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+Project Gutenberg's Nan Sherwood on the Mexican Border, by Annie Roe Carr
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Nan Sherwood on the Mexican Border
+
+Author: Annie Roe Carr
+
+Release Date: May 24, 2011 [EBook #36202]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NAN SHERWOOD ON THE MEXICAN BORDER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, eagkw, Roger Frank and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  NAN SHERWOOD
+  ON THE
+  MEXICAN BORDER
+
+  BY
+
+  ANNIE ROE CARR
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  THE WORLD SYNDICATE
+  PUBLISHING COMPANY
+  CLEVELAND NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+  _Published 1937 by
+  The World Syndicate Publishing Co._
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  _Printed in the United States of America_
+
+
+
+
+  TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                  PAGE
+
+       I UNEXPECTED GUESTS                    1
+
+      II YOU'RE GOING WITH ME                12
+
+     III ADAIR MACKENZIE SPEAKS UP           24
+
+      IV TROUBLE AT THE BORDER               32
+
+       V TELL US ABOUT THE HACIENDA          40
+
+      VI SOMETHING ABOUT MEXICO              48
+
+     VII BESS SMELLS A ROMANCE               57
+
+    VIII TROUBLE FOR RHODA                   66
+
+      IX RESOLUTIONS                         73
+
+       X FIRST MEXICAN EXPERIENCE            81
+
+      XI A LEGEND                            90
+
+     XII LINDA RIGGS TURNS UP                97
+
+    XIII NAN TURNS PHOTOGRAPHER             104
+
+     XIV SMUGGLERS                          111
+
+      XV A BULLFIGHT                        117
+
+     XVI END OF THE FIGHT                   124
+
+    XVII A HASTY DEPARTURE                  132
+
+   XVIII LINDA PERFORMS AN INTRODUCTION     140
+
+     XIX FLOATING GARDENS                   149
+
+      XX GOOD-BYE TO MEXICO CITY            156
+
+     XXI THE HACIENDA                       165
+
+    XXII STUBBORN FOOLS                     174
+
+   XXIII IN A PATIO                         183
+
+    XXIV STOLEN!                            189
+
+     XXV BESS HAS SUSPICIONS                195
+
+    XXVI SERENADERS                         200
+
+   XXVII WALKER DEPARTS                     208
+
+  XXVIII NAN'S BIG ADVENTURE                214
+
+    XXIX HAPPILY EVER AFTER!                220
+
+
+
+
+NAN SHERWOOD ON _the_ MEXICAN BORDER
+
+[Illustration]
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+UNEXPECTED GUESTS
+
+
+Elizabeth Harley jumped down from her bicycle and dropped it noisily
+against the steps of the Sherwood back porch.
+
+"Nan, oh, Nan!" she called.
+
+There was no answer. She ran up the steps and into the cottage, letting
+the screen door bang behind her. A friend since primary school days of
+Nan Sherwood, she was like one of the family and always ran into the
+Sherwood home on Amity Street without the formality of ringing the
+doorbell or pausing to knock.
+
+Now she was more than anxious to find Nan. She had something important
+to tell her, news, she felt, that had to be told right away.
+
+Grace and Rhoda and Laura and Amelia, the whole crowd that had gone to
+England to see the king and queen crowned in Westminster the year before
+were coming to Tillbury by motor to spend a couple of weeks. Nan and
+Bess had invited them during the last busy days at school, but Bess had
+only just now received a telegram saying they could come. Oh, there was
+so much to do!
+
+"Nan, Nan!" she called again. They would have to have parties and
+picnics and hikes. Bess's mind was busy planning even as she wondered
+where in the world Nan was. They would have a steak fry down on the
+shore of the lake. They would stay late and after the moon was up, they
+would sit on the shore and sing and talk and build the fire up high and
+then when the embers were low, they would toast marshmallows and talk
+some more until it was time to go home. But where was Nan?
+
+Bess called again. Again there was no answer, but Bess heard the sound
+of voices in the front of the house. She walked on through. Excited
+herself, she failed to notice the excitement in the voices that
+attracted her, so when she stuck her head through the door between the
+hall and the Sherwood front parlor, she was taken completely by
+surprise.
+
+There were strangers in the room! Bess withdrew her head in
+embarrassment, but Nan had seen her and came towards her laughing.
+
+"Oh, Bess," she said, reaching her hand out toward her friend and
+pulling her into the room. "Come on in, you are just the person we
+wanted to see."
+
+"Yes, Bess, it's so," Mrs. Sherwood nodded her head reassuringly at her
+daughter's young friend.
+
+"Yes, lassie, come in," one of the strangers, a white-haired old man
+spoke up. "Come over here by me, and let me look at you." His bright
+blue eyes twinkled as he noted the blush on the girl's cheek but he did
+nothing to relieve her embarrassment. On the contrary, he adjusted his
+glasses on his nose, and carefully looked her up and down.
+
+"Hm-m-m, a pretty bit," he smiled as he rendered his verdict and then
+reached over and drew Nan, who was standing close beside Bess, near to
+him. "So this is another of the lassies who went over to see the good
+king crowned," he addressed his remark to Nan. "And I gather you are
+pretty good friends."
+
+Nan and Bess both nodded at this.
+
+"And you go to the same school and you pay attention to your lessons and
+you mind your own business?" The old gentleman tried to look severe as
+he asked these questions.
+
+"We try to, sir." Bess found her voice at last.
+
+"You obey your elders and you think you are going to spend your
+vacation here in Tillbury, a God-forsaken place, with a half dozen
+bright lassies like yourself?"
+
+"Yes, sir. No, sir. Yes, sir." Bess didn't know what to answer. This
+strange old man was like no one she had ever met before. She wanted to
+protest that Tillbury was not a God-forsaken place, that she and Nan
+both liked it, but she didn't quite dare. She wanted to speak up and
+tell him that vacation in Tillbury with all her friends would be fun,
+but she didn't dare do that either. She didn't quite know what to think
+of this white-haired gentleman who seemed so fond of Nan and was so
+outspoken. In her confusion, she was tongue-tied.
+
+But he wasn't. Each time that he opened his mouth, the words that came
+forth were more astonishing than they had been before. Bess found
+herself listening in amazement.
+
+"Well, you're not going to stay here in Tillbury for the summer," he
+continued his discussion of Bess and Nan's vacation. "I won't have it.
+And your friends aren't going to either. You're all coming with me.
+England one summer, and Tillbury the next. Forsooth! I thought you all
+had more imagination than that. You, Nan, I'm disappointed in you." His
+eyes twinkled merrily as he looked at his young cousin, for the stranger
+was Adair MacKenzie, first cousin to Mrs. Sherwood, and a wealthy
+Memphis, Tennessee, business man.
+
+"Now, let's see, when can we start?" He took out his watch as he spoke.
+"Hm-m-m. It will take a little time to pack," he reflected. "Lassies are
+such fussy creatures. They have to have two or three dresses--"
+
+"Two or three!" Nan exclaimed, "Why, cousin Adair, we have to have just
+dozens if we are going to stay away all summer."
+
+"Who said you were?" The old Scotchman roared and then threw back his
+head and laughed long and heartily at the young girl who seemed so
+self-possessed no matter what he said or did. Nan laughed with him and
+then, turning toward Bess, she introduced her eccentric old relative and
+his pretty daughter, Alice, a young lady about five years older than Nan
+who, up to this time, had said nothing, but had watched her father with
+amusement.
+
+At the introduction, Adair MacKenzie bowed gracefully and, taking Bess's
+hand lightly in his, kissed it quickly. "You're a nice lassie," he said
+then. "Now let's all sit down and talk a while about this trip to
+Mexico."
+
+"To Mexico!" Bess was wide-eyed as the exclamation slipped off her
+tongue. "Are we going to Mexico?"
+
+"Why, yes. That was all settled weeks ago," MacKenzie knitted his brows
+as he looked at Bess. "Such a bright young lassie and yet she didn't
+know that!"
+
+"Don't mind father," Alice took Bess's hand in hers. "He goes about
+planning all these things and never says anything to anyone until he has
+everything all ready. It used to wear me out, but now I think it is
+quite charming of him. Of course, it keeps everyone at home in a
+constant state of turmoil and it makes the housekeeper furious, but then
+we manage."
+
+"Manage!" the old man exploded again. "Manage! Why, you imp, you, you
+love it and you know you do. It's the spice of life to you. Mexico,
+Europe, Alaska, South America, Egypt, why, the world's a place to live
+in, not just to read about. India and China and Japan, these are places
+we haven't been."
+
+"And daddy, we're not going just yet." Alice acted as though she wanted
+to forestall any possibility of their starting off the next day or the
+next hour for the Orient. "Remember, it's Mexico we're going to this
+summer. We're going to live in that big hacienda that was dumped into
+your hands when you sued those clients of yours that were exporters in
+Mexico City. Oh, daddy, remember, when you came back the last time, you
+said it was a grand old place with gorgeous vines flinging scarlet
+sprays all over everything."
+
+"Yes, I remember. I said that the sunsets were more gorgeous, the birds
+more brilliant, the flowers brighter, the moon more silver, the sea
+bluer than anything we've ever seen."
+
+"And that wasn't all you said," Alice seemed to be baiting her father
+now.
+
+"I know it." He fell right into the trap of the daughter whom he adored.
+"I said also that there was a bunch of darn Mexicans cluttering up the
+place down there who put the politeness of us Southerners to shame.
+Never saw anything like it," he turned to Mrs. Sherwood with this. "They
+fall all over themselves every time they turn around, and women just eat
+it up. Can't stand it myself. Never get anything done. Have to change
+that."
+
+Mrs. Sherwood laughed softly at this. Adair had not changed a bit since
+she saw him last, and that was longer ago than she liked to remember.
+That was at her wedding. She smiled now to herself in recalling it. She
+and Bob, in their anxiety to escape from the wedding reception without
+being followed, had taken Adair into their confidence. He had promised
+to get them a horse and buggy, to see that they got off safely to the
+train that was to bring them up North on their honeymoon. He had told
+them to leave everything to him, and, in their innocence, they had.
+
+Adair had meant well, but somehow or other in his peremptory handling of
+events, he got everything in such confusion that practically the whole
+town turned out to see the Sherwoods off. They, in their turn, almost
+missed the train, for the horse and buggy never did arrive. However, it
+had all turned out happily, and when the bride and groom stood on the
+back of the train and waved to their friends, they had an especially
+fond feeling for Adair. He, however, felt pretty glum, and their last
+view of him was of a perplexed young man standing off alone on one
+corner of the station platform, wondering how in the world all of the
+people had happened to be there.
+
+No, Adair, she could see, hadn't changed a bit. He still liked to manage
+people, still liked to follow up any impulsive idea that came to his
+active mind. Through the years, tales of his adventures had reached her
+by letter from friends and relatives. Adair himself was not given to
+writing. "Takes too much time," he said. "Can't sit still that long."
+
+His visit now was a surprise. He had arrived, unannounced, when she and
+Nan were in a turmoil unpacking the trunks that Nan had brought back
+from school with her. Only the peremptory peal of the doorbell had
+announced his coming. When she opened the door, he had taken her in his
+arms and kissed her and then, without even introducing Alice whom she
+had never met, he began immediately to call for Nan.
+
+"Where's that girl?" he asked almost before he was inside the door.
+"Come all the way up here from Memphis to see her and then she doesn't
+even come to greet me." In his impatience, he pounded on the floor with
+his cane. Mrs. Sherwood called her daughter.
+
+"You're Nan," he said positively, when Nan finally entered the room.
+"I'm Adair. I would have known you anyplace. You look and walk and talk
+(Nan hadn't said a word) just like your mother. The same eyes, the same
+hair, the same determined chin. Now I believe everything I've been
+hearing about you. Didn't before. Sounded like a bunch of nonsense to
+me."
+
+"Young school girl takes part in English coronation. Young school girl
+saves child from rattlesnake. Young school girl saves life of old lady.
+Didn't believe a word of it. Now I do. You're going to Mexico with me."
+
+"Adair MacKenzie!" Mrs. Sherwood exclaimed. "Will you please lay your
+cane aside, take off your coat, put your hat down and have a chair
+before you go sweeping Nan off her feet with your scatterbrained ideas.
+
+"Nan, don't worry, darling," she turned toward her daughter and laughed.
+"This man is really quite harmless. He is Adair MacKenzie, our cousin.
+Remember, the one we wrote to some years ago when we were in such
+trouble. He can't help being like this. He's always been so."
+
+"Well, well, well!" Adair grinned rather winningly at Mrs. Sherwood. "I
+must say, Jessie, you haven't changed either. Still think you can manage
+me, do you? Alice," he turned toward his daughter now for the first
+time, "this woman you see here is the only woman who ever thought she
+could wind me around her finger."
+
+Mrs. Sherwood and Alice exchanged sympathetic glances at this. Alice,
+too, if her father only knew it, had her ways of managing him. Nan's
+mother knew this instinctively and liked Alice.
+
+Nan liked her too. She was tall, slender, with blond curly hair and deep
+blue eyes. She was pretty and happy looking. And she liked Nan and hoped
+against hope that her father could work out his plan to induce Nan and
+her friends to come to Mexico with them. She sat quietly by while he
+plunged into the matter.
+
+"Come here, Nancy," he commanded when he had taken off his coat. Nan
+walked across the room and stood in front of him. "You want to go to
+Mexico?"
+
+Nan hesitated. She had never before thought of going to Mexico.
+
+"You want to go to Mexico? Yes, or no?"
+
+"Why, I can't." Nan hesitated as she answered.
+
+"No such word. Never say can't to me. Don't like it. Why can't you?"
+Adair MacKenzie frowned at Nan.
+
+"Why, sir, I have friends coming to stay with me for a few weeks. I
+can't run away from them." Nan hardly knew what to say.
+
+"You like them?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Are they as nice as you?"
+
+"Nicer."
+
+"Don't be modest. They couldn't be. When are they coming?"
+
+"I'm not just sure. Perhaps next week."
+
+"That's all right then. They'll come with us. We'll all go to Mexico
+together. Now, that's taken care of."
+
+It was on this decision, that Bess had entered the room so
+unexpectedly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+YOU'RE GOING WITH ME
+
+
+"But do you think the others can go?" Bess asked anxiously when Adair
+MacKenzie and Alice had driven off in search of Mr. Sherwood. "To bring
+him home where he belongs when he has visitors," Adair had said.
+
+"What do you think, Momsey?" Nan referred the question to her mother.
+The three were in the kitchen where Mrs. Sherwood was bustling about
+preparing a company dinner.
+
+"The good Lord only knows," Mrs. Sherwood shook her head as she sifted
+more flour on her biscuit dough and then kneaded it lightly and
+expertly. "I can only tell you two girls this. When Adair MacKenzie sets
+out to do something, he usually does it. He has a way about him that
+almost always wins people over to his side."
+
+"Yes, but to Mexico. He wants to take us all to Mexico and he doesn't
+even know us!" Bess couldn't believe it, not even after seeing and
+hearing the old Scotchman. "And if I can't believe it," she questioned,
+"how in the world will the others when they haven't even seen him or
+heard him talk?"
+
+"Don't you worry, Bessie," Mrs. Sherwood looked affectionately at this
+girl who was almost a second daughter to her. "They'll be both seeing
+him and hearing him talk before long now. If I know Adair MacKenzie at
+all, he'll be at work on this thing before another day is up. And if
+he's one-half the man he used to be, you might just as well begin
+packing tonight."
+
+"You mean to say you are sure we will all go?" Bess was incredulous.
+
+"Yes, you'll go and have the grandest time you ever have had," Mrs.
+Sherwood said confidently. "There never was another man like Adair
+MacKenzie."
+
+"Then I'm going?" Nan had, despite her cousin's assurance, been somewhat
+doubtful. She knew that her mother had wanted her to stay at home this
+summer, that she had been lonesome without her daughter the summer
+before and was planning all sorts of little surprises for this vacation.
+
+"Go! Of course you're going!" Mrs. Sherwood nearly dropped her biscuit
+dough in her surprise at Nan's question. "And I shouldn't be a bit
+surprised if your father and I were to go at least part way with you.
+Adair said something about it. Aye, but he's a thoughtful soul."
+
+So it came about that Rhoda Hammond, Grace and Walter Mason, Amelia
+"Procrastination" Boggs, and Laura Polk, all school chums of Bess and
+Nan, in the days that followed, received telegraphic invitations to
+spend the summer with Nan in Mexico.
+
+While each of them is laying her plans, packing her clothes and wiring
+"Santa Claus", as Laura Polk immediately dubbed Cousin Adair, let's
+briefly review the adventures of Nan Sherwood and her friends up to this
+point.
+
+Nan was born in Tillbury, a pleasant little town, some distance from any
+big city, and her early school days were spent with Elizabeth Harley,
+the only one of Nan's many friends who has followed her through all of
+her adventures.
+
+In the first book of the series, "Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp" or "The Old
+Lumberman's Secret" Nan and Bess are pals at Tillbury High School. Here
+Nan is extremely popular with all of her classmates and excels in
+sports. She and Bess have grand times together, though the Sherwoods
+live on a reduced income while Bess, the daughter of one of Tillbury's
+wealthiest families, has everything that money can buy.
+
+The first big disagreement the girls ever have comes in the opening
+chapters of this book when Bess, having decided to go away to an
+exclusive boarding school on the shores of Lake Michigan, tries to
+induce Nan to go with her. Though Nan wants with all her heart to go,
+she absolutely refuses to ask her parents because she knows that they
+cannot afford to let her. She is happy later at her decision, because on
+the eve of it, she discovers that her father has lost his job in the
+Tillbury Mills. Everything looks extremely dark for the Sherwoods.
+Momsey Sherwood is ill and Papa Sherwood, because of his age, is
+complete at a loss as to know where to turn for a job.
+
+However, when things are darkest, Mrs. Sherwood receives two letters.
+One from Scotland informs her that she is sole heir of a fortune in
+Scotland, and the other, from her cousin Adair MacKenzie, whom we have
+already met, promises her aid until such time as she can collect on her
+inheritance. With this, Nan's parents leave for Scotland and pack Nan
+off to Northern Wisconsin where she spends an exciting year in the
+lumber country with an uncle and aunt. Here, in chapter after chapter
+that are full of thrills for Nan, those about her, and the reader, the
+plucky young girl solves a mystery that, in the end, clears her uncle's
+title to a valuable piece of property.
+
+In the next volume of the series, "Nan Sherwood at Lakeview Hall" or
+"The Mystery of the Haunted Boathouse" our young heroine goes off to
+school with Bess. And there never was a nicer school anyplace than
+Lakeview Hall. Situated on a bluff overlooking the lake it's like an old
+castle. Mrs. Cupp, assistant to Dr. Beulah Prescott, is the keeper and
+the girls, early in the volume, learn to respect her, if not to admire
+her. Here, they make the acquaintance of a number of new friends.
+
+There are Grace Mason and her brother Walter, children of a wealthy
+Chicago family; Laura Polk, a red-headed girl whose lively imagination
+and ready tongue are constantly getting her into difficulties; Amelia
+Boggs, a serious book-loving soul with a roomful of clocks; and finally,
+Linda Riggs, a snobbish, spoiled child, who is extremely jealous of Nan
+and her well-deserved popularity.
+
+Last, but not least, there is the boathouse ghost around whom is woven a
+mystery that brings Nan and Walter Mason together in such a way that
+they develop a keen admiration for one another. This book is chock full
+of adventure, excitement and mystery and Lakeview Hall is the center of
+it all.
+
+Her friendship with Grace and Walter bring about her next big
+experience, a visit to Chicago. In "Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays" or
+"Rescuing the Runaways" the Lakeview Hall crowd spends Christmas
+vacation in Grace Mason's palatial Chicago home. The story of Nan's
+meeting with a very famous movie star and her solution to the mystery
+surrounding the strange disappearance of two young farm girls who have
+come to the city to go into the movies is recounted in this volume.
+
+Next, Nan and her friends go off on a visit to a western ranch, the home
+of Rhoda Hammond, a school chum. Here the northern girls get their first
+taste of what it is to live in the wide open spaces of the west. The
+story of lost treasure that is told in this volume of the series, "Nan
+Sherwood at Rose Ranch" or "The Old Mexican's Treasure" is one that no
+admirer of plucky Nan Sherwood would want to miss.
+
+The year that follows this western adventure is a pleasant one at
+Lakeview Hall and at its end, we find Nan and her friends trekking off
+to Florida and Palm Beach. So, in "Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach" or
+"Strange Adventures Among the Orange Groves" in a background of wide
+sandy beaches, beautiful graceful palms, and a hotel that overlooks the
+sea, a villain who has tried to cheat one of Nan's many acquaintances
+out of her fortune, comes to a well-deserved end, and Nan emerges a
+heroine once more. At the end of this volume, we find that Walter and
+Nan are becoming more and more fond of one another, and we see the
+Lakeview Hall girls teasing them about it again and again.
+
+In the sixth volume, Mrs. Sherwood's Scotch connections bring about an
+invitation to Nan to visit Scotland and the family estate of her
+mother's people. Bess is heartbroken that her friend is going away
+without her. However, she tries to conceal her disappointment and joins
+with Nan's other friends in planning a grand farewell party. The party
+proves to be a surprise all round and the great day ends with an
+announcement by Dr. Prescott that she is taking a party of six girls
+abroad to see the king and queen of England crowned! Such excitement!
+Such last minute rush! Such fun! Never was there a happier, more
+exciting, more adventurous crossing of the ocean than the Lakeview Hall
+crowd enjoyed on the S. S. Lincoln. And the whole is rounded out in the
+last chapter with Nan as a lady-in-waiting to the Queen at the
+coronation. How this all came about is a story that all Nan Sherwood
+fans will want to read.
+
+It was the part his little cousin had played in the coronation that made
+Adair MacKenzie resolve to hunt her up. It was this that brought him to
+Tillbury and the cottage on Amity street on the day the present volume
+opens.
+
+"Good biscuits!" Adair MacKenzie bit off a piece of their lightness the
+evening the present story opens. They were all sitting at the Sherwood
+dinner table. There he sat, chewing reflectively, as he glanced down the
+table at young Nan.
+
+"So you helped crown the good queen," he remarked, "And it didn't go to
+your head. You're a good lass. You Blakes," he turned to Mrs. Sherwood
+now, "were always a bunch of modest creatures. That's why I like you.
+Now, Bessie there," he pointed to Bess who had stayed for dinner, "she's
+not so modest, but she's kind and loyal. She's a little spoiled, but
+she'll get by."
+
+Bess blushed all shades of the rainbow at Adair's frankness. Used to
+being babied and somewhat pampered at home, his outspokenness troubled
+her. She felt strangely like crying. Nan caught her eye and smiled
+encouragingly. Mrs. Sherwood patted her hand beneath the tablecloth. And
+Alice, well, Alice was a dear, for she turned the conversation toward
+school, and both Nan and Bess utterly forgot themselves in telling of
+the horse show in which they had both taken part during the last week at
+school.
+
+"So you think you can ride, eh?" Adair MacKenzie was secretly pleased
+at both of the young girls. "Well, we'll see. I'll put you each on a
+Mexican mule and let you try to climb a mountain and see what happens."
+He chuckled at the thought.
+
+Alice laughed merrily at this. "Well, you'll never get me on one," she
+vowed. "Once was enough. Instead of the mule pulling me up the narrow
+path, I pulled the mule up. I never worked harder in my life."
+
+"Oh, my sweet, you never worked at all." Adair shook his finger at his
+daughter. "But you'll work this summer--if that old housekeeper of ours
+keeps her resolution not to go down to that dirty hole which we call a
+hacienda. The words are hers," he explained to Nan and Bess.
+
+"She once, when she was a very young girl, spent a summer on a sugar
+beet farm here in the north. A lot of Mexicans worked on it. They were
+miserably treated and poorly paid. As a result their huts were like
+hovels. She saw some of them and now she says that wild horses couldn't
+drag her into that country down there. She'd rather see me starve first.
+But I'll get her yet." Adair MacKenzie smiled as though he liked
+opposition. "I'll show her who is boss," he ended.
+
+"Of course you will, daddy," Alice agreed. "But now tell us, when are we
+going? How long are we going to stay? And whom have you invited?"
+
+This last question put Adair MacKenzie in a corner and he knew it.
+Really, a very kind and extremely impulsive soul, when he went on these
+summer jaunts for pleasure he was apt to go about for weeks, inviting
+all his friends. As a result, no matter how large the house was he
+rented, it was always too small, and no matter what preparation Alice
+made for guests, they were always inadequate.
+
+Now, as he sat thinking, a mischievous light came into his eye. "There
+is only one that I've invited," he teased, "besides these girls that
+will interest you."
+
+"And that is--?"
+
+"Walker Jamieson, that smart-alecky reporter that we met in San
+Francisco a couple of years ago. Remember?"
+
+"Remember? Of course I remember and he wasn't smart alecky. He was kind
+and sweet and--" But Alice didn't finish her sentence, for she became
+conscious of the fact that all the eyes around the dinner table were on
+her. She blushed prettily.
+
+"Anyway," she justified herself, "he'll be a help in handling you, for
+he's smart, almost as smart as you are, daddy."
+
+"A reporter! You mean to say a real newspaper reporter will be down
+there with us?" Nan couldn't contain herself any longer.
+
+"Yep, a no good reporter." Adair MacKenzie tried hard to look
+disdainful as he said this, but he didn't succeed very well and both Nan
+and Bess guessed that he had a genuine regard for the "young scamp" as
+he called him. "Got to have someone around," he muttered as he drank his
+coffee, "to help handle you women, even if it's a young scalawag who
+spends all his time tracking down stories for your worthless newspaper."
+
+"Stories!" Bess and Nan were wide-eyed.
+
+"Now, see here," Adair shook his finger in the direction of the two
+young girls, "reporters are no good. They're a lazy lot that hang around
+with their feet on desks pretending to think. Think! Why, I never knew
+one yet that had a thought worth telling, let alone writing.
+
+"This one that you are going to meet is no better than the rest. M-m-m,
+and no worse either," he conceded as he noted the expression on Alice's
+face. "I asked him to come along because he has a knack of making things
+lively wherever he is.
+
+"Soon's he gets those two big feet of his down off his desk, he makes
+things hum. That's the way he is, lazy one minute, full of action the
+next. If there's absolutely nothing happening, he knows how to stir
+things up. I rather like a man like that--not that I like him," he added
+hastily, "but if we're going to go across the border this summer, got to
+have someone like him around. Might just as well be Jamieson as anyone
+else."
+
+"And will he write stories while we're there and will they be in the
+paper?" Nan was reluctant to let the conversation about the young
+reporter drop.
+
+"Never can tell anything about people like him," Adair MacKenzie shook
+his head as though he would be the last person in the world to predict
+anything about reporters. Could he have looked into the future he would
+have shaken it even more violently, for in the next few weeks Walker
+Jamieson, with the help of Nan and the Lakeview Hall crowd, was to
+uncover in Mexico one of the biggest stories of the year.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+ADAIR MACKENZIE SPEAKS UP
+
+
+It all started in Laredo, Texas, just after Nan and her guests had been
+met by Adair MacKenzie, Alice, and that amazing young newspaper man,
+Walker Jamieson.
+
+"Got everything?" Adair MacKenzie asked gruffly when the bevy of pretty
+young girls, all in their early teens, had stepped, one after the other,
+from the streamlined train that had brought them from St. Louis. They
+had met in that city, all except Rhoda whose home, as those who have
+read "Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch" will remember, was in the South. She,
+therefore, had joined the party at beautiful San Antonio. From there on,
+the girls had all been together.
+
+"I-I-I guess so," Nan answered her eccentric old cousin slowly as she
+looked about first at her friends and then at the suitcases and bags
+that the porters were setting on the station platform beside them.
+
+"Looks it." Adair MacKenzie agreed laconically. "Got almost as many
+bags as Alice here and I thought that she carried more junk than any
+other woman alive. So these are the girls. H-m-m." He looked at the
+Lakeview Hall group in much the same manner that he had appraised Bess
+just three weeks before.
+
+"Let's see," he began, and Nan's eyes twinkled as she realized that he
+was not going to keep his conclusions to himself any more than he had
+before. "You're Laura," he said positively, picking the red-headed girl
+out of the crowd as though he had studied a photograph of her until he
+couldn't possibly mistake her features.
+
+"And that red hair's going to get you in trouble sometime," he continued
+his characterization. "Got a temper now. I can see that. A ready tongue
+too, I'll wager. But you'll get by if you can go on laughing at
+yourself. You've got a sense of humor. Keep it."
