The Mystery of the Blazing Cliffs - M. V. Carey [28]
A few minutes later Bob was back over the fence in the comparative safety of Barron’s land. He found Pete under the trees, looking anxious.
“Did you find out anything?” Pete wanted to know.
“Plenty!” crowed Bob. “They’re crooks and they’re just about ready to fight one another and let’s go find Jupe!”
The two hurried back towards the ranch buildings. When they came out of the citrus groves on to Barron’s front lawn, they stopped dead and stared up at the big house.
Jupiter was standing on the roof of the front veranda. He was pressing himself close to the wall of the house and was scowling at a corner window only inches from his elbow. It was an open window; Bob and Pete could see the curtains blowing outward on the breeze.
They could also see Jupe’s face. It was red with embarrassment—or perhaps with desperation.
“I think we’d better do something,” said Pete, “and we’d better do it quick!”
Chapter 12
Jupe Has a Brainstorm
WITH A WAVE TO JUPE, Pete began to jog across the lawn to the drive. Bob followed, wondering what Pete had in mind. The taller boy kept moving until the drive took them between the Barron house and the humbler ranch house to a point where Jupe was no longer in sight.
Pete stopped suddenly and turned.
“Do that again and I’ll knock your block off!” he shouted at Bob.
Bob froze, his face startled. “Hey!” he said.
“Cut it out!” roared Pete. “You know what you did!”
Pete leaped at Bob and struck him lightly on the arm. “Come on!” he yelled. “Put ’em up!”
“Oh!” said Bob. “Oh yeah!” He darted at Pete, his fists flailing.
“Boys, you stop that!” called Elsie Spratt from the side window of the kitchen. “That’s enough! Stop it, you hear me!”
She clattered down the steps of the ranch house and waded into the battle, grabbing Bob by the arm and yanking him away from Pete.
“What’s this?” demanded a gruff voice from above.
The boys looked up. Charles Barron was scowling down at them from a side window in the second storey of the big house.
“It’s nothing, Mr. Barron,” said Elsie. “Boys do this sort of thing all the time.”
Jupiter walked around the corner of the big house just then. He looked rumpled and soiled, but he was smiling. “Trouble?” he said.
“Not really,” said Elsie, and she went back to her kitchen. Barron drew in his head and slammed his window shut. Grinning at one another, the boys walked off behind the big house.
“Thanks for creating a diversion so I could climb down off that roof,” said Jupe. He sat down under a eucalyptus tree in the Barrons’ backyard and the other boys crouched beside him.
“I was alone in Mr. Barron’s office when he came back to the house,” Jupe reported.
“He started upstairs and there was no place to go except out the window on to the roof.
Once I was on the roof I didn’t dare climb down. I didn’t know exactly where he was, and he might have seen me.”
“Did you find out anything?” asked Pete.
“I’m not sure. I have to think about it. What about you? Were you able to learn anything about the soldiers on the road?”
“You bet!” said Pete. “For openers, they lied. The field telephone they have is not out of order. We saw them use it twice. Then Bob went over the fence and got close to the tent.
Bob, tell Jupe about that.”
“Okay,” said Bob. “I heard the second call that came in on the field telephone. That lieutenant asked someone what was new, and they told him that Mr. Barron had just gone on an inspection tour.”
“Oho!” said Jupe. “So there is a conspiracy against Barron. And someone who works here is in on it!”
“Right,” said Bob. “Those guys in the jeep aren’t soldiers—none of them. The two who were sitting outside the tent were drinking whiskey, and when the lieutenant called them on it they gave a lot of backtalk. Soldiers don’t talk back to officers, do they?”
Jupe shook his head.
“The lieutenant said if they made any more trouble they could beat it back to Saugus, and one of them said he didn’t see why they were going to so much trouble when they had enough muscle