William Arden - The Mystery of the Headless Horse

“Hey, someone’s coming,” Pete said. He got up and hurried towards the door. “It must be Jupe and Diego. Ju — ” He jumped back out of sight against the burned walls, his voice a sharp whisper. “Bob! It’s three guys!

“Strangers!” Bob crouched behind a mound of debris and peered out the door.

“They’re coming towards the barn! I don’t like the look of them. Quick, over there under those beams!”

They scurried quickly but silently to one side of the barn. Here, the side wall had fallen in over some roof beams that leaned up against the front wall. Underneath the beams was a small, dark, triangular space. The boys crawled into it, then lay on the ground and looked out. Careful to make no sound, they barely breathed.

Moments later the three men came into the barn.

“Wow,” Pete whispered uneasily, “they look mean.”

The three men stood just inside the door, looking around at the ruins. One was a big, black-haired man with a thick moustache and three days’ growth of black stubble on his heavy face. The second was small and skinny, with a narrow, rat-like face and mean little eyes. The third was fat and bald with a big red nose and broken front teeth. They were all dirty and rough looking, and dressed like saddle-tramp cowboys in worn jeans, muddy cowboy boots, work shirts, and greasy, battered Stetson hats. Their rough hands and faces looked as if they hadn’t been washed for a month.

None of the men looked happy as they stared at the ruins.

“We ain’t gonna find nothin’ in here,” the small, skinny man said. “How we find anythin’ here, Cap?”

“We gotta find ’em,” said the big, black-haired man with the moustache.

“No way, Cap,” the fat one said in a high, squeaky voice. He shook his big head back and forth. “No way, no sir.”

“Just you all look, you hear?” Cap said. “They gotta be right aroun’ here.”

“Sure, Cap,” the fat one squeaked. He began to kick at the debris, peering expectantly at the floor as if whatever they were looking for would appear any second.

The small, rat-like man began to walk around looking here and there, but not too hard. The big one, Cap, swore at him.

“Get down and look, Pike, you ain’t pickin’ daisies!”

The skinny Pike glared at Cap for a moment, then bent lower and began to search harder. Cap turned towards the fat one.

“You, too, Tulsa. We’ll each take a section, you got that?”

Tulsa immediately dropped to his hands and knees in the ashes and began to crawl around with his fat face almost touching the floor. Cap and Pike stared at him in disgust for a moment, and then fanned out to search on either side of the leaning door frame.

“You sure they was lost in here, Cap?” Pike asked.

“Sure, I’m sure. We had to jump the ignition to get out of here that day, didn’t we? Had to go get another set later.”

Twice as the three men searched the ruins, one of them passed close to where Bob and Pete lay hidden and holding their breath. The big, black-haired Cap was so close the boys could have touched his boots. Pete gulped, and silently pointed to a thin-bladed, heavy-hilted knife sheathed in Cap’s boot!

“I don’t know,” the skinny Pike said after a time. “Who says they wasn’t lost somewhere’s else before?”

“We had ’em to drive here, didn’t we, stupid?” Cap said in disgust.

“Okay, so maybe they got dropped outside!” Pike shot back.

The skinny little man sat down on a beam right over Bob and Pete! With another ugly-looking sheath knife he began to whittle at a burned splinter of wood.

“Okay,” Cap finally conceded, “maybe you’re right. I guess we ain’t gonna find ’em in here without a light anyhow. Let’s go look where we was parked that day, and if we don’t find ’em, we’ll go get some lights.”

As the boys tried not even to breathe, Pike jumped up and hurried out of the ruined barn with the other two. Bob and Pete listened for a time without moving. They could hear the three men talking and arguing out in the muddy yard. Bob and Pete waited. Then there was silence outside. Cautiously, they crept out from under the collapsed wall and slipped to the door. The yard was empty. Bob turned to Pete with his eyes gleaming.

“I don’t know who they are, Second,” he said, “but I’ve got a hunch they were here the day of the fire and probably had something to do with Pico’s hat! I think they lost some car keys!”

“That’s what it sounded like,” Pete agreed. “They look like cowboys. Maybe they work for Mr. Norris!”

Bob added, “They sure want to find those keys, and that means the keys are dangerous to them — or to someone! Let’s look hard!”

“We already did, Records,” Pete pointed out. “Those guys couldn’t find them, either.”

“They didn’t look very hard, and now we know what we’re looking for,” Bob said. “I saw a burned rake over there — go get it! We’ll rake up the debris around the peg!”

Pete found the rake in a corner. Its handle had been burned half away, but the metal part was still usable. He began to rake through the ashes and debris. Every time the rake struck something metallic, he and Bob bent over excitedly to examine the object. Their search was a little easier than before because the day had brightened, letting more light into the roofless barn. The clouds were breaking up and patches of blue showed overhead.

Finally Bob cried, “Pete!” and pointed down. Something glinted in the light.

Pete raked it up. The two boys almost bumped heads as they both bent over to pick it up.

“Two keys on a chain with a silver dollar!” Bob cried.

“Any marks on them? Identification?” Pete asked quickly.

Bob looked. “No, nothing. But they’re car keys, all right, and they’ve got to be what those men were looking for.”

“Unless they’re Pico’s,” Pete said. “Or maybe they belong to one of those friends of his.”

“Hey! You two kids!”

Bob and Pete whirled. The fat man named Tulsa stared at them from the burned doorway. For a moment he didn’t seem to know what to do.

“Out the back!” Pete whispered to Bob.

They ran out the rear of the ruined building, and got behind some live-oaks that grew in back of the barn. Then darting from tree to tree, they moved to a position from which they could look back into the hacienda yard.

“You, there!”

The big, black-haired man named Cap stood near the ruined hacienda, gesturing at the boys. Suddenly, the rat-like man came out of the corral and called him.

“Cap! Tulsa says those kids found somethin’ in the barn!”

The two boys looked wildly around. They were blocked off from their bikes at the back of the hacienda yard, and there was no place nearby to hide!

“The ridge!” Pete hissed.

They fled towards the high ridge where the headless horse statue loomed against the sky!

When Jupiter left the Historical Society, he rode to the library and found Diego. The slender young Alvaro boy was looking gloomy.

“There’s a lot in the old newspapers about shoot-outs in the canyons around that time,” he reported, “but nothing that helps us figure out what happened to Don Sebastián.”

“Never mind now,” Jupiter said eagerly. “I think I’ve found something! Bob and Pete should be finished at the jail by now — they’ll probably be at Headquarters. Come on!”

The boys rode quickly through the rain to the salvage yard. To avoid being seen by Aunt Mathilda or Uncle Titus and perhaps grabbed for some chore, Jupiter led Diego in the back way. He stopped his bike along the rear fence about fifty feet from the corner. The entire fence around the salvage yard had been decorated by Rocky Beach artists, and Jupe had halted in front of a dramatic scene of the San Francisco fire of 1906. A little dog sat in the painting near a red spout of flame.