+
+"Yes, sir," Laura answered as meekly as she could. She had already been
+warned, on the train, by Bess as to what to expect, so this frank
+analysis of her character did not take her altogether by surprise.
+
+"And you, Miss," the old Scotsman went on around the circle of girls
+enjoying himself hugely as he characterized his young cousin's friends,
+"you," he was looking at Amelia as he spoke, "are the one that has all
+of those clocks. You're too serious. You'll learn down here in this lazy
+country that time just doesn't matter. Ask anybody to do anything for
+you and he'll nod his head slowly and mutter, if he's got enough pep,
+'Si, si, senor, manana!' He'll do anything in the world you want him to
+do, manana, and manana never comes.
+
+"However, you and I will get along. I like you. You are punctual. It's a
+virtue. Never been late for anything in your life, have you?"
+
+Amelia hardly knew what to answer, for Adair had made time seem both
+important and unimportant.
+
+"Speak up," the old man looked at her kindly now. "Don't be modest like
+my young cousin here. Well, never mind," he passed Amelia by as he saw
+that he had embarrassed her beyond her ability to speak. "I'll take care
+of you later," he ended before he turned to Rhoda.
+
+"From the West, aren't you?" he questioned the proud brown-eyed young
+girl. "Can tell in a minute. That carriage, the way you hold your head,
+your clear eyes. Even if I hadn't heard that Western accent, I would
+have known." Adair MacKenzie was proud of his ability to read character,
+and as he went from one of the young lassies to the other, he was
+pleased with himself and pleased with them, for their quiet acceptance
+of his outspokenness.
+
+"A city girl. Just a little too shy." Grace's turn came last, and she
+had been dreading it. "You've got to learn to stick up for your own
+rights," he had struck home here, he knew, and though he realized that
+Grace could take it with less equilibrium than any of the rest, he
+wasn't going to spare her.
+
+"Say, 'boo,' to you," he went on, "And you'll run. Isn't it so?"
+
+Grace said nothing, but nodded her head.
+
+"Try saying 'boo!' back sometime," he advised in a quieter tone than he
+had used to any of the other girls, "and see what happens. If the person
+you say it to doesn't run, stand your ground and say it again, louder.
+But be careful," he patted Grace on the shoulder, "and don't scare
+yourself with your own voice."
+
+At this everyone laughed, including Grace, and Alice MacKenzie took her
+father by the arm and started toward the station. "If you don't look
+out, father," she warned, "I'll say 'boo!' to you and then you'll jump."
+
+"Oh, go along with you," Adair MacKenzie pounded his cane on the wooden
+platform, and then shook it at his daughter, "If you don't behave
+yourself, I'll give you one last spanking that will hold you until you
+are as old and gray as I am."
+
+For answer, Alice laughed provocatively up into his face.
+
+"Now, come on, you girls," Adair frowned as best he could under the
+circumstances, "we've got to get along. And you too, you get a move on,"
+he pointed his cane, with this, at a tall, lanky blond young man.
+
+At this, Nan and Bess, Rhoda and Grace, Laura and Amelia with one accord
+turned their eyes on Walker Jamieson.
+
+"It's real, girls." Walker grinned down into their faces. "It moves and
+speaks, eats and sleeps just like the rest of the world. It does
+everything but work." So saying, he winked quite openly at Alice and
+lengthened his steps so that he walked beside her father.
+
+"First truth I've ever heard you utter," Adair MacKenzie tried to sound
+brusk, but didn't succeed very well. The truth was, of course, that he
+was intensely pleased with the prospect of spending his summer with this
+crowd of young people. And, though he would be the last person in the
+world to admit it, he was intensely flattered that this brilliant young
+newspaper man was in the party. "Not that he came," he thought to
+himself as he noted, with some satisfaction, the regard with which
+Walker seemed to hold Alice, "to keep me company." He sighed deeply as
+he finished the thought. Alice was his only child.
+
+"Got everything?" Adair MacKenzie repeated the question with which he
+greeted the girls as they all approached the customs office. "Baggage
+checks? Tourist cards?"
+
+At this, they all opened their purses and rummaged around in them.
+
+"Shades of Glasgow." Laura murmured into Nan's ears. "Seems good to be
+going through this red tape again, doesn't it?"
+
+Nan nodded. She felt much the same as she did the day they had first
+stepped foot on foreign soil, an unforgettable experience that they all
+had talked over again and again since that morning in May when the great
+boat had been moored to the dock and they had walked, one after the
+other, down the gangplank to set their feet in Scotland for the first
+time. The adventures that had followed had made their vacation the most
+exciting of their lives as those who have read "Nan Sherwood's Summer
+Holidays" all agree. Now, as they all walked forward toward the offices
+of the Mexican officials, Nan wondered idly what further adventures were
+in store for her.
+
+"Senorita, your bag, senorita."
+
+"Why don't you answer when you are called?" Walker Jamieson dropped
+back into step beside Nan. "Lady," he prodded Nan with his elbow, "the
+handsome young Mexican with the neat little mustache that is running
+after us, is calling you."
+
+"Me?" Nan's voice had a surprised ring to it. "Am I Senorita?"
+
+"None other, for months to come, now." Walker Jamieson answered. "You
+are Senorita Sherwood and you had better answer when these Senores call
+or they will be so much insulted that they will never recover."
+
+"Oh, I'm sorry," Nan looked genuinely regretful as she turned to the
+tall thin native that had been following her.
+
+"It is nothing," he dismissed her concern with a wave of his hands, "but
+the Senorita has dropped her purse. May I give it to her?" He bowed
+gracefully as he presented it, and Nan felt that he couldn't possibly
+have presented the finest gift in the world with more grace.
+
+However, before she could possibly thank him, he disappeared. She turned
+to follow the others into the offices, rummaging through her purse, even
+as they had done, as she went.
+
+"Why, it's gone!" Nan looked first at her purse and then in the
+direction in which the obliging young Mexican had vanished.
+
+"Uh-huh, we should have guessed," Walker Jamieson shook his head sadly.
+"Dumb of me. What did he get?"
+
+"My visitor's pass!" Nan exclaimed. "Now, what will I do?"
+Involuntarily, they both looked toward Adair MacKenzie who was just
+disappearing through the door. Then they laughed.
+
+"I don't know, kid," Walker liked this youngster that Alice had already
+filled his ears with tales about. "But you're in for it. It's tough,
+these days, getting duplicates of the things. Shall I break the news to
+the ogre," he nodded in Adair MacKenzie's direction. "He'll explode, but
+you've just got to take it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+TROUBLE AT THE BORDER
+
+
+"Here, here, what's eating you two?" Adair MacKenzie came bursting forth
+from the door he had entered just a few moments before Nan's encounter
+with the Mexican. "H-m-m, lost your pass, I'll wager." With the uncanny
+instinct of many peppery old gentlemen, Adair MacKenzie as soon as he
+saw the baffled expression on Nan's face, jumped immediately to the
+right conclusion.
+
+"Might have known that would happen. Should have taken care of them all
+myself. Can't depend on women and girls. Always tell Alice that. Ought
+to have a safe place to keep things. Old pouch my mother used to strap
+around her waist was a good idea."
+
+Nan couldn't restrain the smile that came to her eyes at this. She had
+known one person in her life who tied a bag around her waist. That was
+grim old Mrs. Cupp, assistant to Dr. Beulah Prescott, principal at
+Lakeview Hall. Legend had it that Mrs. Cupp had a dark secret the key to
+which she carried in the black bag which someone, in days long before
+Nan and Bess descended on Lakeview Hall, had seen. Whether or not it was
+so, Nan didn't know, but at Lakeview Hall, the words "Keep it a secret"
+were generally expressed by saying "Put it in the black bag."
+
+"Laughing at me, Miss!" Adair's roar brought Nan out of her reveries.
+She jumped, and looking up into his face, she winged her way from
+Lakeview Hall on the shores of the Great Lakes back to Laredo, Texas and
+the immediate problem of the lost visitor's pass.
+
+"I said you should take care of your things the way I do," he roared
+again. "See," he pushed his hand inside his topcoat pocket, "Always know
+where my things--" the end of the sentence was lost in a sputter, as
+Adair MacKenzie searched frantically in pocket after pocket for his
+visitor's pass. It was gone!
+
+"W-w-why, somebody's picked my pockets. Can't allow this. Where's a
+policeman? You, you, why don't you do something instead of standing
+there and laughing?" Adair shook his cane at Walker Jamieson who was
+grinning broadly at the spectacle of the old man fuming and sputtering
+now, not at his own negligence, but at the inefficiency of a government
+that would allow such things to happen. His tirade against Nan and her
+carelessness were utterly forgotten.
+
+But it wasn't necessary for Walker to do anything. Adair, in his
+outburst, railing against governments in general now, calling down the
+wrath of the gods on the heads of all policemen, and expressing himself
+most forcibly on the subject of newspaper men in particular, attracted a
+crowd. Shortly, English and Spanish words were being flung this way and
+that and everyone was arguing, but what it was all about no one seemed
+to know.
+
+"Why, daddy, what has happened?" Alice having heard the excitement from
+her seat in the office where her father had left her had worked her way
+through the crowd, and now put a restraining hand on his arm.
+
+Immediately, he was quiet. "I'm sorry, dear," he looked down at her
+shamefacedly, "but these blundering Mexicans have lost not only that
+poor young girl's," he pointed to Nan with his cane, "visitor's pass,
+but mine too. It's an outrage! That's what it is, an outrage. And I
+won't stand for it."
+
+"Oh, Walker," Alice turned to the young reporter now, "What shall we
+do?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, Miss," the voice was that of a Texas Ranger with a
+big ten-gallon hat who had watched the whole scene with some amusement,
+"but if you'll step right over to the offices there" he nodded in the
+direction of the door from which Alice had emerged a moment before, "Mr.
+Nogales will take care of you."
+
+"Thanks," Walker acknowledged the information, grinned, as though he was
+sharing a joke with the stranger, took both Alice and her father by the
+arm, and, with Nan, worked his way out of the crowd.
+
+"It's a difficult problem." Lozario Nogales gave a slight Spanish accent
+to his words as he spoke to the Americans who, a few moments after the
+scene above, were ushered into his office. "You see, it's like this--"
+he spoke slowly and fingered a pencil as he chose his words, for English
+did not come any too easily to him.
+
+"Nonsense! No difficulties at all." Adair MacKenzie was always impatient
+with slow speech, "all you have to do is write out another of those
+cards for each of us. Take you a minute. They're nothing but a lot of
+silly red tape anyway. If I had my way about it, there would be no
+passports, no customs, no visitors' passes, no anything that impedes
+free movement of people across the borders. It's all foolishness the way
+you Mexicans do these things." Thus, with utter inconsistency, Adair
+MacKenzie, in a moment's time placed the whole burden of border
+regulations in the laps of the Mexicans.
+
+"But Senor," Lozario felt that he never would become accustomed to the
+ways of these Americans, and of this American in particular, "there are
+the rules."
+
+"Rules! What rules?" Adair stormed further, then he caught Alice's eye
+and capitulated, "Well, what are we to do?"
+
+"It's simply this," Mr. Nogales was more than grateful for Alice's
+presence which gave him at last an opportunity to speak, "there has been
+a good deal of smuggling across the borders in the past few months, and
+your American government has made new rules about the issuing of
+duplicates when passes are lost."
+
+"Smuggling?" Walker Jamieson now spoke up for the first time since the
+party entered the office. "Smuggling what?"
+
+"Well, the American gentleman knows that immigration laws prohibit the
+free passage of certain nationalities into the United States."
+
+Walker nodded. His work in San Francisco had brought this fact most
+forcibly to his mind again and again, for there he had worked often
+among the Chinese and the Japanese and numbered among them many close
+friends. These people admired him and respected him greatly. They
+thought that because he was a newspaper man, he could do anything in the
+world for them that he wanted to do.
+
+As a consequence, they were constantly coming to him with tales of
+wives or mothers or children that they wanted to see, but could not get
+into the United States because of the immigration laws.
+
+"And the senor knows that these people somehow or other manage to get
+across the border in spite of these laws?" Mr. Nogales continued. He
+liked this young man.
+
+"Yes." Walker knew that too. Often he had been amazed while covering his
+beat in Chinatown to meet the very mothers, wives, or children he had
+been asked to "get here for me, please, Mr. Jamieson" a few days after
+being asked.
+
+However, as he threaded through the dark streets of the famous San
+Francisco Chinatown this surprise always wore off. The ways of the
+people he was among were so silent and mysterious, even to him working
+among them and calling them "friends", that he had grown to take such
+sudden appearances for granted.
+
+"Well, just lately," Mr. Nogales went on, "there have been even more
+than the usual number of persons smuggled across. Your government and
+mine has been working hard on the problem of putting an end to this.
+One means of stopping it has been to check most thoroughly the
+issuance of all duplicate visitor's passes."
+
+Nan was beginning to see light in the whole situation now. Immigration
+laws and the smuggling of aliens across the border was something she had
+studied about in social science classes at Lakeview. This scene in the
+Laredo offices was a school lesson brought to life.
+
+Nan vaguely remembered, as she stood there listening and watching, that
+Laura had once had a special report to give on this particular subject.
+She remembered because it was at the time the girls were planning a big
+spread down at the boathouse, and Laura had been so excited about the
+whole thing that she had gone to class utterly unprepared. In the few
+minutes before the assembly bell rang Nan helped her out, and so Laura
+had managed to struggle through the social science hour.
+
+Nan turned. She wished that Laura and the rest were here now, but she
+knew that they were waiting in an outer office.
+
+"Then you think," Walker Jamieson's words brought Nan back to the
+present plight of herself and her cousin Adair, "that there is a regular
+trade in visitors' passes, that the pickpocket who got ours wanted
+nothing else?"
+
+"You had no money stolen, did you?" Mr. Nogales queried.
+
+"Uh-h-h-" Adair MacKenzie had been silent for a long while for him. Now
+he rummaged through his pockets even as Nan checked on the contents of
+her purse.
+
+"Just as I thought," Mr. Nogales nodded his head, as the two agreed that
+all their money was there. "Your visitors' passes are the only thing
+missing. Just a moment, please, I'll see what can be done." With this,
+he disappeared into the office of his superior, and Adair MacKenzie
+followed him.
+
+Nan, Alice, and Walker Jamieson looked hopelessly at one another as
+Adair disappeared from their view.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+TELL US ABOUT THE HACIENDA
+
+
+"What did you think?" Laura inquired afterwards when the girls were all
+settled in a hotel close to the border for the night. "That the walls of
+that inner office would just cave in when Mr. MacKenzie started
+bellowing."
+
+"Why, Laura Polk, how disrespectfully you talk!" Bess exclaimed from her
+place in front of the dressing table where she was brushing her hair.
+"And Mr. MacKenzie is our host too. If it weren't for him we wouldn't be
+down here now. At this minute we'd probably be on the shores of a lake
+near Tillbury."
+
+"Oh, Bess, you know I'm not one bit disrespectful, really," Laura
+retorted. "I like Mr. MacKenzie real well and you know I do. I'd give
+anything in the world to be able to roar the way he does." There was
+genuine longing in her voice as she spoke. "Just imagine," she
+continued, "how handy that roar would have come in the night we routed
+the ghost. I just think," she continued to play with the idea of making
+use of Adair MacKenzie's roar, "how handy it would come in, if we were
+to meet Linda Riggs.
+
+"Couldn't we manage," she was lying prone on the bed, and, as this new
+idea came to her, she cupped her chin in her hands and looked off into
+space, "to have your cousin around sometime when Linda Riggs was
+present. I'd love to have him analyze her the way he did us today. Such
+fun!" Laura's eyes danced merrily at the thought.
+
+"And then I'd like to have her open her mouth to protest," Laura
+continued, "and have him roar at her. Oh, I'd give a million dollars,
+a trillion dollars," she amended generously, "to hear that roar."
+
+"You and me too," Bess joined in. "By the way, have any of you heard
+anything about her lately."
+
+"Not I," Nan answered, "and I must say the less I hear about her and the
+less I see of her, the better. There was a rumor, you know, at school
+that she was going to be allowed to come back this fall."
+
+"I know it," Bess somehow always managed to hear all the rumors, "and I
+can't for the life of me understand why Dr. Prescott would ever let her
+reenter. Certainly, she's no credit to Lakeview Hall, or to any school
+for that matter. If I were a principal I wouldn't let her in my school.
+In fact, if I got the chance at all, I'd just slam the door right in her
+face."
+
+"Oh, Bess, do you ever sound as though you meant it? Cousin Adair
+should hear you talk now. He thinks that Laura has a temper. He should
+hear you sometimes." Nan laughed at her pal.
+
+"I know it, but I think I'm more than justified. She's certainly caused
+us plenty of trouble from the very first time we ever met her. I'll
+never forget how she embarrassed us on the train that took us to
+Lakeview the first time."
+
+"Nor how Professor Krenner took our part," Nan added.
+
+"Nor how you outwitted her and drove up to school in the back of Walter
+Mason's car as though you were a princess returning to her palace,"
+Laura giggled. "There never was a freshman created more of a stir than
+you did that night. Boy, did we ever put our heads together in corridor
+four and decide that we would have to put you in your place right away,"
+she continued slangily.
+
+"And did I ever hate you, Laura Polk," Bess laughed now at the
+recollection. "You embarrassed me so about that lunch box that when I
+went to bed that night I cried myself to sleep."
+
+"Poor Bessie," Laura sympathized. "You were such a proud little thing
+that I never in the world thought I'd ever be able to get along with
+you."
+
+"Get along with Bess!" Nan exclaimed, "if you had ever heard what Bess
+said about you that night, you would have been surprised that she ever
+spoke to you again."
+
+"What did you say, Bess?" Laura looked positively impish as she looked
+at Bess's reflection in the mirror.
+
+"Oh, I don't remember." Bess was obviously concealing the truth.
+
+"You do too," Amelia joined in as she wound the pretty little travelling
+clock that had been given her the week before.
+
+"If you don't tell, I will," Nan was enjoying the situation as much as
+the rest, for she saw that Bess was not really embarrassed.
+
+"Go ahead then and see if I care," Bess retorted, giving a few final
+strokes to her hair.
+
+"Well, you said," Nan began slowly, "that that homely red-headed Polk
+girl was just as mean as she could be!"
+
+"Did she say that?" Laura laughed heartily. Even in those days she would
+have been the first to laugh at herself. Now she could laugh doubly, for
+the homely red-headed girl had, since then, blossomed out into a pretty,
+fair complexioned curly headed miss with a very pleasing personality.
+
+And so the girls continued for some time to talk over events and
+happenings that are recounted in other books of this series until Laura
+turned to Nan, "Anyway," she said, "if we may return to the present and
+Laredo, Texas, will you please tell us just how your cousin managed to
+extract those passes from the authorities this afternoon? I respected
+his abilities to get what he wanted from the moment mother capitulated
+and let me come down here with what she called, 'a perfect stranger,'
+but I never respected them as much as I did when I saw that white
+uniformed official bowing you people out of that office as though you
+were the President's party itself."
+
+"Wasn't he just grand!" Nan's eyes were alight at the recollection.
+"That man was none other than a special aid to the Mexican consular
+office here in Laredo, and he nearly fell all over trying to help us
+after cousin Adair ceased his storming and told those people who he was.
+I never saw anything like it in my life.
+
+"It was 'Si, senor, this,' and 'Si, senor, that' until Alice and Walker
+and I began to think that we were really somebody, if only by reflected
+glory."
+
+"Well, you certainly looked like somebody very important when you came
+out," Bess agreed. "I wondered for a moment whether I had really heard
+allright when you went in."
+
+"Then you did hear us?" Nan laughed.
+
+"All Mexico did," Laura put in. "Really, at first we thought another
+revolution was taking place. Grace here was looking around for
+someplace to hide herself. Amelia was clutching her watch to her with
+a look of determination which said as plainly as anything 'no foraging
+rebel is going to get this' and Rhoda looked as though she wished she
+had brought her trusty six shooter along. And then when we had gotten
+ourselves all worked up to the point of accepting the inevitable, who
+should come round the corner but you and Mr. Jamieson, Alice and her
+father!"
+
+"You sound as though we disappointed you," Nan remarked.
+
+"Oh, not at all." Laura hastened to correct this impression. "I don't
+believe Mr. MacKenzie has ever disappointed anyone in his life. He just
+couldn't. Not with that cane, that roar, and that honesty which stops at
+nothing. He's a dear. Now tell us, Nan, all you know about this place we
+are going to."
+
+"I've done that a thousand times since I met you in St. Louis," Nan
+responded as she pulled off her dress and slipped her arms into the
+lounging robe that the Lakeview Hall girls had given her at a surprise
+party in her honor more than a year before.
+
+"Oh, no, you haven't," Laura denied. "We made you spend most of the
+time telling us about this angel of a cousin that appeared out of a
+clear sky and offered to take us all to Mexico. Doesn't sound real even
+now when we're here."
+
+"There's one thing about it," Amelia added, "if one can't have rich
+relations oneself, the next best thing in the world is to have charming
+friends who have them."
+
+"Here, here!" Laura raised a protesting hand. "You're out of order. The
+first thing you know Nan will be thinking we're fond of her."
+
+"Oh, you old ducks," Nan looked at them all fondly. "Don't you know that
+cousin Adair knew that if he didn't invite all of you that I wouldn't
+come at all? Now, let's forget all of this gratitude stuff. It
+embarrasses me."
+
+"All right then," Bess agreed, "but you really haven't told Rhoda
+anything at all about the hacienda, Nan."
+
+"I don't know anything myself," Nan admitted after some hesitation.
+"I've tried and tried to get cousin Adair to tell me something about the
+place, but he just won't say anything. I'm not sure whether he knows and
+won't tell or whether he doesn't know himself. At any rate, he's being
+extremely mysterious about the whole thing. Says that we didn't see
+anything when we saw Emberon, that this place that we are going has that
+beat all hollow. Now what do you people make of that?"
+
+"Dungeons, secret passage, weird wailing of bagpipes, that's what
+Emberon had," Laura summarized. "If this Mexican hacienda has anything
+better to offer, I'd like to see it."
+
+"And so would I," Nan agreed. She almost resented the idea that anything
+could possibly be any nicer than the old Blake estate in Scotland. "And
+listen, he says this further, that if we think we had adventures in
+Scotland and England, we just haven't seen anything yet. What in the
+world do you suppose he means?"
+
+"If Doctor Prescott said that, or Mrs. Cupp, or your father or mine,"
+Rhoda answered, "I might possibly hazard a guess as to what was meant,
+but there's no telling about this cousin of yours, Nan."
+
+"No, he's as unpredictable as the seasons, Alice says, and the only
+thing we can do is wait." Nan sounded as though waiting was the hardest
+thing in the world to do.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+SOMETHING ABOUT MEXICO
+
+
+"What's this?" Laura questioned the next morning when she came upon
+Amelia in her hotel room reading diligently from a book.
+
+"Oh, nothing." Amelia barely looked up.
+
+"Come on, tell aunty," Laura teased. "Nobody else is up yet and I've
+simply got to talk to someone."
+
+"You mean there's no one else about, so you'll talk to me. Well, I like
+that!" Amelia returned to her book as though she were really indignant.
+
+"You know I didn't," Laura sounded very conciliatory--for her. "It's
+just this; I've got the whim-whams something terrible. Did you ever have
+the whim-whams, Amelia?"
+
+"Can't say I did," Amelia answered. "At least I didn't call them any
+such name as that."
+
+"Then you know what I mean?" Laura looked very serious.
+
+"You mean," Amelia turned the open book over on her lap and answered
+Laura's question, "that you have awakened early in a hotel in a strange
+city, that you want like anything to go off exploring, that you know you
+can't, and that the next best thing you can find to do is to annoy
+someone else who can't go either."
+
+"My dear professor," Laura assumed as serious a mien as possible, "you
+have hit the well-known nail squarely on the head. It must be that you
+have the whim-whams too. Now what is that you are reading?"
+
+"Well, if you must know," Amelia gave in, "It's a guidebook to Mexico."
+
+"Ah, what could be better." Laura herself reached for the book. "Let's
+see what this country across the street from this hotel is like."
+
+"It does seem funny, doesn't it," Amelia said, "that when we look out
+our hotel windows we are looking into a foreign country. It doesn't look
+any different. It doesn't sound any different. And it doesn't--"
+
+"Smell any different," Laura finished, "and that's the most surprising
+thing of all, because according to Mr. MacKenzie, Mexico is just the
+smelliest place on God's green earth."
+
+"Did he tell you that too?" Amelia asked. "Really, when he finished the
+tirade against the country that he delivered to me after dinner, I began
+to wonder why in the world he ever brought along five such nice girls as
+we."
+
+"Five? What's the matter, 'Mealy, can't you count before breakfast?
+There are six of us."
+
+"I said five _nice_ girls," Amelia insisted. "He might have had one of
+several reasons for bringing you along."
+
+"Such as--" Nan had come into the room just in time to hear this last.
+
+"Oh, he might have wanted to make the world a better place for the rest
+of us to live in by losing Laura, making her a target for the
+revolutionists, feeding her to the bulls, or just leaving her here as
+food for the fleas," Amelia responded airily, and then she put her arm
+around Laura's shoulder as though to show her that she didn't mean a
+word of what she was saying.
+
+"They do say," Grace added as she joined the group, "that the fleas here
+are man-sized. That reporter told me last night that the reason they
+give us mosquito netting to put over us at night is that the fleas and
+the mosquitos wage a nightly battle as to who is going to carry off the
+Americans."
+
+"And you believed him?" Laura laughed.
+
+"Well, not exactly," Grace answered, "but I did carefully tuck my
+netting all round me last night."
+
+"He told me lots of things about Mexico, too," Nan added, "and I don't
+know which of them to believe. This is a queer country we are going
+into, full of so many strange legends, so many different kinds of people
+that any wild tale at all might be true."
+
+"That's what I was thinking," Amelia agreed, "when Laura came into the
+room this morning. This guidebook here is full of all sorts of queer
+tales."
+
+"Such as--?" Nan queried.
+
+"Oh, you people in there," Bess called from another room, "wait until
+Rhoda and I come before you talk any more about Mexico. We want to hear
+too."
+
+"All right, slow-pokes," Nan called back, "but you'll have to hurry.
+We're supposed to be downstairs for breakfast with Cousin Adair in
+exactly one-half hour."
+
+At this, Bess and Rhoda came into Amelia's room and the girls, all
+dressed in sports clothes, settled themselves to learn something about
+the country they were going to visit.
+
+"It says here," Nan began, for she had long ago lifted the guidebook
+from Amelia's lap, "that Mexico is a Latin-American country south of the
+United States of America. The Gulf of Mexico is to the east and the
+Pacific Ocean to the west."
+
+"Oh, we know that," Bess interrupted impatiently, "tell us something
+that is different."
+
+"Well, how's this?" Nan queried, "Mexico is a land of great contrasts.
+About sixty percent of its population are Indians who live in a backward
+civilization that weaves its own clothes, grinds its own corn, does
+everything for itself by hand. The other forty percent is advanced and
+modern. The first can neither read nor write. The latter attends modern
+schools and universities.
+
+"Nothing in Mexico, in its history, its climate, its people, or its
+landscape is dull or monotonous."
+
+"That's better," Bess approved. She was not one to care much for facts
+or figures.
+
+"Oh, there are more interesting things than that in the book," Amelia
+reached for it. "Here let me read you something that I found this
+morning."
+
+"Just a second," Nan held on to it, "How in the world do you pronounce
+these words with all their z's and x's. No wonder there are so many
+people that can't read or write. I wouldn't be able to write myself if
+I lived here. Imagine living in a place called I x m i q u i l p a n or
+X o c h i m i l c o." She spelled them all out because she couldn't
+possibly pronounce them. "They must all be Indian words dating from the
+time of the Aztecs," Nan went on. "Look, they all have beautiful
+meanings.
+
+"Chalchihuites is translated into 'Emeralds in the Rough', Tehuacan,
+'Stone of the gods', Chiapas, 'River of the Lime-leaved Sage', and
+Tzintzuntzan, 'Humming Bird'. And here's a place I want to go,
+Yecapixtla or 'Place Where People Have Sharp Noses'."
+
+"What a funny place that must be," Laura laughed with Nan, "I'll bet
+they all spend their time minding one another's business."
+
+"They probably have a factory there," Nan went on, "for turning out
+people like Mrs. Cupp and they have catalogues showing the sharp,
+sharper, and sharpest noses."
