“Whizzle, but you certainly took the wind out of my sails, as Cousin Bob says,” Betsy declared, “I’ve always been scared of Chinamen and to see you actually embracing one! I dunno as I’ll ever recover from the shock.”

“I don’t believe there’s a kinder, nobler, more faithful race of people on this earth,” Margaret championed, “and Sing Long is just like home folks to Virginia, isn’t he Virg?”

The shining-eyed girl nodded. “He surely is. Why, Betsy, Sing was here before mother came as a bride. I’m so glad he wanted to come back. I wouldn’t have Uncle Tex know it, not for worlds, but I was rather dreading the responsibility of cooking for so many people, and now we won’t have anything to do, but plan—”

“Mysteries,” Betsy cut in. Then she asked: “Virg, I may be slow as a detective, but I certainly do think the way you keep looking in first one direction and then another is most mysterious.”

The young hostess sat down in one of the comfortable yucca chairs. “Have you noticed it?” she inquired, “Well, then, I’ll explain. I’m not really worried, but I’ll confess I am puzzled.”

She then told the other three girls all that Uncle Tex knew of her brother’s sudden departure two nights before.

Megsy smiled and nodded toward the little stranger-to-the-desert, for, with a brow supposedly wrinkled in deep thought, she sat gazing across the shining stretch of sand toward the mountains.

“What do you make of it, Mistress Detective?” Babs asked merrily.

“I don’t,” was the frank answer. “Virg, what do you?”

“Well,” the oldest girl replied, “since Lucky rode in, after nightfall, in such haste and told brother that he was sure he had hit the trail, I conclude that there had been a—”

“Oh, do you think it was a holdup, or something like that?” This from the eager Betsy.

“No, I don’t. I think a mountain lion may have been killing the young calves and that Lucky and Slim have been trying to trail it.”

“How disappointing! I’m not at all interested in solving a mystery which has only a mountain lion in the leading part.”

Babs teased. “I’ll say you aren’t. You wouldn’t want to start on any clues that would lead you to a lion’s den.”

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