The Mystery of the Death Trap Mine - M. V. Carey [5]
He wasn’t crowing — he was squawking.
A split second later there was a screeching,
fluttering, flapping uproar in the hen yard. An instant after that the boys heard the thunderous explosion of a gun.
Pete shouted and fell to the ground,
instinctively covering his head with his arms.
Jupe and Bob ducked behind the car.
A huge dark shape came racing from behind
the hen yard and bounded toward Jupe.
Jupe had a confused impression of gleaming
white teeth and dark eyes. Then the creature
leaped, knocked him to the ground, and
bounded over him to disappear westward into a field of Christmas trees.
Chapter 3
Allies Mysterious Millionaire
“WELCOME TO PEACEFUL acres!” laughed Allie, as the afternoon stillness settled over the ranch again.
Pete sat up and blinked. “What the heck was that?” he demanded.
“Just Wesley Thurgood’s monster of a guard dog having another go at the chickens,”
Allie explained as Jupiter picked himself up. “He tries to dig his way under the fence into the chicken yard. The chickens squawk and Magdalena runs out and shoots off her shotgun. If that dog doesn’t watch it, she just might stop shooting into the air, and he’ll have a tail full of buckshot.”
“Magdalena?” said Bob.
“My housekeeper,” explained Uncle Harry.
A stout black-haired Mexican woman came around from behind the house. She wore a dress made of coarse cotton fabric with bright flowers embroidered at the neck and on the sleeves, and she carried a shotgun.
“Señor Osborne!” she cried. “Allie! I am pleased you are back. It is too quiet when you are not here.”
Harrison Osborne chuckled. “So you have your own ways of livening things up,” he said.
Magdalena scowled. “That dog, he is a thief!”
“Never mind,” said Uncle Harry. “Keep blasting away with that gun and he’ll reform.
Magdalena, these boys are friends of Allie’s. Jupiter Jones, Bob Andrews, and Pete Crenshaw. They’re going to stay with us for a couple of weeks.”
Magdalena’s black eyes sparkled. “Ah, good, good!” she cried. “It is nice to have more young people here. I will get steaks from the freezer. You are hungry after your journey.”
She disappeared into the house.
“I hope you are hungry after your journey,” said Uncle Harry. “Magdalena doesn’t have any patience with people who pick at their food.”
“Don’t worry!” said Jupe heartily.
Uncle Harry began to take suitcases out of the station wagon and set them on the front porch. The boys hurried to help him. In a few minutes they had carried their things into the house and upstairs to a big bunkroom that was over the spacious living room. Allie’s room was on the first floor, next to her uncle’s. Magdalena had her own little apartment behind the kitchen.
“You’ll want to wash up,” Uncle Harry called to them as they began to unpack. “Don’t take too long. I’d like to show you around the place before dinner.”
Pete immediately lost interest in stowing his clothes in the closet. “We can unpack anytime,” he said, heading for the bath across the landing from the bunkroom.
Soon the boys, Allie, and Uncle Harry were out under the blue New Mexico sky. Allie ran down the drive, two lumps of sugar in her hand. “Here, Queenie,” she called. Her Appaloosa snorted and galloped to the fence. The girl hugged the horse’s neck and it tossed its head, whinnying joyfully.
“Getting Allie unpeeled from that horse, even for a couple of days, was quite a job,”
said Harrison Osborne. “C’mon. I want to show you the machetes we use for pruning.”
“Machetes?” said Pete. “Aren’t they big knives?”
Uncle Harry nodded. “In adventure stories, the heroes use them to hack a path through the jungle.” He led the boys past the pickup truck and opened the door of the dilapidated barn. The boys smelled hay and saw bales piled high in one corner. Coils of hose hung from pegs in the wall. Spades, shears, trowels, and hoes were neatly stacked beside a workbench with a grindstone fastened to it. Over the workbench was a rack with five huge deadly-looking knives.
“We always use shears when we prune at home,” said Pete.