+
+"And when a school principal wants to hire an assistant that will see
+everything and hear everything he pays top price and gets the sharpest,"
+Laura liked the idea. "We ought to go there," she ended, "if it's only
+to get a postcard so that we can send it back to Mrs. Cupp with the
+words 'Wish you were here'."
+
+"Oh, Laura, you old meany," Nan laughed. "You know she isn't half as bad
+as you make her out to be."
+
+"No, she isn't," Laura agreed. "Lakeview Hall certainly wouldn't be
+complete without her. Why, down here in Mexico--well, on the border of
+Mexico--when I'm going farther and farther away from her all the time, I
+can almost believe that I'm fond of her. But don't let me talk about
+it," she pretended to sniff as though she was going to cry, "or I'll be
+getting homesick for her."
+
+"Small chance of your ever getting homesick for anyone," Bess remarked,
+"but let's hear what it is Amelia wants to tell us about and then go
+downstairs, I'm almost starved."
+
+"Oh, I'm sorry, Amelia," Nan handed over the book, "I didn't mean to
+monopolize it." These Lakeview Hall girls, together for so many years
+under all sorts of circumstances, were still polite to one another and
+thoughtful about little things. They teased one another, laughed at one
+another's faults, and quarreled sometimes among themselves, but they
+were always eager to forgive and more than anxious to please. This was
+why they had been friends for so long. They were never really jealous of
+one another and were always ready to praise anyone in the group who did
+anything outstanding.
+
+"It's all right, Nan," Amelia answered as she reached for the book. "I
+merely thought that this story of the founding of Mexico City might be
+fun to read. It's short, Bess, so we'll be downstairs in just a few
+minutes. Here it is.
+
+"'When the Aztecs, a people that inhabited this part of Mexico long
+before the coming of the white man from across the water, were wandering
+from place to place in search of a spot on which to establish
+themselves, their head priest had a vision.
+
+"'In it, he saw their War God and heard him telling them to go on and on
+until they found an eagle on a cactus growing from the rock. The cactus,
+the War God said, was the heart of his treacherous nephew who had waged
+war against him and lost. As punishment, he had been put to death and
+his heart was torn from him and thrown into the lake. It fell upon a
+rock among the reeds, and from it grew a cactus so big and strong that
+an eagle, seeking a place to build his nest, had made his home upon it.
+
+"'The Aztecs heeded the words of their War God as told them by the
+priest. For years they wandered, until finally, one morning very early,
+their long search was rewarded. They came upon the eagle on the cactus!
+His wings were extended to the rays of the sun and in his claws he held
+a snake.
+
+"'So it was here that they built their city and even to this day, the
+cactus and the eagle, holding a snake in his beak, is Mexico's emblem.'"
+With this, Amelia closed the book.
+
+"So that's why I've been seeing that symbol on so many Mexican things
+all these years," Nan commented. "I've wondered what it meant, but was
+always too lazy to look it up. How strange the history of this country
+is that we are going into! I wonder what will happen."
+
+"Probably everything," Laura said, "so, now I think we'd better go
+downstairs and eat, fortify ourselves so to speak for any emergency."
+
+"Guess you're right," Nan laughed. And with this, Nan and her friends
+all hurried down to breakfast and to the beginning of another day in
+their Mexican adventure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+BESS SMELLS A ROMANCE
+
+
+"Well, how are the charming senoritas this morning?" Walker Jamieson
+dropped his feet from the chair next to him and rose as Nan and her
+friends entered the lounge of the hotel.
+
+"Let's see, one, two, three, four, five, yes, there are six of you
+still. There was no victory for the mosquitoes last night I can see. I
+had an idea," he nodded his head slowly as though he had been seriously
+considering the subject, "that all would go well after my joust with the
+man-sized monster that forced its way into my room. Boy, was it a big
+one! It had a million legs like tentacles that wound themselves around
+me so that if it hadn't been for my trusty Excalibur, none of us would
+have been here this morning. It was a fight." He shook his head as
+though the recollection was more than he could bear.
+
+"Yes, we can see it was." Alice, too, had been waiting for the girls to
+appear. "We can see the marks of the bloody battle all over your face."
+
+"Can you really?" Walker Jamieson grinned down at the girl who was just
+a foot shorter than himself. "Well, they are all for you ladies," he
+pretended now to doff a big sombrero and sweep it across in front of him
+in the most approved style.
+
+"What's all this nonsense?" Adair MacKenzie joined the party. "Can't
+stand silliness any time, and least of all before breakfast. Now, get
+out into that dining room and eat."
+
+At this, the whole party moved. "Don't intend to spend the summer in
+Laredo," Adair muttered as he followed them.
+
+Breakfast was a silent meal--silent that is, save for Adair's sputtering
+into his coffee. At its finish, he pushed his plate back, called the
+waiter and gave him an extraordinarily large tip, and turned to his
+young cousin.
+
+"Well, Nancy," he said agreeably, "How are things with you this fine
+morning? Ready to move on? And you, Bess, and all the rest of you, are
+you all right? Now, let me tell you all a secret," he went on as he
+realized how quiet everyone had been throughout the meal, "I'm not
+really such a bad old soul. Oh, I lose my temper at times. I admit
+that," he said generously, "but I'm not bad, not bad at all." He shook
+his head as though he was entirely satisfied with himself and the world
+in general.
+
+"And you there, Jamieson, you're not bad either," he went on.
+
+Walker nodded his head as though he acquiesced entirely and Alice beamed
+on everyone. It was nice to have everyone in such a happy frame of mind,
+she thought, and then, for luck, crossed her fingers.
+
+"And now, daddy," she ventured while he was still in his expansive mood,
+"What's on the program for today?"
+
+"Oh, lots of things, lots of nice things," he looked very pleased with
+himself. "First off, how soon can you all be ready to move on? We should
+be moving along to Mexico City, a grand place, one of the most
+interesting cities I've ever visited. What say you, Jamieson?"
+
+"Eh, what?" Jamieson had been quite bowled over by the old man's sudden
+change in mood and had been wondering whether it would be the right time
+now to ask whether he could kidnap Alice for part of the morning. He was
+trying to signal her to ask her opinion, when the question was addressed
+to him. Now, he was at a complete loss, for he had heard nothing of the
+conversation that preceded the query.
+
+"I say," Adair repeated his question patiently, "isn't Mexico City a
+grand place?"
+
+"Yes, yes, a grand place," Walker answered absently. Had Alice
+understood what he was signaling? He couldn't be sure. What was she
+telling him with her lips. Was it "Better wait" or "Better not." "What?"
+The question came out audibly without his realizing it.
+
+It was Nan, the darling, who saved the day. She had been watching the
+frantic efforts of Walker Jamieson to communicate with Alice and noted
+his lack of success. She, too, had been trying to read Alice's answer
+and was as startled as Walker when his "what?" was voiced. Now, like a
+"veteran" (Walker used the word later when he promised to buy her
+something, anything from a gorgeously colored serape to an jade bracelet
+for coming to his rescue) she filled the breach.
+
+"I said," she affirmed, looking at Walker as though she was answering
+his question, "that we can all be ready to leave about noon, if it
+pleases cousin Adair." She turned to her cousin somewhat diffidently as
+she added this last. The truth was, of course, that she and her friends
+could have left in an hour, in a half hour, but it was fun trying to
+help Walker and Alice out.
+
+"Let's see," Adair took out his big gold watch and considered. "Noon.
+That gives us a few hours to make a good start on our way before dark.
+Could you make it by eleven?"
+
+Nan looked at Walker. "Eleven-thirty." She read his lips.
+
+"Eleven-thirty," she smiled up at her cousin.
+
+"You little beggar, you," he tweaked the pink ear that showed just
+beneath her brown bobbed hair, "you'll be able to barter with those
+Mexicans like a veteran. It's your Scotch blood." He looked proud of her
+as he turned to the others, "Well, Nan here says 'eleven-thirty', so
+eleven-thirty it is. Now get out, all of you, I've got some business to
+attend to, and I don't want to see any more of any of you until it's
+time to leave. No, not even you," he added as he looked at Alice.
+
+They all strolled out of the dining room together and Walker executed a
+few fancy little steps for Nan's benefit, as, when they reached the
+elevators, he and Alice went on past them to the doors and out.
+
+"Why, Nan Sherwood, it's a romance. Walker Jamieson is in love with
+Alice MacKenzie. I'll bet you anything." Bess's face was all alight as
+she closed the door of Nan's room. "It's just thrilling. Did you see the
+way the two of them walked away together. Why, they were so glad you
+said you couldn't be ready until eleven-thirty! I just know they were!"
+Bess was fairly bubbling over with excitement. "Didn't you see it at
+all?"
+
+"See what?" Nan pretended innocence.
+
+"Why, how glad they were, of course," Bess seemed impatient with Nan's
+inability to see a romance when it was right under her nose.
+
+"Oh, Bess, you imagine things," Nan answered. She didn't want Bess to be
+aware at all that she had tried to help Alice and Walker out.
+
+"Imagine things! You're just blind, that's all," Bess was very proud of
+her discovery. "They are in love with one another and they'll get
+married in Mexico. You'll be the maid of honor and we'll be the
+bridesmaids and everything will be just grand, won't it?"
+
+"Bess, Bess," Nan laughed, "how you do jump to conclusions! Have you
+ever considered that the bride has to have someone to give her away and
+have you tried to imagine cousin Adair giving Alice away?"
+
+Bess was all soberness immediately. "No, I didn't think of that," she
+admitted. "Oh, what can we do about him?" she puckered her brows as if
+Adair was an immediate and very difficult problem. "If we could get him
+right after he has had a good breakfast," she laughed, "maybe he would
+be as nice as he was this morning and then I'm sure everything would be
+all right."
+
+"Or," she continued, as a new and better idea came to her, "they could
+elope. Wouldn't that be exciting, Nan? And just think how mad your
+cousin would be. No, that's not so good either. Mr. MacKenzie would
+probably disown Alice and then they wouldn't have all his money."
+
+"Bess!" Nan exclaimed, "how you do run on."
+
+"Yes, I know," Bess agreed, "but it's such a perfectly entrancing
+subject. She's a darling and so is he. Why, he's almost as nice as
+Walter Mason," she added slyly.
+
+Nan ignored this last. "Walker is nice, isn't he?" she said. "And he and
+Alice do look dear together."
+
+"He's swell," Bess said slangily. "He's tall and handsome and full of
+fun. Do you know, I think sometimes that Mr. MacKenzie does like him,
+for all the way he calls him 'lazy' and a 'no-good reporter.'"
+
+"Of course he does," Nan agreed, "and Walker likes him too. I just know
+it."
+
+Bess looked at Nan questioningly at this latter bit of information. Did
+Nan know something she didn't know?
+
+"Anyway, we'll just have to wait and see what happens," Nan tried to
+dismiss the subject.
+
+"I suppose so," Bess sighed, "but it would be such fun to be an
+attendant at a wedding."
+
+"Oh, Bessie," Nan ruffled her friend's hair, "you're such a romantic
+soul. I'll bet that you think that if worse came to worse and cousin
+Adair insisted that Alice marry someone else, Walker would ride up on a
+charger and carry Alice off the way young Lochinvar did in that poem we
+learned back in the fifth grade. Remember?"
+
+"You mean the one about Lochinvar coming up out of the West, 'through
+all the wide world his steed was the best,'" Bess laughed.
+
+"Yes, that's the one," Nan assented. "Remember how we loved that thing
+and how we used to say over and over again the stanza that followed the
+one where he asked the bride to dance with him
+
+  'One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear
+  When they reach'd the hall door, and the charger stood near;
+  So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung,
+  So light to the saddle before her he sprung!
+  She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur;
+  They'll have fleet steeds that follow, quoth young Lochinvar.'"
+
+"And then at the end," Bess went on, "there was this,
+
+  'There was racing and chasing, on Cannobie lea,
+  But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see.
+  So daring in love, and so dauntless in war,
+  Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?'"
+
+"Oh, Nan," Bess laughed when she had finished, "when I was a kid I
+thought there couldn't possibly be anything more romantic than that."
+
+"Nor I neither," Nan admitted, "And I thought of it often when we were
+in Scotland last summer. But do you know, Bess," she giggled, "that
+Young Lochinvar of today would have to dash up in a car--"
+
+"Yes, or in Mexico it might be a burro," Bess laughed heartily at the
+thought.
+
+"Say, what are you two making such a rumpus about," Laura stuck her head
+in through the door. "First thing you know, they'll be locking you up as
+a couple of laughing hyenas, because you are making such a racket."
+
+"Come on in, Laura," Nan invited, "We've just got a silly streak, that's
+all. Bess, here, had a couple of crazy ideas that she aired. She's all
+right now. You can come in," she finished reassuringly. "What's up?"
+
+"Oh, nothing," Laura answered in such an unusual tone that Nan knew
+immediately something was wrong.
+
+"Come, what is it?" she asked again, going over to Laura and closing
+the door behind her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+TROUBLE FOR RHODA
+
+
+"Oh, it's Rhoda," Laura admitted when the door was closed. "Nan,
+something terrible's happened and Rhoda is in her room crying her eyes
+out. Won't you come and see if you can't do something for her."
+
+"Of course," Nan started for the door at once. "But what's happened?"
+She and Bess asked this last together.
+
+"Rhoda just received a telegram from her father asking her to come home
+at once."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Oh, girls," Laura herself was almost in tears, "Rhoda's mother is
+seriously ill and they don't know whether or not she will live until
+Rhoda gets there."
+
+"Go downstairs," Nan took command of the situation at once, "and find
+cousin Adair. Tell him what's happened and ask him what to do. I'll go
+to Rhoda. Bess, you had better come too," she continued. "Somebody will
+have to fix her bags so that she can leave at once. Now, don't any of
+you cry in front of Rhoda, we've got to help her to be as brave as
+possible. Maybe it isn't as bad as it seems." With this Nan and Bess and
+Laura set about to help their friend and, for the time, all thoughts of
+their Mexican journey were forgotten.
+
+Mrs. Hammond, Rhoda's mother, had entertained the girls a couple of
+years previous to the present story, on the Hammond ranch in the West.
+They all remembered her as a beautifully graceful, sweet woman. Blind
+for many years, she had not let her affliction crush her spirit and was,
+perhaps, one of the happiest, nicest people they had ever known.
+
+Those who have read "Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch or The Old Mexican's
+Treasure" will remember Mrs. Hammond too and remember well her first
+meeting with the girls.
+
+"I'll never forget it," Nan had told her own mother again and again. "As
+we rode up to the veranda of the low-roofed ranch house Mr. and Mrs.
+Hammond stood there on the porch waiting for us. She was a tall lovely
+person. I liked her the moment I saw her. As I came up the steps behind
+her friend, Mrs. Janeway, she took hold of me and asked 'Who is this?'
+
+"Before I had a chance to answer she ran her fingers lightly over my
+face, even feeling my ears and the way my hair fluffed over my forehead
+and the way my eyebrows were. Then, without any hesitation and before I
+had said anything at all, she said, 'Why, this is Nan Sherwood that I
+have heard so much about.'
+
+"When I asked her how she knew, she laughed the prettiest laugh I've
+ever heard, outside of yours, and said that she knew because Rhoda had
+written home about me and because she was a witch. She knew the others
+by touch too. Oh, she was such a nice person and so good to us all the
+while we were there!
+
+"She never once said a thing about her blindness. She seemed to take it
+for granted and never excused herself on account of it.
+
+"I only hope that, if ever anything terrible happens to me, I will
+remember her and be as sweet and uncomplaining about it as she is."
+
+The other girls had felt the same as Nan. All had left Rose Ranch with a
+very warm feeling for Mrs. Hammond and they were all better girls for
+having met her.
+
+In the days that followed their return to school that year they sent her
+a gift along with their bread-and-butter notes. Ever after that, boxes
+Rhoda received from her Western home always contained some sort of
+goodies specially marked for Rhoda's Lakeview Hall friends. So Mrs.
+Hammond had become a well-beloved friend to them all.
+
+Now, when the telegram came telling of her serious illness, they all
+felt personally concerned.
+
+"Oh, Nan," Laura came into the room where Nan was helping Rhoda dress
+and comforting her as much as possible, "I can't find your cousin
+anyplace. He seems to have gone out on business and he didn't leave word
+with anyone as to where he was going."
+
+"Well, we've got to find him, that's all." Nan was not one to give up
+easily in any circumstances. "Have you tried to locate Walker Jamieson?"
+
+"Yes, and I can't find him or Alice either. You don't know where they
+were going, do you?"
+
+"No." Already Nan was regretting that she had helped Alice and Walker
+out. She felt that she needed them now, very much. "I tell you what you
+do, you call up the railway station and find out what are the best
+possible train connections that Rhoda can make. Then reserve her a
+compartment. After that call those offices where we were yesterday and
+ask whether cousin Adair is there or is expected.
+
+"By the time you finish, Rhoda will be ready and we'll be downstairs at
+the telegraph desk. We are going to wire her father so that he can have
+someone at the station to meet her."
+
+At these instructions, Laura flew across the hall to her own room to
+make the calls, for she wished to keep things as quiet as possible
+around Rhoda. In the meantime, both Amelia and Grace had heard what had
+happened and came to help.
+
+The girls were all sticking together in trouble even as they always did
+in pleasure, and it was a great comfort to completely bewildered Rhoda.
+
+Now, as Nan completed the job of helping Rhoda dress and Bess finished
+packing her bags, there was a gentle knock on the door and a gentle
+voice inquired, "May I come in?" It was Alice.
+
+"Walker's gone for father," she said, "And Laura's asked me to tell you
+that there's a train out in a half hour. Is everything ready?"
+
+Rhoda nodded her head, but said nothing. She was trying hard now not to
+cry.
+
+"So you know where cousin Adair is?" Nan looked across the room at
+Alice.
+
+"No, but Walker will find him and have him here in no time at all,"
+Alice replied quietly and confidently.
+
+She had hardly finished the sentence, when those in the room heard the
+firm tread of Adair MacKenzie in the hall and heard his voice boom out,
+"Porter, porter, come here, and take these bags."
+
+It was good to hear him, good to hear his decisiveness. Everyone in the
+room felt better as soon as he opened the door.
+
+"Here, here, what's all this?" He looked at Rhoda's red eyes. "Come,
+girl, buck up," he patted her roughly on the shoulder. "Ready, are you?"
+
+"You're going by plane. It leaves in fifteen minutes and there's a taxi
+waiting downstairs. That red-headed girl, what's her name, got you a
+compartment in a train, but we've cancelled that.
+
+"Now, that good-for-nothing newspaper friend of my daughter's is
+downstairs putting through a long distance call so that you can talk to
+your father before you leave here.
+
+"You can tell him that this is a private plane and that it will
+practically drop you in your own back yard. Do they have back yards
+where you come from?"
+
+Rhoda nodded. How good everyone was being to her.
+
+"Now, now, don't thank me," Adair MacKenzie forestalled her thanks.
+"Help a nice girl like you out any time I can. Ready? You better go
+downstairs. You've just got time to talk to your father before you make
+the plane. You'll find everything comfortable there.
+
+"Come, you, Nan," he motioned to his cousin, "You're the only one that
+can come along with us. Don't want a lot of fuss. See the rest of you
+later." With this, he hurried Nan and Rhoda out of the room and down the
+elevator so quickly that Rhoda, in doing things, got control of herself,
+just as Adair MacKenzie had known she would.
+
+The talk with her father was comforting, but not encouraging, and it was
+with a heavy, heavy heart that Rhoda Hammond waved good-by to her
+friends at the airport a few minutes later.
+
+Nan stifled a sob as the plane taxied across the field and rose into the
+air. Adair MacKenzie looked down on her. "There, there, child," he said
+gently, "Things will turn out all right and we'll make this up to the
+girl sometime later."
+
+Nan caught her upper lip between her teeth and tried to smile up at
+him. "Please, please, make everything right." It was a prayer that she
+breathed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+RESOLUTIONS
+
+
+It was a sad little party that drew out of Laredo that afternoon. The
+thoughts of Nan and her friends were all with Rhoda. At every turn they
+wondered where she was and what she was doing.
+
+Only Adair MacKenzie's insistence had made them depart from the city on
+the border at all.
+
+"Got to be on our way now," he had said brusquely when he and Nan had
+driven up to the hotel after seeing Rhoda off. "Now, get busy, you," he
+ordered the girls after they had heard the details of Rhoda's departure
+from Nan. "Can't stay around here any longer. Sick and tired of this
+place. Nothing but a hole in the wall. Don't like it. Don't like the
+people. We're leaving. Get busy, I say." He tapped his cane impatiently
+on the floor of the hotel veranda. "I mean you and you and you." He
+pointed with it to each separate member of the party.
+
+The girls jumped. Alice jumped. And Walker Jamieson jumped. Everyone got
+busy and in an hour's time they were all sitting on the veranda, dressed
+for traveling, waiting for the car to come.
+
+"What are you doing here?" Adair MacKenzie appeared in the doorway.
+Short and somewhat stocky with a face that was perpetually tanned and
+dressed as he was in a white suit and large white panama hat, he looked
+like a permanent part of the scene about him. Nan, as she looked at him
+felt proud. Despite all his blustering, his ordering of people around,
+and his abrupt manner, he was kind and gentle at heart. This, she knew,
+was the reason for his success. This was why everyone who had ever known
+him liked him and loved him.
+
+Now, characteristically, he followed his abrupt question with a piece of
+information that laid bare his softness and unfailing thoughtfulness.
+
+"Get inside, all of you," he ordered, "there are long distance calls
+coming through for each of you from your parents. Can't have you mooning
+around," he muttered, "waiting for mail in order to find out whether or
+not your mothers and fathers are well. You, Nancy, your call is waiting
+now. Just talked to Jessie myself in Memphis. She's fine, just fine.
+Never felt better in her life she says. Might have known it in the first
+place. The Blakes are strong people."
+
+With this, he walked away. "No nonsense, now," he grumbled as he
+disappeared and each of the girls went in to talk from a telephone booth
+on the southern border of the United States to her parents in the north.
+
+How exciting it was to talk over that great distance! How good it seemed
+to the girls to hear their mother's voices! Nan talked to both her
+father and mother in Tennessee, and as she did, she imagined just how
+they looked, the expressions on their faces when they said certain dear,
+familiar things and the look in their eyes when they laughed. It was
+almost like having them in the same room with her.
+
+As she hung up, a wistful expression crossed her face, one that Adair
+MacKenzie, standing off to one side of the room noted. "What's the
+matter, Nancy?" he asked in a softer tone than Nan had ever heard him
+use.
+
+"Lonesome?" Adair questioned further.
+
+"Oh, a little bit," Nan smiled. "Sometimes, I miss Momsey a great, great
+deal." As she spoke her thoughts slipped back to those first days at
+Pine Camp recounted in the first volume of the Nan Sherwood series when
+it was so hard to fight off the wave of homesickness that came over her.
+
+"Not going to back down on me and go home, are you?" Adair MacKenzie
+asked the question half in fun and half in seriousness.
+
+"Oh, no," Nan laughed. "I couldn't do that."
+
+"That's the spirit!" Nan's cousin applauded. "Never back down on
+anything you set out to do. When you start a thing, finish it. That's
+the way people get places. Made me what I am. Never started a thing yet
+I didn't finish."
+
+Nan looking at him, believed it. He had the air about him of one that
+accomplishes things. You could see it in the way he walked, the way he
+talked. "Doesn't make any difference," he continued, "what it is, a
+school lesson, a vacation, a housekeeping task for your mother. If you
+begin it, finish it." He said this last so emphatically that Nan looked
+about her half expecting to find something that she should finish right
+away.
+
+"Doesn't make any difference," he went on, "how hard the thing is or how
+much you want to do something else. Do the thing you first started and
+do it as well as you possibly can. Understand what I mean?" Nan's cousin
+looked at her very intently for a moment and then he ruffled her pretty
+brown hair with his rough hand. "Of course you do, child," he smiled at
+her. "You're as bright as they make them."
+
+"Dad, oh, dad!" Alice MacKenzie joined the two. "You're wanted. The
+car's ready and the driver wants to know when we're going to start."
+
+"Start!" Adair MacKenzie, the soft mood having slipped away from him
+now, roared. "Haven't I been waiting around here for an hour now for
+that old sluggard. And then he has the effrontery to send word to me
+that he's waiting! The dolt! I'll fix him. I'll fix him, if it's the
+last thing in the world I do! Thinks I'm a softy, does he? I'll show
+him!" With this, Adair MacKenzie went fuming from the room.
+
+Fifteen minutes later Nan Sherwood and her friends, Walker Jamieson, and
+Alice and her father were riding along the road toward Mexico City.
+
+"Got this telegram just before we left," Adair MacKenzie felt in his
+pockets for the yellow paper, "It's from that Hammond girl." He turned
+it over to Nan who read aloud to the others.
+
+"Arrived safely at San Antonio. Plane there ready to take me on. Called
+home again. Mother holding her own. Love. Rhoda."
+
+Nan's voice was husky as she finished. She folded the telegram slowly
+and thoughtfully, thinking of the struggle that was going on at Rose
+Ranch and remembering her own concern years back over her own mother's
+health.
+
+"There, Nan," Bess laid a gentle hand on her friend's. "Don't look so
+worried. I'm sure things will turn out for the best."
+
+"Oh, Bess, if they don't," Nan half whispered in return, "It will leave
+Rhoda and her father all alone. It will make things so hard, for
+everyone just worships Mrs. Hammond."
+
+"I know," Bess's voice was heavy too, "but don't think of those things."
+The role of consoler was new to Bess, but instinctively she was saying
+just the right thing. "Mrs. Hammond just has to get well, and so she
+will. I feel sure that what I'm saying is true. Oh, Nan, don't cry,"
+Bess's own voice was full of tears.
+
+"Here, here, what's happening back there?" Adair MacKenzie turned from
+his place next to the driver and frowned at the girls. "Can't have this.
+No blubbering on this trip."
+
+Nan smiled a wan smile at the word.
+
+"Thought you were a brave girl," Adair went on. "Now, dry away those
+tears," he ended, and turning, resumed his work of instructing the
+driver as to how to drive.
+
+It was Laura who unthinkingly started them all off again.
+
+"Makes you think, doesn't it," she remarked, "of the number of things
+you overlook doing for your mother when you're around her? Will I ever
+be good," she continued, "when I get home. I'll wash the dishes, set the
+table, run to the store, do anything and everything without question."
+
+Laura sounded so serious and so unlike herself in her seriousness that
+even Nan had to smile, as she agreed. "That's just the way it makes me
+feel," she said.
+
+"Oh, Nan," Bess protested, "and you're always so good to your mother.
+I'm the one that's mean. Why, I never do a thing around the house if I
+can help it." And Bess spoke the truth. The daughter of a family that
+had plenty of money, Bess was a pampered child. As a general rule, she
+had little regard for either of her parents. Whatever she wanted, she
+asked for without regard for cost. What she couldn't get from her
+mother, she frequently managed to get from her father, and the two were
+well on the way toward spoiling her utterly when she went off to
+Lakeview with Nan.
+
+There, away from home among strangers in a place where she had to live
+up to certain well-defined rules, Bess had improved considerably. Those
+that have watched her since her first appearance in "Nan Sherwood at
+Pine Camp" have seen a change come over her gradually. She is a little
+more thoughtful, a little more considerate of other people, but she
+still has a selfish streak which at times like the present confronts her
+so that her conscience pricks her sharply.
+
+"When I get home," Bess spoke more quietly than was her wont, "I'm
+going to do a little reforming myself. I'm going to pay more attention
+to what mother has to say. I'm going to be a better daughter."
+
+"And I am too," Laura agreed.
+
+"And I," Grace and Amelia said this together.
+
+So even while Rhoda Hammond in a plane that was winging its way toward
+her western home, was remembering little, dear things about the mother
+she was so fond of, her friends were thinking of her and making
+resolution after resolution about their own conduct toward their
+parents.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+FIRST MEXICAN EXPERIENCE
+
+
+The days that followed were punctuated by telegrams received from Rhoda.
+
+"Arrived safely." That was the first one. It told nothing at all of her
+mother's condition.
+
+"Mother's condition very serious. Not much hope." That was the second
+and the girls scarcely had the heart to go on with Adair MacKenzie's
+party. Privately, they gave up hope entirely, but Adair tried to keep
+their spirits up. "Never can tell about these things," he said after
+reading the message.
+
+"Some improvement. Pray. Love. Rhoda." The third one read, and everyone
+felt better.
