First Clue

Maria shrugged. “That’s the story most people believe.”

“But you don’t? ”

“People used to search this house and the surrounding area. I’ve heard stories about it ever since I was a little girl. No one ever found any treasure.” Maria got to her feet briskly. “Would you like more tea? ”

Nancy drained her cup, then shook her head. “It’s delicious, but I think I should be getting back to bed. Thank you for telling me about the house and the Kachina spirit. You have given me plenty to think about. ”

“I just hope it helps you solve the mystery here so the McGuires can go on with the resort.” Maria’s expression softened. “And thank you for saying that you’d try to help Ngyun. He’s really a very good boy, Miss Drew—Nancy. I just can’t believe he’d do anything that would get him sent away from here. He wants so much to be like his father.”

“I’ll do my best on both, ” Nancy assured her, then made her way back through the now empty and quiet hall to her own peaceful room.

After her disturbing night, Nancy slept later than was her habit. When she’d washed and dressed in jeans and a bright, plaid Western shirt, she went outside to find Bess, George, and Heather still sitting around a table in the back garden. All three were sipping some of Maria’s herb tea, their breakfast dishes empty on the table before them.

“We got too hungry to wait, ” Bess told her. “Anyway, we wanted you to sleep late. Maria told us that you had some excitement last night, so you would be tired.”

“Did she tell you what happened? ” Nancy asked, feeling rather strange about confessing to what she’d seen in the shadowy hall. It had been believable in the light of the full moon, but now that the bright Arizona sun was shining and the bees were buzzing around the citrus blossoms, it seemed more like a dream.

“She just said you’d seen something in the hall and had tea with her before going back to bed, ” George answered, her eyes full of curiosity.

“Was it the Kachina ghost? ” Heather asked as Maria came out with an omelet and a large glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice for Nancy.

Nancy recounted her night’s adventures carefully, starting with the sound she’d heard in the hall. “At the time, I thought it must be an intruder, ” she said, “but now I realize that it was more like distant voices singing or chanting.”

“An Indian chant? ” George asked.

“It could have been, ” Nancy admitted.

“I wouldn’t have followed it out into the hall, ” Bess murmured, shivering. “That’s so spooky.”

“What do you think it means? ” Heather asked.

Nancy repeated the two stories that Maria had told her about the haunting of Kachina House.

Heather nodded. “I’ve heard both theories, ” she admitted. “But what does it help? Either way, we still have a ghost and we can’t open our doors to guests till we get rid of it.” Her voice was filled with despair. “I guess we should have sold the place to Mr. Henry when he offered to buy it last fall.”

“Someone wanted it? ” George asked. “You didn’t tell us that.”

“Oh, he wasn’t interested in the old house, just the land. He has cattle, and he was going to expand his herd. We’d already done quite a bit of work on the house, though, so we didn’t want to give up the resort idea.”

“You sound as though you might change your mind now, ” Nancy observed, feeling sorry for the girl.

Heather’s green eyes filled with tears. “I love it here, ghost and all, but if we can’t open the resort, we’ll have to sell. Grandfather invested everything we have in it. But we won’t be able to maintain it, unless we make money, and we’ll have to sell at a loss.”

“Nancy won’t let that happen, ” George assured her. “She’ll find a way to stop the ghost.”

The young detective ate her delicately spiced omelet without speaking, hoping fervently that she could justify her old friend’s confidence. If the ghost had been simply someone’s trickery, she would have felt surer of her next move. But last night’s apparition was something she’d never encountered before, and she wasn’t exactly sure what to do next.

“What would you three like to do this morning? ” Heather asked, recovering her composure. “Our dinner guests won’t be arriving till early afternoon, when we’ll ride into the Superstitions. There’s a pretty trail that leads to the place where Ward and Maria will have our dinner waiting.”

“I’d like to get to know Ngyun a little better, ” Nancy suggested, remembering her other mystery. “Maybe he could tell us more about finding the filly.”

Heather sighed. “I’m afraid he’s already gone, ” she said. “I went to invite him to join us this afternoon, but Maria said he’d left just after dawn.”

Nancy frowned. “Where does he go? ” she asked.

“I don’t really know, ” Heather admitted. “He gets on that pinto and rides out into the desert. He used to talk about learning to trail animals and watching coyotes and jackrabbits, things like that. But since the fires...” Her voice trailed off. “I don’t think he trusts us anymore.”

