The Mystery Boys and the Secret of the Golden Sun — Inside the Classic

quick: he preferred action to reasoning, and was usually more willing to meet trouble than to avoid it. Tom, who was generally as cool and as level headed as Cliff, the oldest of the trio, seemed inclined to agree with the youngest chum; but Cliff, cinching up his pony’s saddle, shook his head at Nicky.

“We came out here to try to learn something about Tom’s sister, not to court trouble,” he urged. “I guess that chap is simply curious about us and is watching to see that we saddle up properly.”

“Is it any of his business?” demanded Nicky. “He’s just one of the miners having his lunch. What business is it of his what we do or how we do it?”

“He looks pretty mean,” Cliff admitted.

Tom, having taken a moment to consider, as he generally did, came to a conclusion. “I’m not so sure that he is mean,” he told his two friends. “That scar across his face, and his bleary eyes, make him look pretty fierce; but he may be perfectly innocent of any wrong thoughts. As long as he only watches, he isn’t breaking any law or hurting us. Are you fellows ready?”

“All set!” answered Cliff, patting his pony’s flank.

“Then, let’s not bother about a rough looking miner who has hardly taken his eyes off us since we came here this morning. Nicky, run over to the mine office building and tell Mr. Gray we’ve got everything ready to start back.”

Nicky dropped his own pony’s rein over its head, while Tom, with his lithe movements apparent in the ease with which he mounted his own animal, caught the bridle of an extra mount and Cliff took the burro’s leading rope. Nicky ambled across the flat ground toward a zinc sheathed shack at a little distance.

Cliff and Tom sat on their ponies, watching covertly as the man they had been discussing finished the remnants of his chili con carne, wiped his mouth on a ragged coat sleeve, rose and strolled with a seemingly aimless air toward the upper level on which stood the engine house, the mouth of the mine and other timbered and metal covered buildings.

Nicky, on his return, looked around, saw that the man was gone and voiced a proposal.

“Mr. Gray says he won’t be ready to go for more than an hour,” he informed his chums. “The mine superintendent is telling him about some old Aztec curios he owns, and you know how that will chain Cliff’s father in his chair. What do you say if we take a little gallop down the trail—a race, maybe?”

Tom vetoed the race: they had a good ride before them and he did not want to start on winded ponies: however, he agreed to a short ride on a trail that they had not explored and the trio rode off, tying their burro to await their return.

The extra pony, also left standing, may have wondered why his own rider, the older one, had not come; but he waited with the patience of a well trained animal.

As the boys rode along, the trail became rapidly steeper and the small plateau narrowed into a rough, rocky coulee.

“It certainly is too bad,” Nicky said, with a sidewise glance of rueful sympathy toward Tom. “After we came all the way to Mexico City and then rode out here to the old mine, it is too bad that we can’t get even a trace of your missing sister.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “You’d think the authorities would know something, after all these years, or that we could pick up some clues.”

“It would have been different in the United States,” said Nicky, with a sense of pride in his native land. “Our detectives don’t let the grass grow under their feet.”

“And yet,” broke in Cliff, “many girls, and men and women, too, disappear in America and never are found.”

“There were no eye-witnesses, except the ones they found dead, after the bandits made their raid—that’s why there were no clues,” Tom added.

“Well,” he finished, sadly, “I guess my own private mystery will never be solved.”

“You can’t tell,” Nicky said, with his usual optimism. “You know, it seemed as though Cliff’s father would never be heard from again, after he went to Peru—but we got a letter, or Cliff did, and we went down there with Mr. Whitley, our history instructor—and not only rescued Mr. Gray from the hidden Inca city, but we saw a lot of adventure and got some of the Inca treasure.”