+
+Then for two days, there was no word, and everyone's hope just dwindled
+away to nothing. During these days, it was Walker Jamieson with his
+knowledge of Mexico and its ways that put what life there was into the
+party.
+
+The eight hundred miles over the new Pan-American highway from Laredo
+to Mexico City was through gorgeous tropical and mountain scenery, and
+all the way Walker regaled the girls with stories and legends about
+Mexico and its history.
+
+He told bloody stories of bandits coming down out of the hills,
+attacking travelers, kidnaping them and then robbing them, or holding
+them for huge ransom. He told of warfare between the Mexicans and the
+Indians back in the hills. He told of lost tribes who still worshipped
+the Sun God, talked their native tongue, still lived in the way those
+who had built the pyramids had lived.
+
+Alice listened breathlessly to all he had to say. Nan and her friends
+hung on his every word. Adair MacKenzie listened and grunted
+noncommittally.
+
+From Laredo to Monterey, he told these stories and from Monterey to
+Villa Juarez until everyone, whether he would admit it or not, felt
+deeply the spell of Mexico.
+
+Then from Villa Juarez to Tamazunchale, across rivers that were bordered
+by heavy tropical foliage, everyone except Adair MacKenzie was more or
+less silent absorbing quietly the beauty about.
+
+"Listen!" Nan had the temerity to interrupt one of Adair's outbursts
+against their chauffeur. Surprised by the command, Adair chuckled and
+kept quiet. Nan had heard the song of a tropical bird. Its call was
+picked up by another on the other side of the road. The chauffeur slowed
+down and then, at Adair's command, stopped.
+
+For a few moments everyone listened, and then Nan pushed open the door
+of the car and got out. The others followed. To the right and to the
+left of them the luxuriant growth made the place like nothing else they
+had ever seen before. The birds that flew out of the thicket were
+gorgeous things in brilliant colors. The butterflies that drifted from
+flower to flower were lovely too. But the biggest surprise of all was
+the orchids.
+
+"Why, they grow wild!" Bess was amazed. The only ones she had ever seen
+before had been in the window of a florist's shop on Madison Avenue in
+Chicago and in a shoulder corsage worn by Linda Riggs at a school ball.
+This last had made Bess exceedingly envious, despite the fact that Linda
+had been reprimanded afterwards, by Dr. Prescott, for wearing it. And
+now, here they were growing all about her, wild! Bess could scarcely
+believe her eyes.
+
+Walker Jamieson laughed at her. "You like them?" he asked. "Didn't know,
+did you, that they grew any place outside of a hothouse?"
+
+Bess shook her head. It was the first time in her life that she had
+ever really been moved by nature in any form. The others felt the same.
+The air seemed quiet and heavy and yet full of all sorts of strange
+noises too. Grace was timid in the face of all the strangeness and held
+on to Nan's hand.
+
+Nan's eyes were big and wondrous. It was like tropical jungles that she
+had read about. It was like something she had never even dared hope to
+see. She was quiet. Silently Adair MacKenzie watched her, and felt
+pleased with himself that he had shown it to her. In regarding her, he
+felt almost as though he himself had created it for her special benefit.
+
+She caught his glance, looked up at him and grinned. "Wish I could take
+a piece of it home with me," she said.
+
+"You can." Walker Jamieson sounded as though that would be the simplest
+thing in the world.
+
+"How?" Nan asked in the tone of one who didn't believe a word of what
+she heard.
+
+"Easy." Jamieson's eyes twinkled, for he knew that she thought that this
+was only another bit of his foolishness. "All you've got to do is get a
+camera and take a picture. Then you'll have it for life."
+
+"But I can't," Nan was serious too now.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"First, I've no camera and secondly, I don't know how to take pictures."
+
+"Oh, we'll take care of that," Walker Jamieson waved these difficulties
+aside as though they didn't amount to anything. "I've got a camera in
+the car, and, if you want, I'll show you how to get the best results.
+I'm in your debt anyway," he whispered.
+
+"Do you mean that about the camera and everything?" Nan was incredulous.
+
+"Mean it? It's a promise, isn't it?" Walker drew Alice into the
+conversation.
+
+She nodded her head happily. She knew, if Nan didn't, that Walker had
+made a hobby of photography and just the year before, had won a prize in
+a national show.
+
+"We'll begin, just as soon as we get back in that car," Jamieson
+promised further. "When we get to Mexico City, we'll buy some more films
+and the camera is yours to do with as you will until we return to the
+States."
+
+So, because of an impulsive wish and an impulsive promise, Nan began
+almost immediately to develop a hobby that, even before her Mexican
+adventure was over, was going to have amazing consequences.
+
+From Tamazunchale to Mexico City, the drive was quite another
+experience. The road now was hewn out of sheer mountain rock. The car
+climbed and climbed, until the girls' ears felt strange and Bess
+declared that she could hardly breathe. She forgot this, however, when
+they, upon Alice's insistence, this time, got out again. All around
+them, huge mountain peaks rose to great heights making them all, except,
+perhaps, Adair MacKenzie, feel small and insignificant.
+
+Straight down below them they saw rivers and waterfalls that looked
+small and white and unimportant, like a thread that some mighty hand had
+dropped carelessly in the greenness. Then they got in the car, went down
+the mountainside again, and they came to a lovely white village in a
+fertile green valley.
+
+Here they stopped and ate.
+
+"Can't understand this jargon," Adair MacKenzie laid the menu that had
+been given him down and looked utterly disgusted.
+
+"No sense in their making it like this," he continued as though it was a
+personal insult that anyone should presume to speak or write any other
+language than English. "Can't see how they can understand it
+themselves."
+
+In the end, it was Walker Jamieson who did the ordering. "How about
+some nice mode de guajolote?" he grinned at Nan and her friends as he
+put the question. "It's turkey to you," he explained when they laughed,
+"stuffed turkey to be exact and a choice bit here. With it, we'll have
+tortillas, the Mexican substitute for bread, and frijoles, the favorite
+Mexican bean. Sound all right?"
+
+The girls nodded as they tried to find the items on their own menus. And
+Adair MacKenzie grunted that he would take the same.
+
+The meal wasn't entirely a success. Nan and her friends enjoyed it, but
+Adair MacKenzie grumbled throughout despite all that Alice could do to
+mollify him.
+
+"Never mind, daddy," she said at last, "in a couple of more days we'll
+be at the hacienda--"
+
+"Yes, and that housekeeper of ours better be there, or I'll fire her."
+Adair was off again.
+
+Alice restrained a smile. For twenty years now, Adair had been firing
+the housekeeper and for twenty years she had been running him and his
+house just as she pleased. It was a joke that the motherly old lady and
+Alice shared.
+
+"She'll be there," Alice tried to reassure him, "and so will that
+Chinese cook that we have heard so much about."
+
+Nan and the rest looked up from their turkey, half expecting a story,
+but Alice said nothing further. They finished the meal in silence and
+followed Adair to the car.
+
+Then, by way of Zimapan, an attractive hillside village, remembered
+ever afterwards by the girls for its huge cacti, some more than
+thirty-five feet high, they continued on toward Mexico City. They passed
+through Tasquillo, and then over a sandy road between other tall cacti
+to Ixmiquilpan, a picturesque town where native Indians were tending
+sheep and spinning along the streets.
+
+Here Nan took a picture, the first of many she was to take, of the girls
+as they stood in a market where they had just bought some gayly woven
+baskets. The sight of the Indians brought more stories to Walker's mind
+and so, in the few miles that lay between them and their stopping place
+for the night, he told more tales.
+
+He told stories of buried treasure left by the Aztecs in deep
+underground chambers, of turquoise and jade that was more lovely than
+any the modern world has discovered. He told of gold so plentiful that
+it had no value, of great temples that American Museums were spending
+hundreds of thousands of dollars to rebuild.
+
+He knew all the stories, because, since his early childhood, spent in
+California where Mexican labor was plentiful because it was cheap, he
+had been interested in the country.
+
+When, on the third day of their journey, they approached Mexico City,
+Walker Jamieson was in a particularly expansive mood, one designed to
+keep their minds off the question of what word they would find from
+Rhoda in the capital.
+
+"Below you, ladies and gentlemen," he said with a great sweep of his
+arm, "you see Mexico City, the capital of this surprising republic of
+Mexico. There you will find romance, adventure, everything."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A LEGEND
+
+
+"Mexico City," he went on, as though he were a guide introducing a party
+of tourists to its first sight of a city, "lies, as you can see from
+here, in a mountain valley on the Great Central Plateau. Constructed on
+a former lake by those Aztecs who once made of this whole region a grand
+and glorious place, it was called by them 'Tenochtitlan', an Aztec word
+meaning 'Belonging to the property of the Temple.'
+
+"When the Spaniards conquered Tenochtitlan, they found grand palaces
+and elegant homes under the shadow of the mountains that lie all about.
+They found gardens more beautiful and more highly cultivated than any
+they had ever known. They found wealth and splendour such as not even
+their vivid imaginations had ever constructed. They found everything,"
+he finished dramatically, "and they drove the people who had conceived
+it out, and they took it unto themselves, and it went to ruin. You see
+now, the modern city, and as you go through its streets, you will find
+everywhere evidences of all these changes living side by side with the
+new that the present generation is in the process of building up."
+
+Walker Jamieson had started his little harangue half in fun, but as
+always when he talked about the old city, he grew serious as he went on.
+Now, as he noted the half scowl on Adair MacKenzie's face, the look of
+interest on Alice's, and the attention of Nan Sherwood and her friends,
+he paused.
+
+"How am I doing?" he directed the question to the group in general.
+
+Adair MacKenzie grunted.
+
+Alice beamed, her eyes full of pride in him.
+
+And Nan and her crowd nodded their heads for him to go on.
+
+"So, my public adores me," he said in a mocking self-satisfied tone that
+caused Alice and Nan to laugh aloud.
+
+With this he wrapped his guide's cloak about him again and went on.
+
+"As you go about," he said, "and look up from day to day at the
+mountains that surround you, you will soon be able to name them all from
+Chiquihuite, 'the basket', to El Cerro Gordo, 'the fat hill', but there
+is none that has a more fascinating story than La Sierra Madre over
+there to the west." He pointed as he spoke. "That's the famous one with
+the two volcanoes, Ixtaccihuatl, 'the white woman', and Popocatepetl,
+'the mountain that smokes'.
+
+"At one time, before the great Cortez conquered the country, these
+volcanoes were worshipped as deities. There were days set aside for
+their veneration, feasts in their honor, and elaborate ceremonies."
+
+"Just imagine," Laura interrupted, "having a feast in honor of a
+mountain."
+
+"Strange, isn't it?" Walker Jamieson agreed. "But wait, I have even
+stranger things to tell you."
+
+"I have no doubt." The remark was Adair MacKenzie's who, whether he
+would admit it or not, was really enjoying himself thoroughly.
+
+"Ixtaccihuatl had a wooden idol representing her in the Great Temple and
+Popocatepetl a representation of dough of amarand and maize seeds. These
+idols you will see in the great museums of the city. The legend that
+surrounds them, if you will bear with me, goes something like this.
+
+"Ixtaccihuatl was the beautiful daughter of a proud and powerful Aztec
+Emperor and his only child. As such, she was heir to his throne and
+watched and guarded throughout her youth. Her father adored her, but as
+he grew old and weak and his enemies began to wage war against him, he
+realized more and more how difficult it would be for a woman to hold
+together his vast and wealthy empire. So he set out to find a husband
+worthy of his daughter, worthy of the splendour that would be hers after
+his death.
+
+"He called to his aid all the proud young warriors of his tribe and
+offered his daughter in marriage and his throne to the one among them
+who would conquer his enemies.
+
+"This Popocatepetl that you see yonder went into the fight. He had long
+been in love with the beautiful princess.
+
+"The war was long. It was cruel. It was bloody. But Popocatepetl endured
+to the end. Ah, but he was proud and triumphant when he saw that it
+would surely be he who would return to claim the princess whom he loved.
+
+"But alas, his triumph was short-lived. His enemies, having failed in
+battle, stooped to the lowest form of deceit. They sent back to the
+Princess the false news that her beloved had been killed. She languished
+and became ill of a strange malady that not even the smartest witch
+doctors in the realm could cure her of. She died.
+
+"Popocatepetl's grief was more than he could bear. He wished to die too,
+so he caused to be constructed a great pyramid upon which he himself
+laid the beautiful Ixtaccihuatl. Next to it, he built another. There, he
+stands, holding a funeral torch.
+
+"The snow has enfolded her body and covered that of the man that would
+have married her, but it has never covered the torch which burns on, a
+symbol of the love of Popocatepetl for Ixtaccihuatl."
+
+"And the smoke," Nan said quietly when she saw that he had finished, "of
+the volcano is the smoke of the torch's flame."
+
+"Smart girl," Walker Jamieson slipped into a lighter mood now.
+
+"And they believed that story?" Bess sounded incredulous.
+
+"Yes, O doubtful one," Laura answered the question, "and they had feasts
+for the couple. Didn't you listen to the beginning?"
+
+"Hm-m, they probably weren't edible," Adair MacKenzie suddenly
+remembered the meal he had found so distasteful a short time before.
+
+Walker winked at Alice who patted her father on the arm, "Never mind,
+dad," she said, "there'll be food that you like later on."
+
+"Too late then." Adair MacKenzie was not to be mollified now. "Be all
+burned up before then by these confounded Mexican chiles. Must have a
+million varieties. Find them in everything. Afraid even to order
+ice-cream. Probably comes with a special chile sauce on it. Somebody
+ought to teach these Mexicans how to eat. Do it myself if I had time.
+Always think that when I come here. Teach them that and how to build
+roads," he added as the car bumped over the highway.
+
+"Anyway, we're coming into some sort of civilized city, now." He looked
+about himself with some degree of satisfaction, for as Walker had
+proceeded with his account of the legend of the two famous volcanoes,
+the car had been progressing toward the city. Now it was on the
+outskirts and Nan and Bess, Grace and Amelia and Laura were craning
+their necks so as not to miss one single sight.
+
+"How nice it would be," Amelia remarked to the group after she had
+missed something that Walker had pointed out on the side of the road
+opposite to the one she had been watching, "to have a face on all sides
+of your head so that you could see all ways at once."
+
+"Well, all I can say is," Laura returned dryly, "that you are doing
+pretty well with the one that you have. You might have missed the old
+flower woman back there, but you are certainly making up for it now."
+With this she laughed and pushed Amelia's head, that was now blocking
+her own line of vision, out of the way.
+
+"Such pretty young girls," Nan remarked as the car stopped at a
+crossroad to let a half dozen Mexicans cross the street.
+
+"Aren't they though?" Bess agreed. "One of them looked just like
+Juanita. Remember?"
+
+Of course Nan remembered the girl that had been involved in the hidden
+treasure plot that was recounted in the story "Nan Sherwood at Rose
+Ranch." The thought of her now brought Rhoda back to mind and her
+mother, and with it a return of the anxiety they had felt at not having
+heard recently from their friend.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+LINDA RIGGS TURNS UP
+
+
+Adair MacKenzie was quick to note the change in their mood. "Wells Fargo
+and Co., Madero 14." He gave instructions to the chauffeur, and then
+turned to Nan. "It's the American Express of this country," he explained
+in a tone that indicated that they had no right to call it other than
+the "American Express". "We'll pick up mail there. You see."
+
+"What have you done to the old man?" Walker Jamieson questioned as he
+helped Nan out of the car a few minutes later. "Why, Alice," he
+continued, assisting her too, "he's practically putty in her hands."
+
+"I know," Alice smiled as she took Nan's arm and walked along beside
+her. "It is amazing and I'm almost jealous. I thought that I was the
+only one in the world that could manage him." She looked fondly in the
+direction of Adair MacKenzie who had already passed through the door and
+was at the counter inside demanding his mail.
+
+"See, what did I tell you?" He asked triumphantly when they all entered
+together. "There's a whole bunch of mail here. See." He held up a truly
+large package of letters, letters from home for each of the girls. As
+they all crowded around him, he teased them by delaying the process of
+handing them out.
+
+"Let's see, this one looks interesting, mighty interesting." He lingered
+over the address. "But the writing isn't very clear."
+
+Alice reached for it as though to help him out. He raised his arm high.
+"No, it's not for you," he shook his head at her. "This mailman always
+delivers his mail to the proper person. Now, stand back all of you,
+while I look again."
+
+"This is as bad or worse than it is at school when they distribute mail,
+isn't it?" Laura nudged Nan. "But look, isn't the old duck getting a
+kick out of it all?"
+
+Nan nodded. There was only one thing that she was really impatient
+about. She wanted to know now, right away, whether there was any word
+from Rhoda. She felt as though she couldn't stand it a moment longer not
+to know.
+
+"Please, Cousin Adair," she begged, "is there anything there at all from
+Rhoda?"
+
+"Yes, father, tell us quickly," Alice chimed in.
+
+"Oh, I'm sorry," Adair MacKenzie was immediately all contrition. "H-m-m,
+wait." He leafed quickly through the pack.
+
+"Yes, there is something," he admitted at last. "It's addressed to
+Nan." With this he handed a yellow telegram over to her. "Take it
+easily," he advised, while they all waited anxiously for Nan to open
+it. She tore the seal, pulled the message out, dropped it in her
+nervousness, and then when it was restored to her hands, read it slowly
+to herself.
+
+At long last she looked up. "It's--" she caught her breath before she
+could continue--"all right. Rhoda's mother is going to get well." Saying
+this, she passed the telegram over to Bess and Laura, and then, before
+she realized at all what was happening, her eyes welled up with tears.
+
+"Why, Nan, darling!" Alice exclaimed, "don't cry. Everything's all right
+now. Come," she drew from her own purse a pretty white handkerchief and
+wiped Nan's tears away, "you'll have us all in tears."
+
+Nan took the handkerchief away from her and wiped her own eyes, hard.
+Then she smiled. "Don't mind me," she laughed. "I'm just an old silly.
+Please, cousin Adair, what's in the rest of that package."
+
+"Yes, what's in it?" Even Adair MacKenzie sounded as though he had lost
+possession of himself for a moment. Now, he collected himself again and
+took the party in his hands, as he had had it before. "Too much stalling
+around here," he grumbled to no one in particular, and then went on with
+the distribution of the mail.
+
+The letters from home were fun to get, fun to read, and fun to share.
+Each one was read and re-read a dozen times by the girl that received
+it, and then it was passed around and enjoyed by all the others. There
+were letters from their mothers and fathers and letters from their
+friends. There was a round robin from their pals at school.
+
+Though all of them had news, this last had the choicest bits.
+
+"Do you know that," it began, "Professor Krenner and Dr. Beulah Prescott
+are going to be married before the summer is over?"
+
+"Nan," Bess stopped Nan who was reading the bit aloud to the others, "is
+it true? Did I hear you right?"
+
+"I guess you did," Nan's eyes looked merry now. She of all the girls had
+been the only one who knew that this announcement was coming. Beloved by
+Dr. Beulah and the best student and most wide-awake person that had ever
+come to Dr. Krenner's attention, she had been in their confidence before
+school had closed.
+
+The romance between the Principal of Lakeview and one of its most
+scholarly instructors had blossomed the summer the two had escorted the
+present group of girls on their European trip. Professor Krenner joined
+the party in London, just before the coronation. There he and Dr.
+Prescott learned of the million and one things they had in common. Nan
+knew of this, knew too that the wedding was to take place in the chapel
+at Lakeview just before school opened. Already, she had planned to
+attend.
+
+Now, she went on with the reading of the round robin. "Do you know," she
+continued, "that the old boathouse where we had that grand party on
+Bess's twenty-five dollars, is going to be pulled down and a big new one
+built?
+
+"That the dormitories are being redecorated and that corridor four where
+we have rooms is going to have all the walls done over and that serapes
+will look especially nice hanging on them?
+
+"And that, and this is the biggest piece of news of all, Linda Riggs is
+someplace in Mexico?"
+
+"No!" the exclamation was Bess's. If it was possible to say that one
+girl in the room disliked the proud Linda more than the rest, Bess was
+that girl.
+
+"I hate her. I just hate her." Bess had said vehemently many times. And
+well she might, for often in the days that followed the registration of
+Bess and Nan at Lakeview, Linda had purposely embarrassed and humiliated
+them. At first, Bess, because she naturally coveted wealth, and Linda
+was a very wealthy girl, had tried to make friends with "Her Highness"
+as Laura dubbed Linda. But her efforts always ended disastrously.
+
+Nan, as all those who have followed the fortunes of the young girl know,
+time and again tried to help Linda. Once or twice she was instrumental
+in saving her life. But despite this, whenever Linda was in a position
+to do so, she managed to belittle Nan, to snub her rudely, to make her
+just as uncomfortable as she possibly could.
+
+So Nan and Bess had particular reasons for disliking the girl who had
+even been expelled from school for one bit of meanness that caused an
+explosion which might easily have cost the lives of many of the Lakeview
+Hall students. Linda, in other words, was cordially hated by most of the
+students of the fashionable boarding school.
+
+Now, the news that she was in Mexico brought consternation to the group.
+
+"It's just as I've always said," Bess fumed. "It's impossible to go
+anyplace without having her turn up."
+
+"Probably likes you and just won't admit it." Laura could well afford to
+add fuel to the flame. Linda generally avoided her.
+
+"She doesn't like me and you know it, Laura Polk," Bess exclaimed. "Why
+she had to come down here when there's all the rest of the world for her
+to travel in, I don't know. But you can just be sure of this, no good
+will come of it."
+
+"Sh! Bess," Nan warned as she looked over to one side where Adair
+MacKenzie, Alice, and Walker Jamieson were deep in consultation.
+
+"I'm sorry, Nan," Bess lowered her voice, "but I just don't seem to be
+able to control myself when that girl comes to mind. She's caused us so
+much unhappiness that I can't stand her."
+
+"I know," Nan was genuinely sympathetic, "but don't you worry, we
+probably won't see her at all. Mexico, after all, is a pretty big
+place."
+
+"Yes, it has twenty-seven states, besides the Federal District and the
+Territory of Lower California." Laura quoted the guidebook glibly.
+
+"Doesn't make any difference," Bess said firmly. "If she's anywhere in
+the country, there's no escaping her. We'll meet her." She ended
+positively.
+
+How truly Bess spoke, the crowd was soon to find out, but the
+circumstances and the far-reaching results must be left to other
+chapters.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+NAN TURNS PHOTOGRAPHER
+
+
+"Well, what's on the program this morning?" Adair MacKenzie was in a
+genial mood the day after the telegram had informed the girls that
+Rhoda's mother was going to recover.
+
+He had had a good night's sleep and a generous well-cooked breakfast in
+the fashionable hotel where he had chosen to take his brood. Though he
+had complained about the coffee in no uncertain terms, as is the custom
+of most Americans traveling in foreign countries, the rest of the food
+had seemed good and now he acted as though he was entirely at the
+disposal of his guests.
+
+"What do you say, Jamieson?" He turned to the young newspaper man. "Got
+any ideas?"
+
+"Only those that we talked over at Wells Fargo's yesterday." Walker
+Jamieson assumed a mysterious air.
+
+"Oh, that, that has to wait until the afternoon," Adair MacKenzie looked
+mysterious too.
+
+"Then we might just explore the city, take the buses and street cars
+and find out how the natives get around. We might let the girls get a
+glimpse of The Cathedral, one of the most important in all of the
+Americas. It was built over the old Aztec Templo Mayor and it took two
+and a half centuries to build."
+
+"Two and a half centuries to build a church!" Laura exclaimed.
+
+"What can you expect?" Adair MacKenzie asked in a tone that indicated he
+was not the least bit surprised, "of a nation that has 'manana' for its
+motto?"
+
+Walker Jamieson laughed heartily at this. "Well, maybe you are right,"
+he admitted, "but I don't think you'll find your interpretation in any
+guidebook. They say merely that the Indians contributed a third of the
+cost and all the work and that 'many died each day due to the long hours
+of unaccustomed strenuous work.'"
+
+"That's right, they'll never admit they are wrong," Adair shook his
+head as though this fact grieved him deeply. "Never be afraid, you Nan,"
+he pointed his finger sternly at his young cousin, "to admit you are
+wrong. Best medicine in the world. If you are wrong say so. It's good
+for you." Adair MacKenzie had a habit of talking thus in circles,
+agreeing with himself over some great truth. Now he nodded his head with
+great satisfaction as though he himself made a practice of admitting his
+mistakes.
+
+Walker looked at Alice. Alice looked at Walker. They both laughed. Both
+knew that the old man had never in his life admitted that he had made a
+mistake. Both at this moment thought him charming and lovable.
+
+"Well, shall we leave The Cathedral out then?" Walker Jamieson was
+always willing to give in in little particulars. "There's plenty else to
+see, palaces, parks, markets. Why, there's a whole new city to explore."
+
+"Won't leave anything out," Adair MacKenzie looked at his watch as he
+spoke, "but we've got to do everything up in a hurry. Haven't got much
+time to stay in this city. Got a telegram this morning from the
+caretaker at the Hacienda. Expects us there within the next couple of
+days."
+
+"Oh, daddy," Alice laughed. "That's the way you always are. Always
+wanting to move on just as soon as we arrive at a place."
+
+"And you," he twitted, "manana is always good enough for you. You're
+just a lazy beggar. Now, what do you want to do today."
+
+"Oh, everything, just everything," Alice looked as though she would
+like to do it all and do it now. She had that happy faculty that some
+people have of always having a good time no matter what happens.
+
+Nan had it too. The word "bore" which slips so easily from the tongues
+of many young people who really shouldn't know what boredom is, had
+never crossed her lips. Life seemed too full of adventure, too full of a
+number of things to do for her to even think of applying it to herself.
+Linda Riggs might have used the word, but never Nan, and never Alice.
+
+"Well, there's your answer," Adair MacKenzie turned to Walker when Alice
+answered that she wanted to do "just everything." "It's a typical
+woman's answer. Now, do what you want to with it."
+
+"O-kay." Walker Jamieson assumed the responsibility willingly enough.
+"Now, listen here," he turned to the girls and assumed a serious air and
+a stern one that unfortunately didn't impress them at all, and said,
+"we've got just about four hours in this day to do with as you want to
+do."
+
+"Four hours!" Nan exclaimed, "why, how short the days are here! It's
+only nine o'clock now, or is Amelia's watch slow?" She had been looking
+at Amelia's wrist as she spoke.
+
+"I said four hours." Walker repeated, still sternly.
+
+"He said four hours." Adair MacKenzie was equally stern.
+
+"Then, why don't you get started," Alice teased.
+
+"Come on, here. We are." Walker pretended that he was angry and that
+Alice's remark was just the last straw. He took her by the arm and with
+the others following after, they all left the dining room, walked
+through the lounge and then out into the morning sunshine.
+
+The four hours flew by. They shopped in the busy Mexican markets,
+bartered with natives, dressed in brilliantly colored blankets and huge
+sombreros, bought serapes, beautiful Indian pottery, some opals that
+were sold by the dozen, handwoven baskets and a million and one little
+things that Walker declared would fill a trunk.
+
+Nan took her camera along and snapped pictures of everyone, pretty
+Mexican senoritas selling flowers, little Mexican boys who were
+boot-blacks, proud of the American slang they had learned in the movies,
+and whole families complete with shawls, squatting over low fires making
+tortillas for whomsoever would buy.
+
+She took pictures until in her enthusiasm she forgot herself entirely
+and asked Adair MacKenzie if he would please hold a little Mexican baby
+while she photographed it.
+
+As soon as the question was out of her mouth, she realized that she had
+made a mistake.
+
+What a torrent it brought forth! Adair MacKenzie blustered as he had
+never blustered before. He would see himself tied and hung before she
+would ever find him even touching one of those kids. Why, the idea. Did
+she think he was an embassador of good will, that he was down there to
+kiss babies and wear serapes to show that he was just one of the people.
+Did--d--did she think he was--why, what did she think he was? He
+stuttered in his surprise.
+
+Finally, Nan and Walker and Alice and all the rest broke down in
+laughter, for Adair MacKenzie was certainly outdoing himself.
+
+With this, he stopped in amazement. And they were laughing at him! "No
+respect any more at all," he muttered and then he laughed too.
+
+"You, Walker, you," he took the remaining bit of his impatience out on
+that able young man, "you've no sense at all in that head of yours. Let
+the girls get out of hand all the time. Now, I'm going to take charge of
+the party. Had enough of your nonsense. Come on, you," he turned to Nan
+and the rest with this, "there'll be no more pictures today. We're going
+back to the hotel now."