“Could we check the places where the fires have been set? ” Nancy asked, determined to do what she could to help the unhappy boy.

“Sure, ” Heather replied. “You can see the blackened area up there on the ridge.” She indicated a rocky ledge about a mile from the stable. “That’s where he set the first one. He said he was learning to make smoke signals.”

“And the others? ” Nancy asked.

“Well, besides the one Grandfather thought he saw, there have been three, and the only other close one is about half a mile beyond that ridge. You can’t see it from here, but when you get up on the ridge, the burned saguaro is off toward the mountains. ”

“So those two are within walking distance, ” Nancy mused.

Heather nodded. “I’d take you to see all of them today, but Chuck’s already off with the jeep to run errands, and the roads are too rough for the station wagon.”

“After this breakfast, I need the exercise, ” Nancy assured their hostess, then turned to Bess and George. “Are you ready for a nice walk in the desert? ”

“You’re sure you wouldn’t rather lie by the pool and start a suntan? ” Bess asked hopefully.

George and Nancy shook their heads, laughing.

As the three girls set off past the stable and corrals, they quickly discovered that the desert was far from desolate. The spring rains had brought green to the tufts of grass that grew everywhere, and there were delicate wild flowers on the gently rising and falling slopes of the hills that rolled toward the Superstitions. Yellow, blue, red, and white blossoms danced in the light breeze, and even the cactus exhibited flowers of varying hues.

“Why, it is really beautiful, ” Bess commented as she stopped to watch a large jackrabbit bounding between two fat-bodied barrel cactuses, with their crowns of pale flowers.

“Look, there’s a roadrunner, ” Nancy called, pointing to where the big bird was racing from one clump of grass to another. He paused, lifting his black-crested head to stare at them. Then, with a jerking of his long black tail, he was on his way again, disappearing behind a strange cactus that looked as though it was composed of monkey tails topped with scarlet flowers.

“Don’t they fly? ” Bess asked as the bird appeared on a small ridge ahead of them, still on his feet.

“They can, ” Nancy replied. “They just prefer to run.”

Ahead, more desert wildlife left cover as several quail took flight. Nancy stopped, and in a moment the gray and brown birds with their dainty, black head plumes returned to the ground. Almost at once, a dozen little, yellow and brown-streaked balls of fluff emerged from the grass to join their parents. They disappeared into their thicket again as the girls detoured away from them on their walk to the ridge.

Once they reached the top, Nancy saw the charred remains of the fire. There were several stubs of scrap wood and the ends of some wooden kitchen matches. Bending closer, she could see that there were more bits of wood under the sand.

“It looks like someone tried to put this out, ” she observed. “Maybe Ngyun kicked sand over it and thought it was out, then it smouldered back to life.”

“At least he didn’t just go off and leave it to burn, ” Bess agreed.

“It wouldn’t really matter, ” George contributed. “There’s nothing around close enough to catch fire anyway.”

“What about that cactus down below? ” Bess asked, pointing toward the blackened skeleton of what had been a large and handsome saguaro cactus at the bottom of the hill.

Nancy picked up the ends of the kitchen matches and dropped them into her pocket, sure that they were a clue Ngyun had left, since she’d seen a box of kitchen matches on the big range in the resort kitchen.

The ground was rougher after they left the ridge. Small stones twisted treacherously under their feet, and the long spines of a big, prickly pear cactus reached out toward them as they slipped and slid down the incline toward the burned saguaro.

Once they reached it, Nancy looked around. “This doesn’t seem like a very good place to light a signal fire, ” she said. “No one could see it.”

“Maybe that was the idea, ” George suggested. “After being scolded for lighting the one on the ridge, he wouldn’t have wanted anyone at the resort to see this next fire.”

Nancy nodded, realizing that her friend could be correct. However, as she looked around the area of the blackened cactus, she quickly saw the difference. There was no neat pile of charred wood and, though she scraped the sandy soil all around the burned area, no sign of wooden match stubs.

“What do you think? ” Nancy asked after she explained what she’d been looking for.

“I’d say this was deliberately set on fire, ” George said, frowning, “and not as a signal fire, either.”

“But why? ” Bess asked. “Why would anyone set fire to a cactus? ”

Nancy could only shrug her shoulders. She was silent and thoughtful as they turned away from the blackened corpse of the saguaro. There was something wrong, and it had little to do with the burned cactus. She felt a prickling of fear and looked back just in time to see the massive saguaro sway and start to fall!