The Desert Moon Mystery by Kay Cleaver Strahan

When I went down to the living-room, at five minutes before three, Danny, John, Mrs. Ricker and Martha were all there. Danny and John were sitting at the far end of the room. Mrs. Ricker was in a chair near the window, tatting. Martha was on the biggest davenport, playing with the monkey charm. I went and sat beside her.

"I feel sleepy," she answered my question. "But I am happy, now. I am very happy."

"That's nice," I told her. "But, if I were you, I wouldn't talk much about being happy; that is, not to-day."

"I don't care. Gaby was hateful and mean, even if she did give me the monkey. She was good, then; but she wasn't good long enough for me to like her. I'm sorry because Chad died, though. I was awfully sorry, until I happened to remember about heaven. He is happy there now. When I die, I'll go to heaven and be happy, too. He'll love me then, won't he? I know he will."

"Of course, Martha," I said. "And he loved you here, too."

"Only like a little girl. I wanted him to love me like a lady. He would have, I guess, if he hadn't shot himself. I am sorry he did that. But I'm happy, anyway, 'cause we are going to have the fireworks to-night."

"Tut, tut," I said. "We won't be having any fireworks to-night."

Her lower lip curled out. "Daddy promised," she whimpered. "Yesterday, when it looked like rain, he said never to mind, that we'd have them the very first night it didn't rain. To-night is the first night. Daddy promised."

To my shame, I never, in all the years, had gotten used to Martha. She looked like a big, healthy, strapping girl. And when, as now, I realized that a smart five-year-old child would have had a better mind, it shocked me all over.

Sam and Hubert Hand came into the room together. Sam looked around, counting noses.

"All here," he said, and locked the door he and Hubert had come through, and dropped the key in his pocket. He went all around the room, closing and locking the doors and windows. He moved a chair to the foot of the stairway, pulled a small table over beside it, took his six-gun out of his back pocket, put it on the table, and sat down in the chair.

No one had moved nor had said a word. I know that I was frightened. I was not afraid of Sam, and I was not afraid of that six-gun. It did not make me a mite more uneasy than a bouquet of flowers would have; that is, if Sam had carried the bouquet in and put it on the table with the same manner with which he had carried and placed the gun. Mostly, I guess, I was afraid of being made afraid; partly, I was afraid of myself.

Hubert Hand spoke first. "Cannon, ugh? " he sneered.

"That's all right, Hand," Sam answered. "This is here, mostly I think, for ornamental purposes."

"Daddy," Martha piped up, "aren't we going to have the fireworks to-night?"

Sam frowned at her. "Not to-night, daughter."

She opened her mouth and began making those dreadful noises she always made whenever she was crossed in anything.

Sam rapped on the table, "Shut that up, here and now," he said. "Not another whimper out of you. Hear me, Martha?"

She closed her mouth with a snap. I thought those immense eyes of hers would pop out of her head. I am sure that the others of us all felt the way she looked. In all the years we had lived together on the Desert Moon, it was the first time any one of us had ever heard Sam speak impatiently to Martha. As for scolding her, being stern with her, up to this minute it had never been in the book.

"John," Sam said, "you and Danny come out of that corner, up here nearer the rest of us, and where it is light."