+
+"And then what?" Alice ventured to ask.
+
+"You'll see. Just wait. You'll see. This is my party now." So, he
+right-about-faced and went striding from the market with the others
+following him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+SMUGGLERS
+
+
+"A bullfight, Bess, we're going to a bullfight," Nan exclaimed as she
+and Bess dressed for the afternoon excursion with Adair MacKenzie.
+
+"Why, Nancy Sherwood, I never in all the world thought you were the
+bloodthirsty creature that you are," Bess laughed at her pal.
+
+"Oh, you are just the same, Elizabeth Harley," Nan returned. "When
+Cousin Adair told us at the luncheon table what we were going to do this
+afternoon, you were just as excited as the rest of us."
+
+"I know it," Bess confessed. "But I expect to hold my ears and close my
+eyes through the worst parts. They do say they can be very gory
+spectacles with blood streaming all over everything."
+
+"That's right," Nan admitted. "It scares me to think of that part, but I
+want to see it anyway." As the girls talked, they dressed, combed their
+hair, and then tidied up the room.
+
+"Ready?" Laura stuck her head through the door and asked. "Amelia and
+Grace are already downstairs. We better get started, or Grace will be
+backing down. Really, I think she's scared to death, but is afraid to
+admit it. Me, I'm going to love this."
+
+"Me, too," Nan admitted. "I can hardly wait. I've read about them so
+often. Remember the lecturer at Lakeview who had all those slides about
+bullfights in Spain. I've wanted to see one ever since then."
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Cupp was so angry over that. She didn't think it was the
+proper sort of thing for young ladies to see. She thought it would
+coarsen them," Laura finished primly. "Wait until we get back to
+Lakeview, will we ever have some tales to tell her that will make her
+hair stand on end! She'll have to go to bed for a week to recover."
+
+"Oh, Laura," Nan laughed, "you sound as though you'd be brave enough to
+tell her all about it yourself."
+
+"Well, if I'm not," Laura joined in the laughter, "because we aren't
+exactly bosom pals, you know, she'll find out. Nothing escapes her."
+
+"Truer words were never spoken," Nan agreed as she adjusted her hat in
+front of the mirror. "Come on, now, I'm ready. Are you, Bess?"
+
+"Just a second." Bess was rummaging through her purse. "There's
+everything here except the thing I want."
+
+"Looks almost like an over-night bag," Laura commented as Bess poured
+the contents out on the dresser.
+
+"What in the world are you looking for?" Nan asked somewhat impatiently.
+Bess never could find things in her purse because she had a habit of
+saving everything and never cleaning the pocket-book out.
+
+"Oh, my passport--I mean my visitors' pass." Bess really did look
+worried. "I had it this morning. I know I did."
+
+"All I can say is," Laura commented dryly, "if you've lost that, you
+might just as well go out and drown yourself, because if you don't, Mr.
+MacKenzie will roar so loud when you tell him that the earth will just
+open up and swallow us all."
+
+"I know it." Bess was almost in tears. She didn't like to be roared at.
+She took scoldings harder than anyone else in the crowd, because at home
+she had always been made to feel that what she did was right.
+
+"Bessie, you're such a silly," Nan laughed. "You've got the wrong
+pocket-book. That isn't the one you had with you this morning. You had
+the little black one and that's over there on your trunk. Remember, you
+put it there when you came in so that you would be sure to know where it
+was when you wanted it again."
+
+Bess laughed too now. "Isn't that just like me, always hunting for
+something and always finding it just where it ought to be?"
+
+"I do that too," Laura sympathized as they three left the room. And so
+does everyone, but Bess had a habit of getting confused and impatient as
+soon as things went wrong and using all her energy in getting excited.
+Nan generally remained calm and found things. Laura was calm too and
+that because she never took anything very seriously. If she couldn't
+find one thing, another would do, and so she always went happily on her
+way.
+
+Bess was thinking of this, as Nan pushed the button for the automatic
+elevator. "But you couldn't have substituted anything for the visitors'
+pass." She directed her remark to Laura as though they had been talking
+over the thing she was thinking about.
+
+"Whatever are you talking about?" Laura laughed. "Or, is it a secret?
+You know what happens to people in this country who go around talking to
+themselves? They throw them to the bulls. Now, come on, Bessie," she
+finished. "You may be a harum-scarum child, but we love you. Cheer up."
+
+At this, the elevator jolted and settled to its place on the first
+floor and the three girls stepped out to find Adair, Alice, Walker
+Jamieson and the rest all waiting for them.
+
+"Thought you had cold feet, and were backing out." Walker Jamieson
+greeted them with this sally as they all walked down the entrance stairs
+and out to their waiting car.
+
+"Look!" Nan pointed at a street car they were passing.
+
+"At what?" Laura questioned.
+
+"Oh, you were too late," Nan answered while she adjusted her camera so
+that it would be ready for her to take pictures when she wanted to.
+"There was a sign on that car which said, 'Toreo.'"
+
+"What does that mean?" Grace questioned.
+
+"Bullfight, darling, that's where you are going now," Laura answered.
+"See, there's the sign that Nan saw again. It's on the front of that bus
+that's stopped across the street. This must be a holiday. Practically
+everyone seems to have dusted off his best sombrero and come out on the
+streets."
+
+"It's a holiday everyday here." Adair MacKenzie turned around to join in
+the conversation. "Saw a calendar of festivals posted in the hotel
+lobby. No end to it. No wonder the people never get anything done."
+
+"I saw that too," Walker Jamieson remarked. "Saw something else posted
+on a bulletin board that was interesting. It was a warning to everyone
+to take good care of his visitor's pass. Right beside it was the
+announcement of a reward being offered to anyone who could give
+information as to the whereabouts of one Antonio Mazaro, an American
+citizen and former aviator, who is suspected of being an accomplice in
+an international smuggling ring."
+
+"They must be the smugglers Mr. Nogales told us about at the border,"
+Nan remarked.
+
+Walker Jamieson said nothing further. The truth, was, however, that he
+had just an hour before received an assignment from a big New York
+newspaper to cover certain aspects of this smuggling ring story, and he
+was already wondering whether or not it was going to be possible for him
+to go on to the Hacienda as he had planned.
+
+"These Mexicans will never catch anyone, much less a band of American
+crooks." Adair MacKenzie looked around again. "Need a couple of good
+G-men down here, if they're going to find out anything at all."
+
+"Think so too," Walker agreed, "they are sending some down, I
+understand."
+
+"You got your nose in the story?" Adair MacKenzie asked abruptly, and
+everyone looked at Walker, waiting for his answer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+A BULLFIGHT
+
+
+"Oh, always interested in whatever goes on," Walker answered
+off-handedly. "You know how it is. See a story breaking, you want to be
+in on the kill. Just can't help yourself. Gets in your blood, after
+you've worked on any paper for a while.
+
+"Back four years ago, I went up into northern Canada for a vacation.
+Chose that spot because I thought it would be far away from newspapers
+and stories of all kinds. I guess I was feeling rather disgusted with
+everything and wanted to get away, so when an old newspaper buddy who
+had struck out a claim for himself asked me to go up and do a little
+prospecting for gold with him, I jumped at the chance.
+
+"It looked like an ideal set-up. We were to go alone to his cabin which
+was miles away from civilization and stay there for the summer. We
+stocked up with plenty of food, some books I had been wanting to read
+for a long time, and took a radio along.
+
+"I had a book I wanted to write, something I had started and never
+found time to finish. Oh, it was nothing," he added as Nan and the rest
+looked impressed. "All newspaper people think that some day they'll
+write a book that will take the world by storm.
+
+"Well, I thought I would finish that, do some prospecting and just have
+a nice quiet time for myself. The chap I was going up with was a nice
+sort of fellow, quiet like myself.
+
+"We went by train as far as we could go, and then got an old Indian to
+paddle us the rest of the way in a canoe. It was nice going. We took it
+leisurely, stopped and fished along the banks of the river, and camped
+for three days in a gorgeous spot that seemed as remote from
+civilization as any place could possibly be.
+
+"Things went along quite perfectly until one night--this was after we
+had been in the camp for a couple of weeks--there was a radio call
+'Plane carrying doctor and infantile paralysis serum to Canadian outpost
+in Northwest down. Position approximately'--Oh, I've forgotten what it
+was now, but it was not far from our camp.
+
+"The next morning we were up at daybreak and by the next afternoon we
+had located the plane. The pilot was dead, but the doctor, though
+suffering from a broken leg and shock, was still living. After we had
+fixed him up, we spent the night trying to get the plane's radio to the
+point where it would function, so that we could get the news back to
+civilization.
+
+"But things were so radically wrong with it, that my pal finally decided
+that he would set out for the nearest outpost, traveling as we had when
+we came, walking and by canoe. In the meantime, the doctor was fretting
+and stewing because he couldn't get to the station that was in such
+urgent need of medical aid, so partly on this insistence, partly because
+I'm a stubborn fool when I start out to do anything, I kept tinkering
+around with the radio.
+
+"Finally, the thing came to life, and we were able to get in touch with
+the outside world. You know as well as I what happens in such cases. It
+wasn't long before I was up to my neck, sending exclusive stories back
+to my old sheet and then, when another plane came to take the doctor and
+brought with it a whole flock of reporters, I was swamped with work.
+
+"I grumbled, but I loved it, and when the story died down and I was
+called back to work on an assignment that I was more than proud to
+accept I was like a kid with a new toy. Never so glad to get back into
+harness in my life.
+
+"I feel now, a little the way I did then. Mexico and the land of manana
+spelled romance and rest to me in the city room where I do my daily
+stint. But now I want neither of them. I smell a story."
+
+With this, he sniffed the air as though he was actually trying to get
+the direction of the scent. Alice laughed and held her hand on the
+handle of the door. "Maybe you do," she said, "but you're not leaving us
+today, at least not this minute. Walker Jamieson, we're headed for a
+bullfight and you're going along with us whether you want to or not."
+
+There was no protest, and Walker was glad afterwards when he pieced the
+little sections of the plot together that he hadn't struck out on the
+trail of the story before that memorable bull-fight.
+
+"And what's the man with the wheelbarrow doing in the parade?" Nan asked
+the question of Walker Jamieson.
+
+They were all sitting now in the huge arena, "Plaza de Toros," the most
+important bull-fighting ring in all Mexico. The place was packed and Nan
+thought as she looked out over the people that she had never in her life
+seen such a gay colorful crowd, nor one in such an excited mood.
+
+They were sitting on the shady side of the ring, "Sombra" it was called,
+the seats of which cost twice the price of those on the sunny side, or
+"Sol."
+
+It was four o'clock exactly and the cuadrilla or parade that precedes
+every bull-fight had just entered the arena. Everyone was standing up
+shouting, waving his sombrero, and cheering for his favorite.
+
+"That's a secret, not to be divulged until later," Walker answered Nan's
+question.
+
+"I didn't know it would be like this," Grace, generally so quiet and
+shy, said. Her face was all alight and she was waving the pillow that
+had been bought for her to sit on, as were all the rest of the girls and
+women in the place. Laura was waving hers too, and so were Bess and Nan
+and Amelia.
+
+Down in the ring below them the parade was marching around. First came a
+man on a spirited horse that pranced and danced and bowed its head to
+the ground again and again as the rider circled the ring. Then followed
+the matadores or bullfighters themselves in brilliant costumes that
+proclaimed to everyone that they were the heroes of the hour. It was for
+them that pillows were waved and cheers echoed back and forth across the
+ring.
+
+"Oh, they're gorgeous, simply gorgeous," Nan was carried away with the
+excitement. "What are they called?" she pointed her finger to a number
+of men now riding on horseback and directed her question to Walker.
+
+"And look, what are they?" Laura turned to him at the same time. She was
+pointing to men in white suits, red sashes, and caps who came in on
+mules.
+
+"One at a time, please," Walker laughed at their excitement. "Nan's
+first. Those men on horseback are the picadores. Watch them later. And
+you, Senorita," he turned to Laura, "you asked about the wise monkeys,
+'monosabios' we Mexicans call them. When the fight's over they'll drag
+out the dead bull."
+
+"Oh!" The exclamation was Grace's. She had forgotten that a bullfight
+meant that there would be blood and killing.
+
+Walker looked at her questioningly and then at Alice. "Here was a girl,"
+the glances they exchanged said, "that would have to be watched at the
+killing."
+
+Now, below them, the horseman leading the procession bowed before the
+judge of the bullfight, the formation disbanded, and the ring cleared
+for the entrance of the first bull.
+
+It came in, charging from a door that was opened below the ring, went
+bellowing madly across the arena, and charged straight into a target
+that maddened it further.
+
+Now the prettiest, most graceful part of the whole spectacle began.
+
+Two helpers carrying lovely bright capes stepped from the side into the
+arena. One of them waved his cape, attracting the attention of the bull
+which came rushing toward the bright moving object. The helper danced
+gracefully aside. The bull turned and rushed at him again, putting his
+head down and going for him with his horns. But the man was graceful and
+daring and teasing and avoided him.
+
+Now the other helper waved his cape and was equally provocative and the
+bull went for him with the same lack of success.
+
+So they played back and forth, tantalizing the bull, attracting it with
+one cape and distracting it with another until it was thoroughly
+maddened.
+
+Then the rider came in on his horse and the rider and the horse teased
+the bull further. So it went until the climax when the third and most
+important part of the fight began--the actual killing of the bull.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+END OF THE FIGHT
+
+
+The ring was in a furor when Bess clutched Nan's arm. "Look, Nan, look,"
+she said. "It's she. It's Linda. Look, Nan."
+
+Nan's eyes were riveted on the ring, where the bullfighter with his
+spear was waiting for a propitious moment to plunge it into the mad
+bleeding animal that was lunging at him.
+
+"Just a minute, Bess," Nan hadn't heard what her friend had said. The
+horror and cruelty and yet the excitement of the scene before her was
+holding all her attention.
+
+Down there before her the bullfighter was fighting a championship fight.
+He was playing with the bull, teasing him toward him and then skillfully
+dancing away. The end was imminent. The fighter was waiting only for an
+opportunity to make the clean, quick plunge that would finish the fight
+with one stroke.
+
+Now, the moment seemed near and everyone, Nan and her friends, and the
+more than twenty thousand other people in the great ring stood up,
+cheering for the finish.
+
+The fighter closed in and then drew back to make the lunge, but there
+was blood on the ground beneath his feet and he slipped. The bull gave a
+mighty roar and went toward him, his horns lowered. The fight had
+turned. There could be only one possible end now. Death for the fighter.
+
+But wait. That fighter is clever. He gracefully pulls aside so the
+menacing horns glance across his arm. He jumps up from the ground, pulls
+his arm back, and before the bull has had a chance to recover from his
+surprise, that fighter is, with one mighty thrust, plunging the spear
+straight through the bull's heart.
+
+There, it's over now. The fighter has fought the fight that will surely
+bring him the trophy, a pair of little gold ears. The throng, wild with
+excitement, throws hats, scarfs, pillows, everything loose that it can
+lay its hands on into the ring as the hero of the hour slowly walks
+around and bows with arms thrown out wide as though to embrace the whole
+cheering multitude.
+
+Everything is gay and happy now. Even the man that follows after the
+hero and picks up the hats, scarfs, and pillows that litter the ground
+and tosses them lightly back to the owners above is laughing. Yes, even
+the man that pushed the wheelbarrow in the grand opening procession is
+happy, basking in reflected glory, as he trundles his burden around the
+ring, sprinkling sawdust over the blood spots.
+
+It was not until the monosabios, "wise monkeys", came to drag out the
+bull, destined now for food for a nearby hospital, that Bess again tried
+to attract Nan's attention.
+
+"Nan, I tell you that that's Linda Riggs down there below us," she said
+insistently this time. "Look at the way she's tossing her head and
+talking to that man that's next to her. You would think that he was a
+prince, a handsome prince, the way she is acting."
+
+"Why, Bess, you're right. That is Linda." Nan at last drew her eyes away
+from the ring and looked at the girl Bess was pointing to.
+
+"Yes, and I'm sure she saw us a while ago," Laura contributed. She too
+had been watching the girl that the Lakeview crowd had grown to dislike
+so cordially. "You know the way she always looks around her to see
+whether there is anyone she really ought to be decent to, anyone that
+might be able to do something for her. Well, she did that when she first
+came in. I saw her, but I wasn't going to say anything because I didn't
+want to spoil the fun we were having."
+
+"I'll bet she sneered when she saw us," Bess said. "She's always hated
+us and especially since we had the laugh on her on the boat last
+summer."
+
+"Oh, Bess, that wasn't exactly a laugh," Nan protested. "The girl almost
+drowned."
+
+"Yes, and you went and saved her. And what thanks did you get?" Bess
+could always be indignant when she thought of Linda Riggs. "You should
+have let her alone. I would have. I would have enjoyed seeing the waves
+wash her over-board. I would have looked over the rail and laughed when
+I saw her screaming and waving her arms and trying to keep herself from
+going under."
+
+"You little fiend!" Nan exclaimed. "How can you say such things?"
+
+"Because they are true," Bess retorted. "People like her shouldn't be
+allowed to clutter up things. She makes everybody that knows her
+unhappy, so what good is she anyway? Her father is always trying to get
+her out of trouble. Look at her down there now. You can see by the way
+she's holding her head that she's mean and proud and deceitful."
+
+"Bess, be quiet!" Nan warned. "You'll have everyone looking at you.
+Linda is a little prig and she does make trouble and I don't like her
+any more than you do, but there's no use making things unpleasant
+because she's happened to turn up here where we are. Forget her."
+
+"Forget her!" Bess exclaimed. "You can't forget a thorn that's forever
+sticking in your flesh. Trying to forget her doesn't do any good. She
+always makes trouble. It's best to watch her so that you will be
+prepared for what happens."
+
+Perhaps Bess was right. Certainly, if at other times Nan and Bess had
+been more watchful they might have been able to avoid trouble. But Nan
+always believed that there was some good in everyone and she was always
+trustful. She felt often that Linda, because of her wealth and the fact
+that her mother was dead and her father tried to give her everything she
+wanted, was not entirely to blame for her actions. And Bess, well,
+Bess's attitude toward Linda had changed considerably since their first
+meeting.
+
+Then Bess had thought that the daughter of the railroad magnate would
+be a nice person to have for a friend, for Bess was decidedly impressed
+by her wealth, by the way she ordered people around, and the way she
+dressed. Bess had even written home in the first days at school and told
+her mother that she didn't have at all the proper kind of clothes to
+wear, if she was going to chum around with people that amounted to
+something. She had Linda in mind when she wrote it, Linda's clothes and
+Linda's social position. But Linda had soon shown Bess that there was no
+room for her in her world.
+
+Girls that Linda called friend, if there was any such word in her
+vocabulary, had to bow to all her wishes. She liked them only if they
+thought everything she did and said was right. No girl could be her
+friend and have a will of her own. No girl could be her friend and have
+other friends too. Linda wanted to be the very center of everyone's
+attention. As a consequence she had no real friends at all.
+
+Bess never analyzed this to herself, but after one or two attempts to go
+around with Linda, she gave up entirely and grew to dislike her very
+much, as all the readers of the Nan Sherwood series know. She disliked
+her particularly because of the mean things she had done to Nan, for if
+Bess had no other outstanding characteristic, she did have a sense of
+justice that was almost as strong as Nan's.
+
+This she had although her sympathies were not as deep nor as
+understanding as Nan's. Bess was apt to accept or reject things and
+people on account of appearances. Nan never did this. She liked everyone
+and had always had some sort of sixth sense that made her look beneath
+surfaces and find the true person. Thus she made friends with all sorts
+of people.
+
+This was the reason that Nan led such an adventurous life. This was the
+reason everyone liked her. Everyone called Linda snobbish. A few people
+called Bess the same. But no one ever thought of applying the word to
+Nan.
+
+And Nan seldom talked about people. So now, as the girls sat in the
+arena in Mexico City waiting for the next bullfighter to come into the
+ring, Nan was doing her best to quiet her friend.
+
+"There's no reason whatsoever to get so excited," she said in an
+undertone to Bess. "She's sitting way down below us so we won't have to
+even talk to her when we go out. We'll be up the stairs and out the exit
+before she does. We'll probably never even see her again while we're
+here."
+
+"That's right," Laura agreed, talking in a whisper too. "And though you
+might think that you could prepare yourself for what might happen if you
+did encounter Linda, you never could. No one ever knows what that girl
+might do. And, Elizabeth Harley, you're not smart enough to guess."
+Laura being Laura with her red hair and her love for battle couldn't
+resist adding this thrust.
+
+"Well, I could try anyway," Bess retorted.
+
+"Say, what are you people all talking about so quietly?" Amelia leaned
+over and asked now. "Why, you didn't even pay any attention when Mr.
+Jamieson took Grace out."
+
+"Took Grace out!" Nan exclaimed, noticing now for the first time that
+two in the party were missing. "Why?"
+
+"She almost fainted when she saw all the blood streaming from the bull,
+so just before he was killed, Walker Jamieson took her by the arm and
+said they were going for a walk and would be back soon."
+
+"I don't blame her," Bess said emphatically. "I would have fainted
+myself--"
+
+"--if you had been watching the bullfight instead of Linda Riggs," Nan
+supplied the end of the sentence.
+
+"I guess you are right," Bess laughed. "That girl certainly does have a
+habit of getting in my hair. I'm always on pins and needles whenever she
+is around."
+
+"There, Bessie," Nan tried to smooth her friend's ruffled feelings.
+"Just you sit quietly and watch the next fight and you'll feel better.
+We'll see that Linda doesn't cross your path."
+
+"She hadn't better," Bess replied and then did try to devote herself to
+watching the next fight on the program.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+A HASTY DEPARTURE
+
+
+"Sit quietly and watch a bullfight!" Adair MacKenzie had heard Nan's
+counsel to Bess. "Never heard of such a thing. Never saw such a thing
+happen. Couldn't possibly sit quietly and watch a bullfight. Too
+exciting. Too much blood and gore. No place to bring a woman."
+
+Adair had been upset by Grace's fainting spell and now he was sorry he
+had ever brought the girls here. Already he was casting about in his
+mind for something else to do that would wipe the memory of the
+unpleasantness of the spectacle out of their minds. He was oblivious of
+the fact that none of them outside of perhaps Nan and Amelia had
+witnessed the fight with their whole attention. He didn't yet know the
+story of Linda. The fact that her presence distracted them consequently
+had gone unobserved.
+
+"Got your things? Come on. We're going now." Abruptly he made up his
+mind and plunged into action without further ado.
+
+"But father," Alice demurred.
+
+"Don't 'but' me," Adair answered. "We're going to get out of this
+outlandish place right away. Can't have you all fainting on my hands.
+Ready?" He was already halfway out the row and effectively blocking the
+view of the ring of all the people who had seats behind his party. But
+it didn't matter to him. In fact, he was so concerned with his own
+immediate problem that no one else in the world existed. Now he turned
+around again to see if the girls were following him.
+
+"Fine spectacle for civilized people to put on," he muttered. "Hurry,
+you people. Can't be all day getting out of here."
+
+"That's right." The voice that agreed with him was an American voice and
+it startled him. Adair looked up. "What's that?" he asked the question
+gruffly.
+
+"I said, 'that's right,'" the stranger answered. He was sitting about
+three rows behind where Adair was standing.
+
+"What do you mean?" Adair looked more belligerent than ever.
+
+"I mean you can't be all day getting out of here." The voice in back
+answered positively.
+
+"W-w-why, you old--old--old," Adair spluttered. He could think of no
+epithet appropriate and yet forceful enough to call his critic in the
+presence of the girls. So his spluttering died away as he brandished his
+cane and just stood and looked.
+
+"Daddy, daddy," Alice put a soft hand on his arm. "Do come. We are
+blocking the view."
+
+"Nothing to see down there anyway," Adair returned. "These Americans,"
+he went on talking loudly and looking back at the man above him, "come
+down here and think they can run everything. Want to tell us to move on.
+Who do they think they are anyway?"
+
+"Sh, daddy." Alice was worried for fear her father would start a fight,
+even while she was secretly amused that he was accusing a fellow
+countryman of doing the very thing that he was guilty of. "We must get
+down and out so that we can find how Grace is," she added tactfully.
+
+"Well, I'm hurrying just as fast as these Mexicans will let me," Adair
+answered. "I always said they were the slowest, most inconsiderate
+people in the world."
+
+Adair was wrong in what he said, and he knew it. As he was now
+sputtering about them being inconsiderate, so often he had sputtered
+because of their patient consideration for other people. Then he had
+said that they were too polite.
+
+However, Adair prided himself on his willingness to change his mind.
+"Only dunces never contradict themselves," he often said.
+
+Now, Alice and the girls were themselves moving along as fast as they
+could behind him, so, though he continued to mutter and even brandish
+his cane at others whom he suspected of calling at him in Spanish, he
+was soon safely out in the aisle and they all hurried up the stairs and
+out.
+
+"O-o-ooh, but that was close," Laura's eyes were dancing at the
+recollection of the scene in the stands as she and Nan stepped out into
+the street.
+
+"Wasn't it though?" Nan was laughing too, now, though at the time, she,
+like Alice, had been worried for fear Adair would come to blows with the
+American.
+
+"Two Americans come to blows at a bullfight," Laura said, "and the
+bullfight is forgotten."
+
+"That's just what I was afraid of," Nan whispered. "These people in this
+country are so hot-headed that I was afraid there would be a general
+riot, before we got out of there. They were all worked up so over the
+first fight that they would have entered our private little fray without
+any question."
+
+"That's what I thought too," Laura agreed. "And did you see the
+expression on Bess's face?"
+
+"No," Nan returned, "but I can just imagine what it was like. She hates
+scenes of any kind. I do too, but this one was almost funny. Cousin
+Adair is so quick tempered that he glides in and out of trouble with the
+greatest of ease."
+
+"Doesn't he though?" Amelia contributed. "It fascinates me when I see
+one of his explosions coming. Every time he opens his mouth, he gets in
+deeper."
+
+"That is funny when you see it happen to someone else," Laura agreed
+somewhat ruefully. "But when it happens to you, if you have a sensitive
+soul, like mine, it's pretty embarrassing." Laura was in earnest, for
+her quick tongue often did its work before she had a chance to stop it.
+"Oh Laura," her mother had more than once shaken her head over her
+daughter's failing, "you need to count to a hundred at least when you
+feel your cheeks flushing and your head getting hot with anger. And you
+need to button your mouth up tight, or you'll always be terribly
+unhappy."
+
+Laura thought of this now, and giggled.
+
+"Well, I don't know what's so funny," Bess remarked. She still felt
+irritated at what had happened. "Maybe if you had seen Linda Riggs
+looking around at us, you wouldn't be giggling the way you are. I wish I
+could have just gone right through that floor."
+
+"But it was concrete and you couldn't." Laura pretended to be very
+practical.
+
+"That is, not without hurting herself," Amelia appended.
+
+"Oh, it isn't funny." Bess was genuinely upset. She would have hated the
+scene anyway, and when it occurred in Linda's presence, she hated it
+doubly. "You should have seen the look of pity and disgust and triumph
+on her face when she saw that it was our party that was making all the
+fuss," Bess went on, growing more vehement the more she talked. "It was
+positively humiliating."
+
+More than any of the others, Bess cared about what other people thought
+of her. Always conscious of herself and eager to make a good impression,
+she was always upset when things went wrong at all. When they did not
+run just according to the way she thought they should, in public
+especially, she felt like hiding her head and running. "It's the way I
+am and I can't help it," she retorted once when Nan accused her of being
+over-sensitive, and so she never made the proper effort to overcome her
+failing.
+
+"Who cares what Linda thinks?" Laura said airily as Walker and Grace
+joined the party, and the incident was forgotten, for the moment, while
+everyone made a fuss over Grace.
+
+"You're just a sissy," Laura teased. "See a little bit of blood and you
+go off in a faint. What will you do when we start dissecting things in
+biology at school next fall?"
+
+"I don't know." Grace looked worried as though she was going to have to
+do the dissecting right away.
+
+"Tut! Tut! We'll worry about that when the time comes," Adair MacKenzie
+answered as though it was his problem to be handled in due course. "How
+are you now?" He looked at Grace closely while he asked the question.
+"Feeling all right again, are you?" He spoke gently, as he might have
+spoken to Alice, his daughter, and a warm feeling of sympathy toward him
+went through all those standing around.
+
+"Why," Nan said afterward, and Bess had to agree, "I believe he was
+irritable up in the stands because he was worried about Grace."
