The Mystery of the Headless Horse by William Arden Page B

somewhere but not sure where.
    “Well, you’re not so smart, you hear?” Skinny yelled in the rain. “We’ve got your Mexican pals now, smart guys! Saturday we take over their ranch! You hear that?”
    The four boys in the trailer looked at each other. Only Jupiter seemed puzzled. The others hadn’t told him yet about Emiliano Paz selling the mortgage.
    “Saturday, that’s all!” Skinny shouted. “No way you’re gonna help those wetbacks now! It doesn’t matter anymore what you think you’re up to! This time you’re beaten, big shots!” Skinny laughed nastily. “So pleasant dreams, punks! Pleasant dreams!”
    For a time they could hear Skinny’s laugh as it slowly faded away in the salvage yard. Then there was only the drumming of rain on the trailer’s roof.
    Jupiter fumed. “Skinny and his dumb bravado! He just wants to make us think — ”
    “No,” Diego said. “This time he’s right, Jupiter.”
    He told the stout First Investigator about Emiliano Paz selling the mortgage to Mr. Norris.
    “Our payment is due on Saturday,” Diego said glumly. “Don Emiliano would have let us pay part of it, but if we don’t pay Mr. Norris in full he can foreclose the mortgage and take the ranch.”
    “So,” Jupiter said, “Mr. Norris appears to have won.”
    “Jupe!” Bob cried.
    “You’re not going to just quit!” Pete exclaimed.
    “I–I would not blame you,” Diego stammered.
    Jupiter’s eyes flashed. “I said that Mr. Norris appeared to have won! That could mean that no one will try to stop us anymore. We must make the most of all the time we have left — and we don’t have much!”
    “No time,” Pete moaned, “and no clues!”
    “On the contrary,” Jupiter declared. “We have many clues. We simply haven’t yet interpreted them correctly. And I have just found still another proof that our speculations are correct.”
    The stout leader of the team took a paper from his pocket. “Bob was right when he suggested that Don Sebastián might have planned to hide himself out in the hills as well as the Cortés Sword. He planned to do it, and he did do it.”
    He handed the paper to Diego. “It’s in Spanish, Diego, and I’m not sure I’ve got it exactly right. Read it out for us in English.”
    Diego nodded. “It’s from a diary, I guess. The date’s 15th September, 1846. ‘This night, word came to our small group of patriots that the eagle has found a nest. We must plan for the care of our most noble bird. Predators are everywhere, it will not be simple, but perhaps now there is something to be done!’ ” Diego looked up. “You think that the eagle was Don Sebastián, Jupiter? That this entry means that local patriots escaped, and planned to help him to stay hidden?”
    “I’m sure of it,” Jupiter said. “That diary belonged to the local Spanish mayor then, a personal friend of the Alvaros, and in my reading I learned that Don Sebastián was nicknamed ‘The Eagle’ in his young days!”
    “But,” Bob said, looking at the paper with the Spanish writing on it, “how does this help us, First? I mean, maybe I was right and Don Sebastián did hide out like Cluny MacPherson, but this entry doesn’t say where. What about later entries in the mayor’s diary, Jupe? Do they help?”
    “This entry was on the last page of the diary, Bob, and there wasn’t a second diary of the mayor’s. He was killed a few weeks later fighting the invaders. I guess he got too busy to write.”
    “Well, if Don Sebastián did hide out in the hills,” Pete said, “what happened to him? Maybe his friends helped him to escape out of the area, and he took the sword with him and never came back!”
    “That is possible, Second,” Jupiter admitted. “It has been all along — but I don’t think that happened. If it had, I’m sure there would have been some reference to it in all the diaries and memoirs we’ve read. No, fellows, I don’t think Don Sebastián escaped for good. I think something