+
+"I suppose so." Bess was much less tolerant of other people's failings
+than her friend. "But that was no excuse for him to get all riled up. I
+can't forget the way Linda looked."
+
+"Bessie, forget it." Nan spoke sharply. "It's not important at all. It
+doesn't matter what Linda thinks of us. And it is important that we not
+criticise Cousin Adair. After all, we are his guests."
+
+"You are right," Bess agreed. She could, on occasion, be generous in
+yielding when she knew she was in the wrong.
+
+As they talked these things over, the whole party walked toward the
+waiting car. Again, it was a voice from the United States that arrested
+them, but one more softly spoken than that they had heard in the
+grandstands.
+
+"I beg your pardon," it said. Nan and her Lakeview Hall companions
+looked up startled. The speaker who had accosted them was accompanied by
+none other than Linda Riggs!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+LINDA PERFORMS AN INTRODUCTION
+
+
+"I beg your pardon." Linda Riggs' companion spoke again, "but could you
+direct us to Avenida Chapultepec?"
+
+Before anyone could answer Linda rushed over to Nan and took her by the
+arm. "Why, Nancy Sherwood!" she exclaimed as though Nan was the best
+friend she had in the world. "I'm so surprised to see you here. When did
+you arrive? Isn't this city just perfectly gorgeous? More quaint, don't
+you think, than anything we saw in Europe?"
+
+Nan was at a loss as to what to say. Deep within her she was entirely
+out of patience with the situation. Linda was being disgustedly
+affected. She was talking slowly, dragging her vowels and gesturing with
+her hands, acting as a person twice her age might act and even then be
+nauseous. But Linda disregarded Nan's coolness.
+
+"And you, Bess," Linda turned to Elizabeth Harley. "Imagine seeing you
+here. Isn't it all too romantic for words, a whole crowd of Lakeview
+Hall people meeting in this far-off corner of the globe. The most
+astounding things do happen, don't they?"
+
+"Yes, they do," Laura remarked dryly, looking Linda up and down as she
+did so.
+
+"And you, Laura Polk. Why, you are all together, I do believe." Linda
+acted as though she had made a brilliant observation. She was having a
+difficult time, even for her, in the situation, for her effusions were
+being received rather coldly to say the least.
+
+"I'd like to have you meet my friend, Arthur Howard," she went on,
+forcing Nan to introduce her and her companion to her cousin and Alice.
+
+"Hm! Glad to meet you." Adair MacKenzie said abruptly. "Got to be going
+now. Sorry, don't know the way to Avenida whatever-it-was-you-said.
+Can't keep any of these streets straight in my mind. They're all mixed
+up." With this, he summarily herded his daughter, Nan, Laura, Bess, and
+Amelia toward the car where Walker Jamieson and Grace who had gone on
+alone together were waiting. Linda and her companion were thus left
+behind.
+
+"Nan," Grace hardly waited until the girls were in the car beside her
+before she asked the question, "was that Linda Riggs that you were
+talking to out there?"
+
+"None other," Laura answered. "And why are you giggling so, Bess. A few
+moments ago you were all hot and bothered about Linda and now you're
+laughing. Will you please make up your mind about what you're thinking."
+
+"Oh, it's so funny." Bess was off again. "Did you see the way she looked
+when Mr. MacKenzie walked away so suddenly. I do believe that she
+thought we would fall all over her the way she was falling all over us.
+Oh, dear, did that do my heart good!" Bess sounded positively gleeful.
+
+"Mine too." Laura was laughing with her.
+
+"And do you remember," Bess went on, "how, when Mr. MacKenzie analyzed
+all of us when he first met us, we wished that some day he would have
+the chance to do it to Linda. Well, that wish almost came true down
+there. I do believe that if we had stayed a moment longer he would have
+done it. I was hoping--"
+
+"Elizabeth Harley! I thought you didn't like Cousin Adair," Nan, too,
+was tickled at the whole situation.
+
+"Oh, I do now," Bess capitulated. "I just love him. Do you know that's
+the first time since we've known her, that we've seen her as embarrassed
+as she makes us sometimes. How I wish we had stayed just a moment
+longer."
+
+"What's this about your just loving someone?" Adair turned around to
+join in the conversation.
+
+Bess blushed.
+
+"Well, all I can say is," he went on when she failed to answer. "I hope
+it's not that girl back there that we just met that you're being so
+enthusiastic about. Don't like her at all myself. No character. She's
+snippy. She's deceitful. Can't even talk without putting on airs. Can't
+stand her. Hope she's no friend of yours." He turned to Nan as he said
+this last.
+
+Nan shook her head and said nothing further. She felt, and rightly so,
+that it was unnecessary to discuss Linda among people who did not know
+her. This was a consideration that Linda would never have shown Nan. In
+fact, time and again, Linda had purposely attempted to blacken Nan's
+character in front of strangers. This was one reason that Bess, loyal as
+she was to Nan, disliked Linda so much.
+
+"Can't tolerate people who are affected," Adair MacKenzie went on
+blustering as the car drove out into the street. "And didn't like that
+man she was with either. He didn't have a very honest look about him."
+
+"But he was nice-looking." Bess let the words out before she realized
+what she was doing, and the wrath of Adair MacKenzie descended upon her.
+
+"Nice-looking! That's all you think of. Nice-looking, bah! Can't judge
+people by their looks. It's what's in their eyes and their hearts that
+counts. Have to see that before you can accurately decide what they are.
+Anybody can dress up and make a good appearance. You, Bessie," he
+lowered his tone at a look from Alice, "you've got to learn something
+about true values before you get much older. You're a nice sort of girl,
+but you put too much emphasis on money and worldly goods. You'll have to
+be taught sometime that they are not so important as you think.
+
+"That goes for all of you," he ended, sweeping them all with his glance.
+"You've all had easy lives, so you don't know yet, really, what's worth
+while and what isn't."
+
+"Now, that girl back there," he resumed his talk after a few moments of
+silence, "she has no conception what-so-ever of worth. What's her name,
+anyway?" he asked.
+
+"Linda Riggs," Nan answered.
+
+"Not the daughter of the railroad king?"
+
+"That's right." Nan nodded her head.
+
+"Knew him, when he was a young fellow," Adair paused, remembering his
+own youth. "He was a nice chap then. Can't understand how he could have
+reared such a poor excuse for a daughter. We belonged to the same
+college fraternity. He was president of it at one time I think. Always
+helping people out. Everybody liked him. That's how he happened to get
+on in the world the way he did. Met up with someone who had lots of
+dough and no son to carry on the family name. Riggs seemed to fill the
+bill, so the wealthy old codger took him into his business and taught
+him the ropes.
+
+"Riggs wore well, and when the old man died he inherited the fortune.
+Sounds like a fairy story, but those things happen. Jamieson here must
+know the tale."
+
+Walker nodded in agreement. "Do. Interviewed the old bird one time under
+particularly difficult circumstances. There was a big railroad merger
+story about to break, and nobody wanted to talk. I got wind of it
+through a hot tip from a stooge in New York. Tried everything in order
+to get the story, and finally in desperation went to Riggs himself. It
+was rumored that he had the controlling interest in the stock. I had to
+go through a dozen secretaries before I finally got to him.
+
+"Then he didn't want to talk either. However, some little thing I said
+in passing, captured his fancy, and before I knew it, I was laying all
+my cards on the table and he was putting them together so that they made
+sense. When we were finished, I realized that I had one of the biggest
+stories of the year and was about to grab my hat and run out to put it
+on the wires, when he put out a restraining hand. 'Sorry,' he said, 'but
+I must ask you to keep this quiet for twenty-four hours longer. If you
+promise, I assure you that no one else will get the release until your
+paper has the scoop all sewed up.'
+
+"In a way I was up a tree, because I knew that if the story had leaked
+out to me, someone else was very likely to get wind of it too. I
+hesitated. He stuck out his hand as though to shake mine and he did it
+in such a frank friendly fashion, that I agreed to what he asked, even
+though I knew it was a dumb thing to do under the circumstances.
+
+"But there was something about the man that inspired confidence and
+regard."
+
+"Lived up to the agreement, didn't he?" Adair said positively.
+
+"Sure did," Walker assented, "and under difficulty too. Just as I
+suspected, some other paper did get wind of the story and sent one of
+their ace men out to get the details. Riggs let him in, quizzed him to
+find out what he knew, excused himself, and then called me to tell me
+that the time was up, that I'd better shoot the yarn right through if I
+wanted to scoop the rest of the dailies.
+
+"Well, after he did that, he went back into his office and told the
+other reporter the whole story he had told me. It took him three hours
+to tell it, and when my competitor came out of the office our extras
+were already on the street."
+
+"That was the Midwestern merger, wasn't it?" Adair questioned.
+
+"Right!" Jamieson agreed. "Remember it, don't you? But you chits," he
+turned his attention to the girls who had been listening with their
+customary attention to his tale, "you wouldn't remember. You were hardly
+out of your cradles then. Nan here was probably still creeping around in
+rompers. Bess, well, Bess probably didn't creep, that was too dirty for
+her, but she was probably beginning to put her hands up to her father
+and saying, 'gimme'."
+
+This brought a laugh from everyone, including Adair MacKenzie.
+
+"Can't understand," he returned to the question of Linda, "how a girl
+with a father like Riggs could be such an obnoxious person."
+
+"Oh, there are lots of explanations," Walker answered. "I happen to know
+that his wife died when the girl was just a baby. He was all broken up
+and turned to the child for comfort. Guess he lavished all his attention
+on her and spoiled her."
+
+"Sounds plausible," Adair agreed, and then looked at Alice. "See how I
+ruined my daughter with kindness," he twitted. "Let her get out of hand
+completely. Now I can't do anything with her."
+
+"Want to get rid of her?" Walker winked at Alice, as he asked the
+question.
+
+"What's that?" Adair was startled.
+
+"Oh, nothing, dad," Alice frowned at Walker. "Where are we going now."
+
+"Don't know." Adair took out his watch as he shook his head. He
+frowned. "Guess we can make it though," he continued, laughing with the
+others at his own inconsistency.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+FLOATING GARDENS
+
+
+"Xochimilco or place of flowers. How lovely," Nan spoke softly in the
+presence of the beauty before her.
+
+Adair MacKenzie in his desire to introduce the girls to something that
+would make them forget the bullfight had brought them to one of the
+prettiest places in all Mexico. Now, he was looking exceedingly pleased
+with himself.
+
+"Oh, daddy," Alice too was thrilled at the spectacle before them. "Many,
+many times I've heard of the floating gardens of Mexico and I've always
+wanted to see them."
+
+"Well, there they are," Adair said as off-handedly as possible under the
+circumstances. "Now you see them."
+
+They laughed at his matter-of-factness.
+
+"If you will allow me," Walker Jamieson who had deserted the party
+immediately after the car had been parked, now brought a canoe he had
+rented and paddled up one of the many canals before them to a stop at
+their feet. He stood up and held out his arm to Alice.
+
+"Fair lady, you come first." He said as he helped her in and assisted
+her to a seat opposite him. "And now, Nan." So one after the other he
+helped the members of the party to places in the large canoe.
+
+"H-h-hm," Adair MacKenzie cleared his throat as he seated his bulk.
+"Now, I'd say this is more in keeping with what young ladies should
+like. How about it?" He addressed his question to Grace who was beaming
+beside him.
+
+She nodded in agreement.
+
+Everyone was completely happy as Walker pushed the canoe off. So the
+rest of the afternoon was whiled away in paddling lazily through the
+flower-bordered canals.
+
+"Why are they called floating gardens?" Nan addressed her question to
+Walker who seemed a fountainhead of information about all sorts of
+things.
+
+"Simply because they float," Walker answered as he disentangled his
+paddle from some lily stems along the side.
+
+"But you can't actually see them move," Nan said as she peered earnestly
+at one of the many islands.
+
+"No, you can't, now," Walker agreed. "But there was a time, Miss
+Curiosity, ages ago when these beautiful gardens actually did float from
+place to place, a time when you didn't know from one day to the next
+just where you'd wake up and find a certain particularly beautiful one."
+
+"Why?" The subject was an intriguing one and Nan wanted to know all
+about it.
+
+"Oh, they say," Walker continued quietly, "that the earth of the gardens
+lies on interlacing twigs. Naturally before the water filled in as it is
+now, these twigs moved with the current and carried their burden of
+earth and flowers along with them.
+
+"This was always a beautiful spot," he continued, "even back before the
+Aztecs found the eagle on the cactus and conquered the region and
+settled their capitol. When they did all this and found themselves with
+leisure on their hands, the nobles made of this place a playground, and
+the Aztec papa and mama came here with the Aztec child for Sunday
+picnics.
+
+"Today, if I hadn't been as energetic as I am," he paused and grinned at
+the snort that this brought forth from Alice's father, "a descendant of
+these same Aztecs, who still, by the way, speaks the tongue of his
+forefathers, would have been plying this gondola. The Aztecs still live
+around here and still preserve many of the ancient customs of their
+people."
+
+He rested the paddle on the side of the canoe as he finished and, as
+water dripped from it making little rings in the canal, he sat idly
+dreaming. The canoe drifted along and came to rest under an over-hanging
+willow. No one spoke. It was a magic moment, for the sun was setting and
+sending low rays over the water. Tropical birds were singing
+full-throated songs and in the distance they could hear, faintly, the
+sound of music.
+
+Finally, Alice spoke. "It can't be very different," she said, "than it
+was centuries ago. For the same exotic flowers ran wild here then that
+do now, and the same birds sang. How queer that makes me feel. Century
+after century has unrolled and yet this is the same."
+
+"I know." Walker looked across at her. "Makes you feel, doesn't it, that
+time isn't so important after all, that a philosophy in which 'manana'
+is the all-important word is perhaps not such a bad one after all."
+
+"Here, here," Adair MacKenzie broke the spell. "Don't go preaching that
+manana business to these girls. They are lazy enough as it is. Look at
+them now, will you?"
+
+In truth, the girls did all look comfortable and lazy, entirely at peace
+with themselves and the world and not at all like the busy energetic
+beings that they were at school.
+
+"The world doesn't seem real, does it?" Nan looked at Bess as she made
+this observation.
+
+"No," Bess answered. "Not real at all. This, I believe, is the most
+romantic spot we have ever been in."
+
+"Yes," Nan agreed idly, and for some reason or other her thoughts
+drifted back towards home and school and then to Walter, Grace's
+brother.
+
+"I've been meaning to tell you," Grace broke in on her train of thought
+as though she knew what had been going on in Nan's mind. "Mother said in
+that letter I got at Wells Fargo's this morning that she had consented
+to let Walter go on a motor trip through the West and Mexico with his
+Spanish teacher."
+
+"Yes." Nan's voice betrayed her interest, and she was conscious as she
+spoke that all the girls were suddenly more alert. The piece of news was
+one they were interested in too.
+
+"It seems," Grace went on, pleased that she had the attention of
+everyone, "that every year he takes a group down through this district
+so that they can hear Spanish spoken by the people whose tongue it is.
+Walter likes Spanish and so he's going along with them."
+
+"When will he be here," Bess asked the question which she knew Nan
+wanted to ask but wouldn't in face of the interest that everyone was
+showing in the matter.
+
+"Oh, mother wasn't sure," Grace answered. "It all depends on so many
+things. They'll be gone the whole summer and will linger at the places
+the boys seem to like the best. It seems that the teacher leaves the
+itinerary almost entirely up to them."
+
+"Sounds like fun." Nan tried to be casual and general as she spoke, but
+she didn't altogether succeed.
+
+"What's all this about?" Adair MacKenzie had caught the drift of the
+conversation. "Who is this Walter anyway?"
+
+"He is Grace's brother," Nan answered.
+
+"Yes?" Adair was not to be put off so easily.
+
+"And he went with us to Rose Ranch a few summers ago and met us in
+London with Grace's mother and dad last year." Nan thought it would be
+better for her to answer the questions.
+
+"Hm-m-m. Think I understand." Adair appeared to be devoting much thought
+to this "understanding" business for he said nothing further for a
+while. Finally, as though he suddenly remembered what they had been
+talking about, he returned to the subject.
+
+"Why can't the young hoodlums--I have no doubt but what they are young
+hoodlums, all boys are--stop at the hacienda with us for a few days?" he
+asked.
+
+Grace's face beamed at this. "Why, how nice!" she exclaimed, "but just
+think, there will be five of them at least."
+
+"What of it?" Adair dismissed this as an objection. "Got lots of room.
+We'll make a party of it when they come and serve them a real Mexican
+meal." Adair seemed to have forgotten entirely that he personally
+despised Mexican cooking. "Hot tamales, tortillas, everything." He waved
+his hand grandly as though the whole world would be at the disposal of
+the boys for the asking.
+
+"Like boys anyway," Adair went on. "Girls are a nuisance. Always
+fainting. Oh, it doesn't matter," he glossed over this last part of
+conversation as he saw the blood mounting to Grace's cheeks. "Just like
+to have boys around." He ended rather weakly. "Now, let's see. It's
+getting pretty dark, better move on." He motioned to Walker who
+obediently took the paddle in hand and began the leisurely journey back.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+GOOD-BY TO MEXICO CITY
+
+
+"Oh, yesterday was a grand day!" Nan stretched her arms wide and high as
+she sat up in her bed the next morning.
+
+"Yes, wasn't it?" Bess rolled over in her bed and looked at Nan. "It was
+just full of surprises. I don't know what I liked the best."
+
+"I do," Nan said promptly.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Oh, Cousin Adair. I think he's a darling."
+
+"He'd probably roar a mighty roar if he heard you say that," Bess
+laughed at the prospect, "but you know, I quite agree with you, even if
+it isn't my friend that he has invited to stop at the hacienda."
+
+"But Walter's a friend to all of us," Nan protested.
+
+"Yes, yes, of course," Bess agreed. "He's a friend to all of us and a
+particular friend to you."
+
+"Bessie, if this big pillow wasn't so soft," Nan looked at the pillow
+she was holding in her hand speculatively, "I'd heave it over at you so
+fast that you wouldn't know what had struck you."
+
+"That's all right, Nancy," Bess laughed. "I understand. You don't like
+to be teased."
+
+"Wasn't it fun last night?" Nan changed the subject completely.
+
+"What was fun?" Bess could remember so many nice things that she really
+didn't know which one Nan was talking about.
+
+"Dinner on the bank of the canal at Xochimilco," Nan answered promptly.
+"I'll never forget it. The lights. The flowers. The music. Who would
+ever think to look at him and hear him talk that Cousin Adair would be
+romantic enough to think up anything like that?"
+
+"I know it." Bess idly watched an insect that was buzzing around the
+room. "I was much surprised. Then I began to wonder if it wasn't Walker
+Jamieson's idea after all. You know he has a clever way of suggesting
+things to your cousin, so that when your cousin decides what to do it
+appears as though he thought up the idea originally."
+
+"Why, Bess." Nan appeared to be horrified at the thought.
+
+"Oh, you know it's so." Bess looked over at Nan. "It's lots of fun to
+watch him do it. Do you know, sometimes I think that he's almost clever
+enough to make Mr. MacKenzie think that the idea of his marrying Alice
+was his, Mr. MacKenzie's I mean, originally. Do you suppose?"
+
+"Bess, if you don't stop speculating about that, I don't know what I'm
+going to do to you." Nan laughed. "You know you might spoil everything
+by talking about it," she ended seriously. "For all you know the idea
+has never once entered Walker Jamieson's head."
+
+Bess hooted at this. "Don't you ever think that," she said finally,
+"because it isn't true and you know it isn't."
+
+"Say, what are you two people doing in bed at this hour?" Laura stuck
+her head in the doorway and inquired. "Don't you know that it's long
+past time to get up."
+
+"Oh, bed's so nice," Nan answered, "I just hate to get up."
+
+"Well, all I can say is," Laura finished before she closed the door,
+"the temperature downstairs is slightly chilly, and if you know what's
+good for you, you'll be out of there in a jiffy."
+
+"Right-o." Nan jumped up at this bit of information. "Hi! Laura," she
+called after her friend, "come back here a minute. Was there any mail
+this morning," she asked as Laura's red head reappeared.
+
+"Nothing for us," Laura answered, "but your cousin got something that
+made him blow up. That's why I'm telling you to hurry. I gather from
+certain orders I overheard him giving the chauffeur that he wants to
+start immediately, if not sooner, for the hacienda."
+
+"Really?" Bess asked, as she too jumped out of bed. "You mean we are
+going to leave Mexico City today."
+
+"That's the impression I'm trying hard to convey," Laura responded. "And
+I think that if you two lugs want any breakfast at all, you better get a
+hustle on." With this she closed the door definitely and disappeared.
+
+Needless to say, Nan and Bess hurried as they had not hurried for a long
+time. "Getting ready for an early morning class in the winter has
+nothing on this," Bess laughed as she tied a bright three-cornered scarf
+around her neck and pulled it in place.
+
+"I'll say it hasn't," Nan agreed, quickly tying the laces in her white
+oxfords. "A lick and a promise and we're ready to go." With this she
+bounded across the room and opened the door wide for her friend.
+
+"Such energy!" Bess exclaimed as though horrified. She was never one to
+be as exuberant as Nan. She was always more dignified and more correct.
+Nan was more natural and more full of fun. She did what she liked to do,
+for the most part, simply because it was fun. Bess was more apt to do
+things because other people did them. Nan was a leader, and Bess, the
+follower. That was, perhaps, the reason they had been friends for so
+long. They were alike in some respects, but totally different in others.
+
+Now, as they came down the broad stairway of the big hotel lobby
+together, this difference was most plain. Adair MacKenzie, pacing up and
+down the lobby even as he did in his office when he was at work, stopped
+to look at them.
+
+"She'll get by," he thought with satisfaction as he noted Nan's bright
+face and free, graceful walk. "'bout time you two made your appearance,"
+he said aloud and assumed a grim appearance. "Finished a day's work
+myself already. Guess it's another to get you people started."
+
+"Started?" Nan questioned.
+
+"Can't stay here all the time." Adair answered her question. "Anyway, I
+just got word that the housekeeper is arriving tomorrow and I've got to
+get down there and have things straightened around before she puts in an
+appearance. These ornery housekeepers, you know, have to be babied. If
+you don't, they leave every time you turn around. Someday, someone will
+invent a robot that will do the work, and then--"
+
+"You won't have a housekeeper to scold anymore, daddy," Alice
+interrupted and finished for him.
+
+"Serve her right," Adair answered as though the housekeeper would be the
+loser. "Can't see that she's any good anyway."
+
+"So we're leaving." Walker Jamieson joined the rest in the lobby. He had
+been out for an early morning walk and looked fresh and full of life as
+he came in. "Got your camera, Nan?" he turned to her when he spoke.
+
+"Upstairs," Nan answered.
+
+"Let's take a few pictures," Walker suggested. In the face of Adair's
+morning state, this seemed a daring thing to suggest, and Nan looked at
+Adair to see his reaction. He seemed not to be listening.
+
+"Run along," Alice gave Nan a little shove. "Dad's going to be busy for
+the next half hour or so, finishing up some business here, so if we
+hurry, we can take all the pictures we want to."
+
+At this Nan did go upstairs for her camera. She was anxious enough to,
+but she had hesitated because she never liked to be the one to arouse
+her cousin.
+
+Now, she almost petted the camera as she returned with it. She loved it
+and was already looking forward to the day when she could own one
+herself, for she had made up her mind, since Walker had been giving her
+instructions to learn all she possibly could about taking pictures. This
+was the reason she took pictures of everyone and everything she saw
+until Walker declared that the authorities would be questioning her on
+suspicion that she was a spy of some sort.
+
+"Me, a spy?" Nan laughed at the thought.
+
+"Well, you do look harmless," Walker agreed, "but then strange things do
+happen, especially to people who spend all their time taking pictures.
+How many have you got now?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know," Nan laughed.
+
+"Come on, 'fess up'," Walker urged.
+
+"Let's see there must be a dozen rolls upstairs," Nan admitted. "It will
+cost a fortune to develop them, won't it?"
+
+"What do you say to my buying some developer and pans and whatever else
+is needed and taking them along to the hacienda with us?" Walker asked.
+"We could develop all your films there then, for practically nothing."
+
+"I'd like that," Nan agreed enthusiastically, "but I thought you had
+some big story you were going to work on down there."
+
+"Oh, that can wait." Walker Jamieson acted as though stories did wait
+for people and laughed at himself while he did it. "Anyway it will
+only take a jiffy to teach you all I know about the photography
+business."
+
+"All right then," Nan agreed.
+
+So it came about that Nan and Walker went to the hacienda supplied with
+everything to develop pictures. How fortunate this was! But then that
+story belongs to later chapters.
+
+"Well, eagle eye, how's the camera working this morning?" Laura inquired
+as Nan and Walker went out into the lovely patio of their hotel. "Want
+to take some pictures of me draped around one of those tall white
+pillars?"
+
+"Do one of you strung from that balcony, up there, kid," Walker offered
+generously.
+
+"Thank you, kind sir," Laura replied graciously, "but since I'm going to
+need my neck for a little while longer, I must refuse--with regret of
+course."
+
+"On second thought, perhaps that is best," Walker agreed. "It would be a
+shame to spoil this lovely scene this fine morning."
+
+"It is pretty, isn't it?" Nan looked about her with great satisfaction.
+The patio or courtyard so familiar to Spain is a part of the Mexican
+scene too, and this one where Nan was taking pictures was particularly
+lovely with its gay flowers, deep green foliage, and pond all surrounded
+by the pinkish colored walls of the hotel itself.
+
+"Oh, but I hate to leave all this," Nan remarked when the pictures were
+taken and she and Laura and Walker were returning to the hotel lobby.
+
+"And so do we," the other girls chorused, as the party all came
+together.
+
+"Ah, you go, but you return." Walker sounded quite poetic as he said
+this. "And then, remember, you have no conception of the adventures the
+hacienda holds in store for you."
+
+"Have you?" The girls looked suspiciously at Walker, when Nan asked this
+question.
+
+His answer was a mysterious look.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE HACIENDA
+
+
+"That must be it over there," Walker Jamieson pointed to a low rambling
+building nestled among the hills, as the car swung around a curve in the
+road.
+
+The party had, despite sundry irritating delays, left Mexico City in the
+middle of the forenoon, and now, as evening approached they did sight
+the hacienda, their destination and proposed home for the summer.
+
+"About time," Adair MacKenzie said curtly. "Hundred miles from Mexico
+City. Humph! That's what they told me in Memphis. Hundred miles maybe,
+as the crow flies, but on this treacherous piece of bandit-infested
+highway it's at least two hundred."
+
+He looked about him, as he finished, as though he was daring someone to
+gainsay him. No one accepted the dare.
+
+"What's the matter?" he surveyed the silent group. "All worn out?"
+Again, there was no answer.
+
+"Say, you," he looked directly at Nan now, "are you backing down on
+your old cousin? Don't know what's happened," he continued. "Can't even
+get anyone to fight with me any more." He really sounded pathetic.
+
+At this, the whole group broke down in laughter.
+
+"What is this?" Adair laughed too now, but his face bore a puzzled
+expression.
+
+"Nothing, dad." Alice wiped the tears from her eyes.
+
+"Don't say nothing to me, child." Adair brandished his cane as though he
+was going to take Alice over his knee and spank her. "What were you
+trying to do," he jumped to the correct conclusion immediately, "give me
+the silent treatment?"
+
+Alice nodded her head half guiltily, half roguishly. The idea had been
+hers.
+
+"Your mother tried that years ago," Adair reminisced. "It didn't work
+then, and it's not working now. It's better to give me an opportunity to
+explode," he advised. "Volcanoes have to erupt or something terrible
+happens."
+
+"That's what I said, sir." Walker Jamieson agreed with the old man.
+
+"You mean to say, to sit right there and say," Adair exploded "that you
+had the gall to liken me to a volcano?"
+
+Walker nodded his head in agreement.
+
+"You-you-you, why, I like you!" Adair thrust out his hand and shook that
+of the young reporter. "You say what you think no matter how dire the
+consequences. Maybe you're not such a bad reporter after all." He said
+this as though he was making a great concession.
+
+"Yes, sir. No, sir." Walker hardly knew what to say in the face of all
+this unexpectedness.
+
+"Now, come on here," Adair turned around and addressed this to the
+driver. "Can't this old jallopie do more than 15 miles an hour even when
+it sees its berth in the distance." He too, pointed to the white
+buildings that stood out from the green foliage around them.
+
+"Not a bad looking place, from here." He went on contentedly. "Supposed
+to be one of the finest in the district, but you never can tell about
+such comparisons. Been fooled too many times to believe much of what I
+hear now. Take everything with a grain of salt.
+
+"Hear that, girl?" He turned to Nan. "Best always not to believe what
+you hear. Discount at least fifty percent and then draw your own
+conclusions. That right, Jamieson?"
+
+Walker nodded his head in complete agreement. It was one of the first
+lessons he had learned as a cub reporter.
+
+Now, as they talked, the car climbed a steep hill. At the top, they
+turned to the right and came upon the hacienda.
+
+"How perfectly lovely!" Alice's face was all aglow as she caught her
+first real glimpse of the place. The buildings were in Spanish style of
+a stucco material of a color bordering on the pink. There were iron
+balconies, large windows, and a courtyard or patio complete with palms,
+a fountain, and seats.
+
+The girls had thought that there could be nothing in the world so pretty
+as the patio in their hotel in Mexico City, but here already was one
+that surpassed it.
+
+"Humph!" Adair MacKenzie was as pleased as the others at his first sight
+of the place, but more cautious than they and more reluctant to let his
+real feelings be known, he let his "Humph!" be his only comment as he
+descended from the car and walked with the others through the archway
+into the courtyard.
+
+There crowds of natives awaited the arrival of the new master, and the
+overseer of the place hurried forth to greet him.
+
+"Eet ees a pleasure, senor," he said as he took Adair's hand and bowed
+deeply. The rest in the party smiled and hung back at this bit of
+Mexican courtesy. Walker grinned broadly.
+
+"You, Senorita, are next," he whispered in Alice's ear. "Are you
+prepared to have your hand kissed by a servant who would consider it an
+honor to die in your service?"
+
+"Be still," Alice murmured, and then smiled as the overseer did come
+forward, take her hand and bow deeply. "Buenos dias, senorita," he
+greeted her. "May your stay here be as pleasant to you as your honoring
+us with your presence has been to us."
+
+"Come on, now," Adair was always impatient with the elaborate courtesies
+of the south, impatient probably because he never felt at ease with
+them. "I always suspect," Alice laughed once when she and Walker were
+talking about Adair's abruptness, "that he's more than a little afraid
+that some day some one of these strangers will break down and kiss him
+on the cheek."
+
+"I wonder what he would do?" Walker paused in speculation.
+
+"You might try it yourself, sometime, and find out," Alice retorted.
+
+"Do you want to have me ousted bag and baggage from your presence, fair
+lady?" Walker questioned, but Alice never had a chance to answer, for
+just at that moment her father came upon the two and demanded all their
+attention.
+
+Alice smiled over this in recollection now as they went through the
+door of the main building and into a spacious entrance hall with its big
+winding stairway, its high-beamed ceiling, and its pretty tiled floor.
+Walker caught the smile and guessed at its origin, but he said nothing
+as they were all escorted up the broad steps to their quarters.
+
+"Ours, all ours?" Bess questioned when the Lakeview Hall girls were
+conducted to a suite of five rooms overlooking on one side the patio and
+the other, a river, broad fields, and mountains in the distance.
+
+"Si, si, Senoritas," the smiling Mexican maid, Soledad, who was to be
+theirs during their stay, hadn't understood the question, but "Si, si,"
+seemed the proper answer. Now she bustled about trying to help them
+until her curiosity as to what was going on downstairs got the better of
+her and on some slight pretext she left.
+
+"Just think of it!" Bess exclaimed when she had disappeared. "A whole
+suite of rooms of our own, a maid, and everything, oh, everything we can
+wish for. It's a magic country and Adair MacKenzie is the presiding
+genie."
+
+"Well, he is in one way," Laura admitted dryly. "When he waves his wand
+things happen."
+
+"Yes, and he goes up in smoke," Nan added.
+
+"Right," Laura laughed, "and there's no one that can do it more
+expertly."
+
+Alone now, the girls went from one to another of their rooms enjoying
+everything. Even Grace, accustomed as she was to luxury, was greatly
+impressed. She had never been in a house like this before.
+
+The rooms were big and spacious with heavy oaken furniture, thick rugs,
+tapestries, and beds so high that it was necessary to climb up a little
+ladder in order to get to them. Each room had big double windows opening
+out onto the patio.
+
+Bess stood out on hers and looked down on the courtyard below where
+maids were already busy setting a table under a tree centuries old. "Do
+they ever serenade people here," she directed her question toward those
+inside.
+
+"I hear that they do, sometimes," Nan called back. "But you have to wait
+for a clear night, with a sky that's blue as blue can be, a moon big and
+silver, shining low over these pretty buildings, and stars that are
+bigger and closer to earth than any you have ever seen."
+
+"Why, Nan Sherwood," Bess came into the room now. "Where did you learn
+all these things?"
+
+"Oh," Nan shrugged her shoulders, "this atmosphere gets into your blood
+and you just can't help yourself. There is only one regret that I have."
+
+"And that?" Bess couldn't imagine anyone having any regrets at this
+time. The world seemed just perfect to her now.
+
+"That Rhoda isn't here with us," Nan replied promptly. She had been
+thinking of Rhoda a great deal in the past few days that had been such
+fun.
+
+"I know," Grace agreed with Nan softly. "I have been thinking of her
+too. We should be hearing from her now in a few days because in those
+last letters that we sent we told her to direct all future mail to this
+place."
+
+"I wonder how you get your mail here," Laura said. "Do you suppose a
+Mexican caballero comes dashing up on a donkey, sweeps his hat in a wide
+arc toward the ground, and then deposits the bills and things as though
+they were special messages from the king of Spain?"
+
+"Oh, Laura, don't be silly," Bess was taking her romance seriously and
+didn't want it to be spoiled with laughter. "Do you suppose," she turned
+to Nan now, "that all those people that we saw down there in the
+courtyard live on this estate."
+
+"Probably those and many more," Nan assented, "but we'll have to wait
+for the tour of the estate that's been promised before we know for sure.
+And there are a million other things, at least that I want to know
+about."
+
+"Me too," Laura agreed, and the rest chimed in, for this Mexican
+hacienda was something that captured the imagination of all of them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+STUBBORN FOOLS
+
+
+"Oh, Bess, you should see yourself now," Nan laughed the next morning.
+It was early and the girls were all mounted on mules as they passed
+through the archway of the patio and out into the gardens with their
+huge palms and brilliant flowers and birds.
+
+"Feel like a fool myself," Adair grumbled as he tried to adjust his
+position on the beast he was riding. And truly, he was a ridiculous
+figure.
+
+"Well, dad," Alice pretended that she was trying to mollify him, "you
+just weren't made to ride a mule. Nor were you," she looked at Walker
+Jamieson's long dangling legs as she spoke.
+
+"Nor you either," Walker retorted laughing. "You're too little. Hey,
+you," he broke off his conversation with Alice quickly and called to
+Nan, "don't do that."
+
+"What?" Nan asked innocently.
+
+"You know. Don't look so innocent."
+
+"Nan Sherwood!" Bess guessed at what Walker was driving at. "You're not
+taking pictures of us in _these_ outfits are you?"
+
+"She not only is, but she has," Walker answered before Nan could say
+anything. "I saw her sliding that little camera back into its case."
+
+"Nan, please," Alice joined in the protest, "have mercy on us and think
+how our children and grandchildren will laugh if they ever see pictures
+of us riding mule-back. We're all perfect sights."
+
+But Nan had already taken the pictures, so the protests came too late.
+Now it was Adair MacKenzie who diverted their attention. "Get along
+there. Get a move on, you slow poke." Adair was kicking the sides of his
+mule with real force. But the mule was accustomed to such treatment and
+he only raised his ears lazily, turned his head slowly and looked at his
+rider sleepily. Then he stopped, dead in his tracks.
+
+"Get along there, get along, I say," Adair kicked the mule again. "Can't
+you understand plain English?"
+
+"Understands only Spanish, I guess, Mr. MacKenzie," Walker said. "Try
+that on him."
+
+"If he can't understand English, the best language in the world, he
+can't understand anything," Adair was as stubborn as the mule he was on,
+but for once all his railing, all his sputtering, all the ordering that
+he could do, didn't accomplish a thing. The mule just wouldn't move.
+
+"Here you," Adair called ahead to their guide who had philosophically
+shrugged his shoulders at the outburst of the new master, and sat now,
+on his mule on the trail above waiting for the party to move on. At the
+call, he ambled back to see what was wrong.
+
+"Hey, you," Adair was impatient with everyone and everything now. "Get a
+hustle on. It's today we want to see this blasted estate, today. Not
+manana."
+
+The guide understood one word, 'manana.' His face broke into a broad
+grin. "Si, si, senor. Si, Senoritas." He was more than glad that these
+strangers could speak his language. Now, he broke out into a voluble
+explanation, all in Spanish of course, as to how to treat a mule.
+
+Walker stood off laughing heartily at the whole situation. Adair
+MacKenzie did not understand one single word of what was being said to
+him, but it was coming forth so fast that he could neither interrupt nor
+stop the flow. For once in his life he looked utterly helpless.
+
+Alice was as amused as Walker. "Poor dear," she said, "to think that he
+should come all of this way to be baffled by a mule and a man whose
+philosophy says 'tomorrow', we will do it 'tomorrow'."
+
+Adair saw their smiles. It was more than he could stand, more than any
+man could stand. Awkwardly, he dismounted from his beast, walked around
+in front and shook his ever present cane at him. The beast did nothing
+but blink.
+
+"Why, wh-wh-why, you good-for-nothing, senseless, no-count, beast you,"
+he burst forth in a torrent, "if you think you can stop me, you're
+mistaken. You'll go up there if I have to carry you and you'll not take
+a picture of that either," Adair turned to Nan with this last. It was
+somehow much more satisfying to explode to Nan than to either the beast
+or the Mexican.
+
+"No, cousin," Nan answered as seriously as she could.
+
+"And don't be meek either." He brandished his cane again. "Never get
+anyplace like that." There was no satisfying the man now. Neither
+agreement nor disagreement could placate him. Nan kept still.
+
+It was Alice finally, who smoothed his ruffled feelings and got him back
+on the mule. "Now, daddy," she said quietly, "if you'll just sit quietly
+and wait, the mule will go, but you can't beat him into action the way
+you do me." Saying this she laughed up at him. He stooped over and
+kissed her.
+
+It was nice to see this father and daughter together. They seemed to
+understand one another perfectly. Adair, explode as he might, could
+never frighten Alice. She knew how soft-hearted and kind he was
+underneath all his crust. She had known from babyhood that he wouldn't
+intentionally, for all his angry outbursts, hurt anyone.
+
+Now, having smoothed his ruffled feelings some, she let Walker assist
+her back on her mule. The party moved slowly along the narrow stony
+trail while huge limbs of great palm trees waved slightly above them.
+
+Reaching the top of a high hill on the estate they looked out over the
+countryside.
+
+"What's that?" Laura, ever curious, indicated a point in the distance,
+something that showed black against the sky and that clearly had been
+built by man.
+
+Walker drew forth his field glasses and directed his glance toward the
+object. "Can't be sure," he rendered his verdict after some thought,
+"but think it might be a pyramid. There are several in the district you
+know. Perhaps the most famous of them all is the one that a hunter down
+from New York discovered three or four years ago. It's rather
+inaccessible, but such an old one that some old codger in the East with
+a lot of money on his hands donated a considerable sum to have it
+opened."
+
+"What did they find?" Nan asked.
+
+"Oh, lots of dried up bones."
+
+"That all?" Nan sounded disappointed.
+
+"Well, not exactly," Walker admitted and then stopped. He enjoyed
+teasing these youngsters.
+
+"Well, what did they find then," Nan persisted.
+
+"Some jewels. Some gold. Some exceptionally fine pottery."
+
+"And--" Nan saw that he was still holding out.
+
+"Some poison spiders that killed three members of the excavation party.
+Now you satisfied?" Walker grinned down at her.
+
+"Well, yes," Nan agreed. "But I still want to visit a pyramid sometime."
+
+"Visit those in Egypt," Walker advised. "There's nothing more
+impressive."
+
+"You been there?" Nan questioned. The path was wide enough so that they
+could ride now with their mules side by side.
+
+"Yes, years ago, with my father," Walker answered. "He had a bad case of
+the wanderlust, so whenever he could scrape a few dollars together, off
+he would go to some outlandish place."
+
+"Taking your mother with him?"
+
+"Oh, sometimes. She went up into Alaska when he went to pan gold from
+the streams. She went down into South America when he went as an
+engineer on a big industrial project. And she went when he set out for
+Russia after the revolution, but after that she gave up."
+
+"You must be like your father," Nan commented.
+
+"Oh, a little," Walker admitted. "But I haven't quite got the wanderlust
+as much as he has. He could go into raptures over anything that was far
+away from him. I've been thinking of him a lot today, riding over this
+estate. He spent some time down here in Mexico, and never grew tired of
+extolling the country. This was after my mother died.
+
+"Though we are not entering the country at all that he was fondest of,
+I've been thinking of his descriptions of it, especially after seeing
+that pyramid in the distance.
+
+"It was down in Oaxaca and was called, I believe, Tehuantepec. It took
+days to get there by horseback, according to his account, and the route
+was through tropical jungles more dense than any others in the world.
+You see my father never saw mediocre things," he explained by the way.
+
+"The City itself lay on a river by the same name in a gorgeous tropical
+setting surrounded by orchards and many gardens, all shaded by flowering
+trees and palms.
+
+"The population was largely Indian, a tribe that had its own language
+and preserved its own traditions, but it seems that above all this
+particular tribe was known for its beautiful women, more independent,
+more lovely, and more beautifully dressed than any of the women in other
+tribes.
+
+"He described them as being tall, well-built, and industrious. Their
+dresses consisted of long full skirts made of bright colors with a deep
+white flounce at the bottom, that swept the ground and covered their
+bare feet. The blouse was short and square-necked and for adornment they
+wore much jewelry, earrings and long heavy chains hung with ten and
+twenty American gold pieces.
+
+"They had a graceful carriage, walking straight and firmly with an ease
+that only those women who have been trained to carry things on their
+head have. These people, he said, carry their flowers, fruit, and foods
+to the market in painted gourd bowls perched firmly on the crowns of
+their heads.
+
+"Ah, yes, those people were perfect, more perfect my father said than
+any he had ever come across. But then, my father," Walker admitted
+boyishly, "always did tell a grand tale."
+
+"So that's why you became a newspaper man," Nan concluded.
+
+"Yes, I suppose so," Walker admitted. "You know this taste for queer
+places and queer things is often bred right in your bones."
+
+"Say, what are you two talking about back there?" Adair MacKenzie
+suddenly became conscious of the fact that two in his party were paying
+no attention whatsoever to him and his troubles with his mule. Had he
+had a horse, he would liked to have galloped back beside them, but with
+a mule there was no galloping. As it was he turned the mule's head
+sharply.
+
+It was just too much. The mule was tired of his burden anyway, so
+before anyone realized at all what was happening, Adair was deposited
+firmly on the ground and the mule, with more intelligence perhaps than
+he had been given credit for, was gazing at him soberly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+IN A PATIO
+
+
+"Are you hurt? Daddy, are you hurt?" Alice cried, but even as she did,
+tears of laughter were rolling down her cheeks. She had never in her
+life seen her father in such a ridiculous position, which was saying
+something, for Adair MacKenzie had a knack of getting himself in more
+absurd situations than anyone else in the world.
+
+"Stop your blubbering." Adair was thoroughly irritated this time. "I'll
+conquer you yet." He scolded the mule. "Think you can vanquish Adair
+MacKenzie, do you? I'll show you." But to all of this scolding that fell
+dully on the tropical verdure about them, that sounded harsh and out of
+place in the soft greenness of the scene, the mule never blinked an
+eyelash.
+
+"Daddy, are you hurt?" Alice repeated her question as she took hold of
+one arm while Walker Jamieson took the other.
+
+But their offers of assistance went unappreciated. Adair MacKenzie
+merely shook off their hands, used his own to push himself up, and then
+stood, brushing himself off while he continued his tirade.
+
+"Now, you're going home, and you're going to stay there." Adair
+spluttered off into the kind of scolding that he might have given an
+erring child. With this, he about faced and walked, leading the mule
+beside him the three miles back to the hacienda.
+
+It was a quiet party, but one full of suppressed mirth, that wound its
+way back over the path. The Lakeview Hall girls could scarcely contain
+themselves until they got in their apartments.
+
+"It was just perfect." Laura laughed heartily.
+
+"Did you see the way he looked, and the way the donkey looked?" Amelia
+asked.
+
+"They just stared at one another until I thought that cousin Adair would
+beat the beast with his cane."
+
+"I thought of that, too," Bess said. "But I guess he's too kind-hearted
+to do anything like that."
+
+Bess was right. Adair MacKenzie had never in his life made any attempt
+to hurt a dumb animal in any way until that morning when he had dug his
+heels in irritation into the mule's side. At home, he always had animals
+about him, a dog that was now well along in years, a stable full of
+horses, and yes, a mule that he once bought on the street when he saw
+its master trying to beat it into moving along.
+
+"The crust of that mule," Laura said slangily. "Did it ever do my heart
+good to see its stubbornness matched against Mr. MacKenzie's! I wonder
+what kind of a character sketch he would make of it, if he had the
+chance, that is, I mean, if the mule could understand him."
+
+"Probably, 'stubborn fool' and let it go at that," Nan answered. "Anyway
+his troubles with that mule will never be forgotten."
+
+"And 'stubborn as a mule', will always mean something to us now," Nan
+added. "Now, we've got to get ready and get downstairs. Dinner's going
+to be ready very shortly."
+
+So the girls changed their clothes, washed, combed and presented
+themselves downstairs all clean and neat.
+
+There was no one around. They walked through the great hall and out into
+the patio. Still they found no one except the servants.
+
+"I never saw so much help in all my life," Grace remarked. "Why, just
+millions of people work here. I haven't seen the same person twice at
+all."
+
+"Didn't you hear Walker Jamieson say that labor's cheap in this
+country?" Nan explained. "Everyone has one or two or three servants. But
+I wonder where cousin Adair and everyone is now."
+
+She hadn't long to wait, for just as she spoke they heard loud voices
+from the direction of the kitchen at the back, and shortly Adair, Alice
+and Walker appeared.
+
+"There that's done," Adair slapped his hands together as though he had
+just disposed of a mighty problem. "Trouble, trouble all the while," he
+looked at the girls as he spoke. "If it isn't one thing, it's another.
+One moment it's a mule and the next it's a woman." He looked utterly
+worn out, and Nan felt sorry for him.
+
+"Oh, daddy, don't take Mrs. O'Malley too seriously," Alice tried to ease
+his worry.
+
+"Too seriously! Well, I like that," Adair exclaimed. "When the best
+housekeeper in all Christendom threatens to walk out on you, tell me
+now, what are you supposed to do? Say, all right, go ahead? Just what
+would you do, now?" He looked at Alice.
+
+She hesitated.
+
+"There," he didn't give her a chance to answer, "she'd walk out on you
+before you did anything. You can't hesitate in serious matters like
+this. You have to act. But never mind," he turned to his guests, "you
+don't need to worry. I have acted. Mrs. O'Malley has promised to stay.
+The Chinese cook has promised to stay. Everyone's staying. There'll be
+no deserting the ship on this trip."
+
+"That's fine, daddy," Alice complimented him. "And now when do we have
+dinner?"
+
+"Dinner? Where's dinner?" Adair was off again. He picked up a bell and
+rang it forcefully. Everyone, except the famous Mrs. O'Malley and the
+Chinese cook came running. People came out of doors, in through the
+arches of the patio, and stuck their heads out from windows. Everyone
+thought that there was something radically wrong. When they saw that it
+was just the American again, they disappeared as quickly as they came.
+
+The old women shook their heads. Would he never learn, they wondered,
+that there was no necessity to rush anything, that if you let things
+just go their own quiet, placid way, they would eventually work
+themselves out. They couldn't understand this man who had come to them
+as their master. Already, thanks to the guide of the morning, legends
+about him and his wrath were spreading around the place. The wireless
+that civilization knows is fast, but the grapevine among the Mexican
+Indians was even more effective.
+
+When he saw the commotion he had caused, Adair MacKenzie sat down, and
+shortly dinner appeared, as it would have appeared even though he had
+done nothing.
+
+The dinner was good and the cool fruit juices that followed it were
+good. And everyone sat, as long as the warmth of the day permitted, in
+the patio under the tropical sky and talked some, sat silent more, for
+it was all very peaceful.
+
+"So you're not going to work on that smuggling story after all?" Adair
+MacKenzie asked Walker just before they all got up to go in.
+
+"Well, I wouldn't say that," Walker answered carefully. "Feel the need
+of a little rest now and I like this place and I like the people and
+it's hard to tear myself away."
+
+"We thank you, don't we?" Adair took his daughter's hand in his. He
+felt vaguely that there was something more serious in all of this than
+appeared on the surface, but just now he was too tired to question. He
+squeezed Alice's hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+STOLEN!
+
+
+"Nan, it's a letter from Rhoda," Bess repeated the information twice
+before she got any response at all, and then it was only a grunt. It was
+the morning after the famous mule-back excursion, and Nan was in her
+room alone until Bess's entrance.
+
+"Whatever are you doing?" Bess asked when she saw that Nan, strangely
+enough, didn't seem to be interested in her bit of information.
+
+"Oh, Bess, I can't find it anyplace," Nan looked as though the world had
+come to an end. She had all that she could do to keep from crying.
+
+"Find what?"
+
+"Oh, my ring. You know the one I mean, the one old Mr. Blake gave me in
+Scotland last summer. He said it was a family heirloom and that I should
+keep it as long as I lived and then see that it was passed on down to my
+children. Now, it's gone and I'm sure I left it in this room when we
+went away yesterday."
+
+"Are you sure, Nan?" Bess looked worried too, now. The ring was a
+lovely thing with the bluest of blue sapphires in an old-fashioned gold
+setting. Bess had coveted it herself, and often wanted to wear it. But
+she respected Nan's sentiment about the bit of jewelry enough to have
+not even asked to try it on.
+
+Now it was gone!
+
+"When did you wear it last?"
+
+"Bess, I had it on yesterday morning before we went on that trip by
+muleback and I took it off because I was afraid I would lose it. I left
+it in this box I'm sure, and it isn't here now. I've looked through it a
+dozen times." As she finished, she proffered the box to Bess, who took
+it, opened it up, and carefully looked through the trinkets contained
+therein. The ring wasn't there.
+
+"Have you told anybody, yet?" Bess questioned.
+
+"No, but if it doesn't come to light pretty soon, I'm going to tell
+cousin Adair. I'm almost afraid to do that, because he values the ring
+almost as much as I. He saw it once, he said, when he was in Scotland,
+and he was proud to think that it came to me. Now I've lost it, and I'm
+sure he'll think that I've been very careless."
+
+"It doesn't matter what he thinks," Bess said firmly. "You'd better
+tell him right away. If someone has stolen it, he's the only one that
+can find the culprit. Come on, let's go downstairs now. Or do you want
+me to hunt first?"
+
+"Yes, do that." Nan did dread telling Adair MacKenzie of her loss.
+
+Bess looked thoroughly, but nowhere could she find the ring.
+
+So together, the two girls went down the stairs, Bess this time in the
+role of comforter.
+
+They found Adair out in the gardens talking as best he could with an old
+gardener who knew at least a few words of English. Adair looked up at
+their entrance.
+
+"So you like flowers, too," he greeted them. Nan nodded her head, and
+then couldn't say anything for a few minutes.
+
+"Why, what's the matter, Nancy child," Adair was all sympathy as he
+noted the worried look on the girl's face. "Nothing serious, I hope."
+
+"I'm afraid it is," Nan answered. "You know my ring--"
+
+"The sapphire ring that you brought home from Scotland?" Adair said.
+
+"Yes," Nan nodded her head to indicate that he was right. "It's
+missing."
+
+"What do you mean, missing?" Adair asked. "Have you lost it?"
+
+"No, it was in my room, and it's gone now." Nan said this very
+positively.
+
+"Gone, gone where?" Adair flared up as usual.
+
+"That's what I don't know," Nan was having a difficult time being
+patient. "I wish I did."
+
+"You think it's stolen." Adair now had the girls by the arm and was
+taking them back to the hacienda.
+
+"I don't like to say that," Nan hedged.
+
+"If that's what happened, speak up." Adair wanted to get to the bottom
+of this right away and although he was very fond of Nan he wasn't going
+to spare her or her feelings any now. The ring, he felt, was a personal
+loss to him too and as he went into the house, he was determined to find
+it.
+
+First he quizzed all the girls to find out, if by chance, they knew of
+anything that would indicate that Nan was mistaken. They didn't. No one
+had seen her wearing it after the time at which she said she had put it
+away.
+
+Then he quizzed all of the upstairs' servants. This was done with
+Walker's help, since he was the only one in the crowd that knew any
+Spanish at all. Again, there was no light cast on the mystery.
+
+He called in all the rest of the house servants, with no results. Then
+he blustered and fumed and threatened, but this to no avail.
+
+Finally, with one last grand threat that he would find out who the
+culprit was in spite of everybody, he sent everyone from the room.
+
+The girls went up to their quarters together.
+
+"Now, who do you suppose could have done anything like that?" Bess
+wondered as they all sat around listlessly and hopelessly, for there was
+nothing that they could do. "Do you suspect anyone, Nan?"
+
+"No one in this whole wide world." Nan answered wholeheartedly. "The
+servants since we have been here have all been just as nice as they
+could be. I don't think there is a one of them that would stoop to
+anything like that."
+
+"It doesn't seem possible," soft-spoken Grace agreed, "but then someone
+has taken it. We're sure of that."
+
+"As sure as we are of anything," Nan said.
+
+"Is it very valuable, Nan?" Amelia asked.
+
+"Oh, I don't know that," Nan answered. "I think, however, that the value
+is mostly sentimental. It was originally given to one of the Blakes as a
+reward by the king. It was supposed then to have the power to bring the
+king's soldiers to the help of the person wearing it, in whatever
+trouble he might be.
+
+"There is a story that once, someone who owned it committed treason and
+was about to be beheaded when he brought forth the ring. It saved him,
+even then, and instead of killing him they banished him to another
+country for ten years. Ordinarily, it would have been death or a life
+banishment, but the ring's power was mighty."
+
+"Maybe then," Laura suggested, "if you or your cousin will offer a
+reward, the ring will turn up. The person that stole it probably thought
+that it was valuable."
+
+"I thought of that," Nan answered, "but cousin Adair says 'no,' that he
+will get the ring back without any such monkey business. So I guess
+we'll just have to leave it up to him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+BESS HAS SUSPICIONS
+
+
+They did leave it up to Adair MacKenzie, and for several days nothing
+happened. The house was like a morgue, for everyone suspected everyone
+else and the servants were all under suspicion.
+
+Finally, Nan couldn't stand it any longer, and decided to do a little
+investigating on her own. It was Bess who put her on the track.
+
+"I don't trust Chinamen," Bess had confided and then felt foolish
+immediately afterward, for if there was one thing that Nan resented
+above all others, it was race prejudice in any form.
+
+"Oh, Bess, don't be silly," Nan dismissed the statement shortly.
+
+"But I don't," Bess persisted.
+
+"Elizabeth Harley," Nan exclaimed, "if you make that remark again, I'll
+never speak to you as long as I live." Nan was cross and irritable these
+days, because nothing seemed to be going right and she felt that if she
+hadn't said anything about the ring in the first place, everyone would
+be enjoying themselves.
+
+"But Nan," Bess put her arm around her friend. "I don't mean it all the
+way you think. I haven't liked the cook ever since that first day when
+he had a fight with Mrs. O'Malley and she's such a dear too."
+
+"Oh, but Bess, you know how that happened," Nan protested. "Mrs.
+O'Malley went into the kitchen that he had run for some twenty years and
+tried to tell him what to do. He just wouldn't stand for it."
+
+"Even then, I don't like him." Bess persisted. "He's been horrid and
+mean to all of us ever since we've been here. I think he stole your
+ring, and if you don't do something about it, I'm going to tell Mr.
+MacKenzie myself."
+
+"See here, Bess," Nan was very serious now. "If you don't keep quiet
+about what you have just been saying to me, I'm going to be very angry.
+I don't want suspicions being cast on people who haven't done anything,
+and I don't think he has, honestly."
+
+Bess paused and thought before she said anything further.
+
+"And Bess," Nan said more softly now, "don't resent the way I've talked
+to you these days. I feel very troubled."
+
+Bess felt badly too now. It wasn't very often that Nan let her temper
+get away with her, and since she had, Bess thought, she must be more
+troubled than any of us realize. So the subject was dropped between the
+two friends.
+
+But Bess's remarks had done their work. When Nan was alone, the thought
+of what Bess had said, came back to her again and again. She dismissed
+it impatiently at first, but then little things about the cook began to
+come to her attention constantly.
+
+Finally she determined to do something about it all and so, one day when
+she was alone, she went back to the kitchen.
+
+She was just about to open the door and go through when she heard loud
+voices.
+
+"I tell you it's not enough," one, an American voice was saying.
+
+"Alle samee, it's all I can get." The voice of the cook came to her in
+reply.
+
+Nan stopped, startled. This, why, this verified Bess's suspicions. Nan
+stood back and listened further, but heard nothing. She had come in on
+the end of the argument. Shortly, she heard a door slam on the other
+side of the kitchen, and then there were no more sounds at all.
+
+She waited for some time, and then cautiously opened the door and went
+in.
+
+Over in one corner, the cook, alone, was busy preparing the evening
+meal. He looked up as the girl entered, and was on the point of
+reprimanding her for invading his quarters when he stopped, recognizing
+her. He waited then, resentfully, for her to speak.
+
+Nan was equally wary however, so there was a moment of embarrassed
+silence, before either said anything. Then, as they stood waiting, a
+call outside distracted their attention.
+
+The cook answered it, and when he returned, they both felt more at ease.
+He brought her a stool to sit on and offered her some of his choice
+cookies, so before long they were talking to one another. They talked
+about little things, and Nan went away without mentioning the ring or
+the conversation she had heard at all.
+
+But she went back the next day. Following this procedure it wasn't long
+before the cook poured out his whole sorry tale.
+
+Nan later, when she got Walker Jamieson alone, told it and swore him to
+secrecy.
+
+"Then he took the ring," Walker concluded, when the story had all been
+told.
+
+"He hasn't said so," Nan was being very careful that the facts were all
+understood as they were, not as other people might imagine them to be.
+
+"No, not in so many words," Walker agreed, "but then, he did. You and I
+know that, and it's not necessary to tell anyone at all anything about
+this yet. It's a bigger story than you realize," he ended, "and it has
+many, many more angles than this particular one. Let me work on it
+awhile without any interference."
+
+Nan agreed to this, and so the two conspirators parted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+SERENADERS
+
+
+"What's going on downstairs?" Laura came into Nan's room quietly. "Of
+course, it's none of my business," she went on, "but everything seems to
+be in an uproar. Your cousin is ranting around as I've never seen him
+rant before, and Walker Jamieson is there and he looks as though
+everything is wrong with the world."
+
+"Why, I don't know," Nan looked up from the diary she was writing, a
+diary in which she kept a day by day account of her trip. But she looked
+worried. Had Walker, after all, told the story that they had promised to
+keep a secret and was her cousin insisting on getting to the bottom of
+everything right away?
+
+"What were they talking about?" she asked Laura.
+
+"I don't know," Laura answered. "When I came through the room, they
+stopped, and seemed to be waiting until I got out, before continuing. I
+got the point and hurried. I was only after a magazine that I had left
+in the room, anyway. But even for the short time I was in there, the air
+seemed so heavy with emotion that you could cut it."
+
+"And you didn't hear anything?" Nan repeated the thought of her former
+question.
+
+"I said, 'no'." Laura insisted. "Why, what did you expect me to hear?"
+She looked at her friend intently. As Bess often did in similar
+circumstances, Laura now felt that Nan knew much more about what was
+going on downstairs than she wanted to reveal.
+
+"Oh, nothing," Nan managed to say this airily, as though she truly had
+had nothing in view when she asked the question. So saying, she screwed
+the top on her fountain pen, put her diary away, and stamped a letter
+she had just written home. With these little things done, she turned
+again to Laura, "Do you know that Grace's brother and his friends are
+expected here at the hacienda tomorrow?" she asked.
+
+"Are they? Tomorrow?" Laura had been out in the courtyard watching some
+Mexican youngsters at play when Grace had told Nan. Now, the information
+was a surprise to her. "What's been planned? How many will there be? How
+long will they stay?" The questions rolled off her tongue one after the
+other, until Nan stopped her.
+
+"Oh, Laura," she said, "one at a time, please. We've not planned
+anything definite yet and we don't know how many nor how long, but we're
+hoping that they can stay at least a week. Isn't it all going to be
+fun!"
+
+"Yes," Laura was almost as excited as Nan. "It's going to be grand to
+have them all here. Now, let's go and get the other girls and plan
+something."
+
+But before they could get out of the room, the others came bursting in.
+"Oh, do you know," Bess got the words out first, "Walter and his friends
+probably will arrive tonight." Amelia and Grace nodded their heads in
+unison.
+
+"How do you know?" Nan asked.
+
+"Here's a telegram." Grace waved it in the air. "It says," she read,
+"'Arriving tonight. Six of us. Anxious to see you. Walter.' I wonder
+when they'll get here." Saying this, she went over to the windows and
+looked down into the courtyard as though she expected them at once. Then
+she turned toward the others again, "How good it's going to be!" she
+exclaimed. "I've been a little lonesome for someone from home ever since
+Rhoda's mother became so ill."
+
+"Have you, Gracie?" Nan put her arm affectionately around the more
+timid girl's shoulder. "I guess we all have been. It will be good to see
+Walter because he has seen all our parents since we left. Now let's go
+downstairs and tell cousin Adair."
+
+But the girls lingered a little while longer, talking and planning. "It
+must have been fate that kept us there," Laura laughed afterwards, for
+one of the very nicest things of all their trip happened just before
+they departed.
+
+It was Nan who heard it first, that faint far-away sound of the
+strumming of a guitar. "Sh! Quiet!" she broke in on the hubbub in the
+room. "What's that I hear?" They all listened for a second.
+
+"Oh, nothing." Laura waved the question aside, "and do you think we can
+get Mr. MacKenzie to go with us again on a mule ride over the estate?"
+she went on with the planning of entertainment for the boys.
+
+"It is too something," Nan insisted, for she heard again the sound of
+music. "Listen!"
+
+"Oh, Nan, you're hearing things," Laura perhaps was more impatient than
+any of the others, for she was intrigued with the idea of asking Adair
+to get on a mule again, and she wanted to talk about it.
+
+"She isn't either." Bess heard the strains now. "I hear something too."
+
+"Come--oh, look!" Nan was at a balcony window beckoning the others
+eagerly. They all clustered round her, and there in the moonlit
+courtyard below them Walter and his friends were serenading the girls.
+When they all appeared, the music grew louder, stronger, and the boys
+harmonized their voices as they sang for the second time,
+
+  "Soft o'er the fountain,
+      Ling'ring falls the southern moon;
+  Far o'er the mountain,
+      Breaks the day too soon!
+
+  In thy dark eyes' splendor,
+      Where the warm light loves to dwell,
+  Weary looks, yet tender,
+      Speak their fond fare-well.
+  Nita! Juanita!--"
+
+As they swung into the chorus, the girls, laughing but enjoying it all
+thoroughly, pulled flowers that they had picked that day from the garden
+from their dresses and threw them down. The chorus ended, and the girls
+clapped. The boys laughed up at them, and others in the courtyard who
+had been attracted by the music called for more.
+
+It was all very gay and happy. The boys did sing an encore, and then as
+Alice and Adair came out on the veranda they broke off, and Walter went
+up the steps and introduced himself and his friends. The girls came down
+and they all had a merry evening together, talking over the million and
+one things that had been happening.
+
+It was not until the afternoon of the next day, that Nan and Walter had
+a moment alone together. Then she told him the story of her missing
+ring.
+
+"Then the cook didn't actually tell you that he took it?" Walter asked
+at the end.
+
+"No, but he implied it," Nan answered, "and I'm as sure he did as I am
+certain that he is not to be blamed."
+
+Walter couldn't restrain the smile that came at this. Nan always
+trusted people, always felt that there was good in everyone. This was
+one of the things that first attracted Walter to her. Somehow, she,
+unlike many others her own age, never found enjoyment in criticising
+others. She seemed to understand their faults and to be able to explain
+them sympathetically no matter what they were. Now, in talking of the
+man whom she felt sure had stolen her ring, she honestly believed that,
+in doing so, he had been influenced by conditions over which he had no
+control. She felt sorry for him, and didn't want to do him any injury.
+This was one of the big reasons why she had pledged Walker Jamieson to
+secrecy.
+
+"And what does Mr. MacKenzie think of all of this?" Walter asked just
+before Nan left him to dress for dinner.
+
+"Oh, he doesn't know anything about it at all," Nan hastened to explain,
+"and I don't want you to say a thing. This is all a secret
+until--until--until--"
+
+"Until what?" Walter looked at the young girl curiously, as she stopped
+midway in her sentence.
+
+"Until it's solved," Nan smiled at her friend, and then refused to
+explain further.
+
+"Nancy Sherwood," Walter spoke seriously now, "if you're not careful,
+you're going to get yourself all involved in a plot that might hurt you.
+Come, be sensible for once. Either forget the ring entirely, or tell
+your cousin all that you know about it. Promise?"
+
+Nan shook her head. She couldn't tell Walter that she and Walker had
+already made certain promises about the ring and the Chinaman's part in
+its disappearance. She couldn't tell him that the reporter sensed a big
+story and asked her to protect the details until he had arrived at a
+solution. She couldn't tell him, but she wanted to.
+
+Now it was Grace who saved what otherwise might have been an
+embarrassing situation. She came out into the corner of the patio where
+Nan and Walter were standing.
+
+"Nan," she asked, "did you know that Walker Jamieson left the hacienda
+early this afternoon and that he took his bags with him?"
+
+"Left the hacienda!" Nan exclaimed, "are you sure, Grace?"
+
+"As sure as I am of anything," Grace replied, "and if you don't believe
+me you can either wait to see if he appears at dinner, or you can go in
+right now and ask Bess."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+WALKER DEPARTS
+
+
+However, it was Bess who sought Nan out, and that before Grace had
+barely had time to finish divulging her bit of news.
+
+"What did I tell you?" Bess greeted Nan as soon as she could find her.
+
+"What do you mean?" Nan retorted.
+
+"I mean that talk we had some time ago up in your room."
+
+"What talk?" Nan pretended to have forgotten.
+
+"You know as well as I," Bess responded impatiently. "I mean that talk
+about Walker and Alice. It was nice, but it's all over now."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that Walker talked to your cousin sometime yesterday, that your
+cousin was simply furious, and that Walker Jamieson has left, never to
+return!"
+
+"Oh, Bess, don't get romantic about it," Nan said abruptly. "Now get
+your breath and tell me actually what you know."
+
+"I have," Bess insisted. "Walker wanted to marry Alice and Adair
+MacKenzie said 'no!' Walker left without saying goodby to anyone and
+nobody knows when he is going to return if at all. Alice has gone to her
+room, and everybody in the house is all broken up, except the old
+housekeeper. All she does is shake her head and say 'You just wait. This
+will all be all right in the end. Young people are too hasty.'
+
+"Imagine that!" Bess ran on indignantly. "She says young people are too
+hasty, when all the trouble here is caused by Mr. MacKenzie and he
+certainly isn't young!"
+
+"Elizabeth Harley, you be careful!" Nan warned her friend. "You don't
+know for sure whether what you are saying is true or not. You'll have
+everybody in trouble if you don't watch out."
+
+"But Nan, I could just cry," Bess protested. "He is such a nice person
+and so is she. And now it's all spoiled."
+
+"Hush, Bess," Nan spoke more softly now. Then she looked over at Walter
+as though begging him to leave them for a few moments which he did.
+
+"Now, see here," she spoke sternly to Bess when he disappeared. "If
+there is anything at all in what you say, and I doubt it, there is
+nothing in the world to be gained by crying and talking and
+interfering."
+
+"I'm not interfering!" Bess was indignant.
+
+"Well, then talking about it," Nan corrected herself. "We can't do
+anything about it except sit around and wait. I don't believe that
+Walker has gone away for the reason you say he has at all, and if he
+has, he'll be back."
+
+"Well, if he hasn't gone away for that reason, why has he gone at all?"
+Bess demanded.
+
+"You can't tell," Nan answered lamely. Why was it, she thought, that she
+was forever running into the secret that she had promised Walker she
+would keep. She had done the same thing ten minutes ago with Walter. Now
+she was doing it with her best friend. "You've just got to wait and find
+out," she added.
+
+"Come on, Bess," she made a decided effort to change the subject, "let's
+go in and get the camera. I want to take some pictures of the boys.
+Anyway we are neglecting them by staying out here like this."
+
+"Neglecting them!" Bess exclaimed. "They've done nothing all day but sit
+around and loaf. They're a lazy bunch, and we all had such high hopes."
+She let her sentence die away tragically.
+
+"Why," she wrinkled up her nose at Nan, as she spoke, "are boys in
+general so dumb? Oh, Walter's all right, but all the rest are just like
+bumps on a log."
+
+"No, they aren't," Nan denied. "Don't you remember last night when they
+were all out there below our balconies? You didn't think they were bumps
+on a log then, did you?"
+
+Bess shook her head and her eyes shone. "No, that was grand," she said.
+"But today, they just don't do anything."
+
+"Maybe they think that we're neglecting them?" Nan suggested.
+
+"Well, let them," Bess flounced away from Nan and into the house.
+
+Nan looked bewilderedly after her. "What can be wrong with Bess," she
+asked herself and then did go after her camera. If Bess didn't want any
+pictures of the visitors, she did.
+
+A few hours later, after an afternoon siesta and a long cool refreshing
+drink of fruit juices beneath the palms of the courtyard, everyone felt
+better. Alice's eyes were red and swollen with crying, but she made an
+appearance. Adair MacKenzie was even more terse than usual, but he was
+kinder too. And Bess who had but three hours before found the boys so
+disagreeable now was surrounded by them. She was telling them in low
+tones of the donkey episode of the day before.
+
+It was all very cheerful and pleasant despite the emptiness that was
+felt because of Walker's absence. However, no one mentioned his name. In
+fact, he might have remained away from the hacienda, away from Alice,
+indefinitely, if it hadn't been for Adair himself, Adair and Nan.
+
+"Well, well, girls, how do you like your new home now?" Adair MacKenzie
+was feeling somewhat talkative after his long refreshing drink of
+loganberry juice. "A pretty nice place, isn't it?" He looked about
+himself with a satisfied sort of appreciation. Adair MacKenzie for all
+of his Scotch blood and his leanings toward economy really liked the
+good things of life. This southern home pleased him.
+
+"It's grand, Cousin Adair," Nan answered for them all. "Perfectly grand.
+There's only one thing that's lacking."
+
+"And that?"
+
+"We're missing Rhoda. She was so excited about the plans to come down
+here that she could hardly contain herself, and now we won't see her all
+summer. We won't see her until we get back to school in the fall."
+
+"Who said you wouldn't?" Adair asked suddenly. "Don't jump to
+conclusions like that. Just to show you how wrong you are--you're
+leaving tomorrow morning by plane to visit with this Hammond girl over
+the week end, and then if it's at all possible, she is to come back with
+you to stay here for a week or two. Now, how's that?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+NAN'S BIG ADVENTURE
+
+
+Nan couldn't answer for a moment, then unexpectedly, even to herself,
+she threw her arms around Adair MacKenzie's neck and kissed him.
+
+"Tut! Tut!" he straightened his necktie and adjusted the soft white
+collar of his shirt after her hug. "Can't stand for this. What's the
+matter? Aren't you pleased?"
+
+"Oh, dear!" Nan's face was flushed and her eyes bright as she answered.
+"There was never in all this wide world a nicer cousin than you are
+being to me."
+
+"Wait a second," Adair was immensely pleased at this outburst. "What
+will these young men all think of you? Want to make them jealous of an
+old codger like me? Better watch out."
+
+Nan looked at the boys sitting around the ground and in the big
+comfortable chairs and blushed furiously. She had completely forgotten,
+at the announcement of her proposed journey that anyone else was present
+beside the girls whom she knew so well.
+
+But her embarrassment couldn't last long in the face of the excitement.
+
+Nan was going for Rhoda! Nan was going by plane to get Rhoda and bring
+her back. Nan was going to start the next morning and by Monday she
+would be back, having flown half the length of Mexico to the border and
+then from there to Rose Ranch.
+
+It was exciting to think of, but then a thousand, a million times more
+exciting in reality, for all sorts of unexpected things were to come
+about as the result of that ride.
+
+Now, Nan could scarcely contain herself as she sat in the group and
+listened to the little everyday things they were talking about. The only
+thing that really penetrated her consciousness was the fact that she was
+leaving and that when she returned Walter and his friends would have
+left.
+
+Adair brought this fact to life. In his free open, hospitable style, he
+tried to induce the youngsters to linger. He liked them, liked the
+excitement they had caused, for in spite of Bess's complaint to Nan that
+they were a dull lot, they kept things moving from the moment they
+serenaded their hostesses until they left.
+
+Through the days there had been hikes, parties, a visit into the
+interior by auto, and an excursion to a small village where the Indians
+were celebrating a native holiday. They had seen them dressed in native
+dress, dancing native dances with all the abandon of a people freed from
+the daily routine, and they had witnessed one of their elaborate
+religious rites in which the ritual of the church and the ritual of
+pagan ancestors who had worshipped the Sun God were mingled with one
+another to result in a queer worship that was unlike anything any place
+else in the world.
+
+Then they all went to a moving picture show where Roberta Taylor, the
+pretty little American actress whom everybody adored spoke in Spanish.
+How queer that seemed! They had all seen the film--it was an old one--in
+a theatre in Chicago, but how different it seemed now with all the
+conversation translated into Spanish. They giggled when the heroine
+looked up at her tall American hero and murmured "Senor, Senor," and
+when he greeted her with "Buenos Dias" and other common Spanish phrases.
+It was all very charming and amusing and everyone had a grand time.
+
+But now Nan was going to leave and the boys were going to leave. The
+evening, in spite of the excitement about Nan's proposed journey, turned
+a little sad when they all gathered around Walter and his guitar to sing
+as they had each night since he arrived. The songs they sang were all
+sad little songs.
+
+By next morning all this was forgotten. The girls were all thrilled
+over Rhoda's coming. They had telegraphed to tell her what was happening
+and she had wired back that her mother was well enough now so that she
+could carry out the plans that Adair MacKenzie had made with such
+enjoyment, for he did enjoy doing things for other people. He liked
+being Santa Claus the year round.
+
+So, by ten o'clock the next day a whole caravan drew up to the airport
+and Walter, his friends, Bess, Laura, Grace, Amelia, Adair and Alice saw
+Nan off. How exciting it was, getting the ticket, standing by while the
+plane's motors were warmed up, and then, when the passengers started to
+get in, taking pictures of the plane, of the people around it, and of
+the crew.
+
+Finally, she was off and Nan was soaring over the heads of all her
+friends. She looked out the window and waved a big white handkerchief,
+but already she seemed part of the clouds and those below, waving too,
+couldn't see her.
+
+How much fun it was climbing, climbing, climbing. Nan wasn't worried at
+all. She looked out. Around her were clouds and beneath her the
+mountains of Mexico were stretched out. She was higher than the
+mountains! Her spirits soared with the thought and she looked around at
+her fellow passengers, two men who were in earnest conversation, a woman
+with a small child beside her, and another man who seemed to be alone.
+
+None of them looked particularly interesting and Nan returned to her
+watching of the landscape, so when, after they had traveled for some
+time, there was a commotion up in the pilot's cabin and the one traveler
+who seemed alone stood up and quietly ordered everyone to put his hands
+up, Nan was taken completely by surprise.
+
+"Hands up, there, you!" The remark was addressed to Nan when she failed
+to comply with the first request. She put her hands up. The woman with
+the baby screamed. The baby cried. Nan put her hands down and moved to
+help the two.
+
+"Put your hands up there!" the order came again in good American
+diction. Nan did. The voice meant business.
+
+Now the plane began to rock. It slowed down some and glided down a hill
+of air to taxi across a field in a place far removed from civilization.
+
+Now, for the first time, Nan was really frightened. Somehow, up in the
+air, she hadn't been very scared. It had all happened too suddenly. Now,
+with her feet on the ground, however, she felt as though she was going
+to faint. She clenched her fists at her side, gritted her teeth, and
+stood waiting for the next move.
+
+It came, quickly. Everyone was ordered to surrender his pass to cross
+the border, told to remove his luggage, and then together, they were
+hurried over the rough ground to a cabin and locked in.
+
+Shortly, they heard the motors of the great plane again and then the
+drone as it swung around over head and went off in the direction it was
+headed for before anything happened--the United States.
+
+The passengers, they were only Nan and the woman with the baby--the men
+had all been involved in the plot--looked at one another in
+consternation. What had happened? Were they being kidnapped and why? How
+long would they be left in this deserted spot?
+
+They tried the doors and the windows. Someone outside yelled a warning
+to them. They paced the floor and the baby cried a pathetic little cry.
+They tried to help it, but still it cried, a baffled little cry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+HAPPILY EVER AFTER!
+
+
+"Passenger plane X 52 headed toward the border missing. Nan Sherwood--"
+
+Walker Jamieson in a newspaper office in Mexico City got no further as
+the news came over the wire. He grabbed a phone, asked for long
+distance, and called the hacienda.
+
+Yes, they had received the news. No, they didn't know anything beyond
+what Walker did. Nan was traveling alone. Walker breathed a deep sigh of
+relief at this. He had been afraid that Alice was with her.
+
+It was all a complete mystery. Couldn't Walker do something? This plea
+came from Alice herself and it wrung his heart.
+
+"I'll try." These were the words with which he hung up and somehow they
+comforted the young woman on the phone. She turned to her father and
+said simply, "It was Walker. He'll help."
+
+And Walker did. While government planes swooped back and forth again
+and again across the country looking for a wrecked plane, Walker was
+busy working out his own theories.
+
+"I tell you," he was calling his New York editor, "there's a whale of a
+good story here, one that's bigger than anyone has guessed. This is no
+mere plane accident.
+
+"How do I know? Oh, just smart that way. Can't tell you more now. Want
+to go through with it? It will cost plenty of dough. Need a plane and a
+couple of darn good pilots.
+
+"Sky's the limit, you say? Okey-doke." With this he slammed the receiver
+down and was off.
+
+He went to the United States Embassy, called the hacienda again, hired a
+plane and zoomed off in the direction X52 was headed for when it
+disappeared.
+
+For hours he and his pilot combed the district and found nothing that
+satisfied Walker. Then, along about nightfall a lone shack in a deserted
+district attracted his attention. The plane dropped down.
+
+Nan heard it, from her shack prison she heard it and thought that it
+was the X52 returning. While she waited, she didn't know what she wanted
+the more--to have the plane come or have it stay away. If it stayed
+away, she thought, that somehow, some way they could get out of the
+cabin, but to what end she couldn't imagine. In the meantime, she was
+concerned over the child and the fear that it would starve.
+
+She waited tensely as the motor died, as she heard footsteps approaching
+the cabin.
+
+A voice called.
+
+Where had she heard it before? Could it possibly be--Walker! Was she
+dreaming? She heard it again. This time she answered and a great flood
+of relief came over her. It was he! She ran to the door and shook it,
+although she had done it a dozen times before during the day and nothing
+had happened. Because Walker was here now, because there was someone out
+there that she knew, she felt that almost anything might come true. She
+pushed and shouted and beat upon the door.
+
+Walker called to her again. This time she answered. His relief was as
+great as hers. She was alive. His hunch was right! He too beat upon the
+door with all his strength, pulled and pushed, but to no avail. Then he
+and the pilots got a beam and rammed it into the unresisting blockade.
+After what seemed hours, the door moved on its hinges, then gave way and
+Walker found Nan, the pluckiest little girl in the world he said later,
+unharmed by her experience.
+
+"But Mr. Jamieson," Nan questioned him as the plane he had brought took
+to the air with the pilots and the other prisoners, the woman and child,
+"how did you guess what had happened?"
+
+He didn't hear her at first. He was already busy planning the release on
+the tale he had pieced together.
+
+The lead--"Plucky Nan Sherwood Found Alive in Deserted Shack in
+Wilderness. Gang of smugglers exposed in daring attempt to take plane
+load of Chinese across the border."
+
+Sounded good, he was thinking, but they really hadn't been exposed as
+yet. He knew how they worked, but he didn't know who they were. He
+turned now to Nan to see if he could find a clue.
+
+"What did the men who imprisoned you look like?" he questioned her.
+
+Nan described them briefly.
+
+"Did you hear or see anyone besides the people you saw in the plane?" he
+questioned.
+
+Nan hadn't, but as he talked she had an inspiration. "Oh, I know, maybe
+I can help you!" she exclaimed. Then she told him of the pictures she
+had snapped before boarding the transport.
+
+The rest of the plane ride was a dash toward a place where the pictures
+could be developed. One by one they were brought forth from the
+developing fluid, until it seemed as though the inspiration had not been
+such a fortunate one after all. But Walker didn't give up. It was the
+last one that brought the desired results.
+
+"Why, I know that man." Walker Jamieson summoned forth from his long
+experience as a newspaperman, the recollection of a story about an
+aviator who had been discharged from the airplane mail service because
+of irregularities. Here was a picture of the man.
+
+Nan took it up and studied it. "Why, I know him too!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Of course you do," Walker agreed. "He was one of the men who held up
+the plane, wasn't he?"
+
+"Yes, and not only that," Nan now divulged a surprising bit of
+information, "he was present at the bull fight in Mexico City a few days
+ago."
+
+"What do you mean?" Walker looked at her intently.
+
+"He was there with a former schoolmate, a Linda Riggs, and he was
+introduced to Cousin Adair by her."
+
+"His name?"
+
+Nan searched back in her memory before she answered. "Arthur--"
+
+"Howard?" Walker supplied the name.
+
+"That's right." Nan was smiling now, thinking of Bess's glee when she
+found out what a position Linda would be in when this story came out.
+
+"So, you perhaps can even locate him," Walker looked at the amazing
+youngster beside him.
+
+"Linda is staying--oh, I don't know." Nan looked disappointed as she
+remembered that they hadn't exchanged addresses with the girl. But it
+didn't matter, before the night was over, Linda Riggs, thoroughly
+frightened because she had unwittingly entertained and been entertained
+by an international crook, revealed all she knew about his whereabouts.
+And before the morning run of the great metropolitan daily that Walker
+was associated with had gone to press, the story was completed.
+
+Arthur Howard using visitors' passes stolen at the border and altered to
+suit his needs passed back and forth freely between the United States
+and Mexico. He was engaged in smuggling Chinese across and in this
+particularly daring attempt to finish up a big job had, after he held up
+the plane on which Nan had been a passenger, loaded it heavily with men
+who had paid high prices to make the trip.
+
+The Chinese cook at the hacienda had been involved because he had paid a
+high price to try to get a relative of his across. The ring stolen from
+Nan was his last desperate effort to finish his payments, payments which
+had been draining all of his resources for months and had taken all of
+his life's savings. This was the part of his story that he had told Nan
+after she had won his confidence.
+
+Needless to say, Arthur Howard and his gang were rounded up by a group
+of United States G-men and he received a long prison sentence after a
+startling trial.
+
+But to Nan and her friends at the hacienda, the most important result of
+the whole complicated affair was a certain wedding.
+
+"Your cousin just couldn't be mean after Walker found you," Bess hugged
+Nan in her excitement. "And there is to be that wedding that we talked
+about, and you are going to be maid of honor and we're all going to be
+bridesmaids. It will be in the garden and there will be lots of guests
+from all over the country and maybe Walter will be back here. Oh, Nan,
+I'm so excited!"
+
+"And that isn't the half of it," Nan finished. "Cousin Adair has given
+this place to Walker and Alice and he's settled a large sum of money on
+them and he's inviting Momsey and Papa down for the wedding. Oh, Bess,
+and Rhoda's going to come too, but not by plane," she added. "Everything
+is just perfectly grand!"
+
+So, let's leave Nan Sherwood and her friends to a happy, happy time, to
+finish out a summer in Mexico that was more exciting than they ever
+imagined a summer could possibly be.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes
+
+
+Obvious printer's errors were silently corrected. Otherwise spelling,
+hyphenation, interpunction and syntax of the original have been
+preserved.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Line 1142: some-place should be non-hyphenated.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Nan Sherwood on the Mexican Border, by
+Annie Roe Carr
+
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