Nan Sherwood on the Mexican Border Part 4

Nan turned. She wished that Laura and the rest were here now, but she knew that they were waiting in an outer office.

"Then you think," Walker Jamieson's words brought Nan back to the present plight of herself and her cousin Adair, "that there is a regular trade in visitors' pa.s.ses, that the pickpocket who got ours wanted nothing else?"

"You had no money stolen, did you?" Mr. Nogales queried.

"Uh-h-h-" Adair MacKenzie had been silent for a long while for him. Now he rummaged through his pockets even as Nan checked on the contents of her purse.

"Just as I thought," Mr. Nogales nodded his head, as the two agreed that all their money was there. "Your visitors' pa.s.ses are the only thing missing. Just a moment, please, I'll see what can be done." With this, he disappeared into the office of his superior, and Adair MacKenzie followed him.

Nan, Alice, and Walker Jamieson looked hopelessly at one another as Adair disappeared from their view.

CHAPTER V

TELL US ABOUT THE HACIENDA

"What did you think?" Laura inquired afterwards when the girls were all settled in a hotel close to the border for the night. "That the walls of that inner office would just cave in when Mr. MacKenzie started bellowing."

"Why, Laura Polk, how disrespectfully you talk!" Bess exclaimed from her place in front of the dressing table where she was brushing her hair.

"And Mr. MacKenzie is our host too. If it weren't for him we wouldn't be down here now. At this minute we'd probably be on the sh.o.r.es of a lake near Tillbury."

"Oh, Bess, you know I'm not one bit disrespectful, really," Laura retorted. "I like Mr. MacKenzie real well and you know I do. I'd give anything in the world to be able to roar the way he does." There was genuine longing in her voice as she spoke. "Just imagine," she continued, "how handy that roar would have come in the night we routed the ghost. I just think," she continued to play with the idea of making use of Adair MacKenzie's roar, "how handy it would come in, if we were to meet Linda Riggs.

"Couldn't we manage," she was lying p.r.o.ne on the bed, and, as this new idea came to her, she cupped her chin in her hands and looked off into s.p.a.ce, "to have your cousin around sometime when Linda Riggs was present. I'd love to have him a.n.a.lyze her the way he did us today. Such fun!" Laura's eyes danced merrily at the thought.

"And then I'd like to have her open her mouth to protest," Laura continued, "and have him roar at her. Oh, I'd give a million dollars, a trillion dollars," she amended generously, "to hear that roar."

"You and me too," Bess joined in. "By the way, have any of you heard anything about her lately."

"Not I," Nan answered, "and I must say the less I hear about her and the less I see of her, the better. There was a rumor, you know, at school that she was going to be allowed to come back this fall."

"I know it," Bess somehow always managed to hear all the rumors, "and I can't for the life of me understand why Dr. Prescott would ever let her reenter. Certainly, she's no credit to Lakeview Hall, or to any school for that matter. If I were a princ.i.p.al I wouldn't let her in my school.

In fact, if I got the chance at all, I'd just slam the door right in her face."

"Oh, Bess, do you ever sound as though you meant it? Cousin Adair should hear you talk now. He thinks that Laura has a temper. He should hear you sometimes." Nan laughed at her pal.

"I know it, but I think I'm more than justified. She's certainly caused us plenty of trouble from the very first time we ever met her. I'll never forget how she embarra.s.sed us on the train that took us to Lakeview the first time."

"Nor how Professor Krenner took our part," Nan added.

"Nor how you outwitted her and drove up to school in the back of Walter Mason's car as though you were a princess returning to her palace,"

Laura giggled. "There never was a freshman created more of a stir than you did that night. Boy, did we ever put our heads together in corridor four and decide that we would have to put you in your place right away,"

she continued slangily.

"And did I ever hate you, Laura Polk," Bess laughed now at the recollection. "You embarra.s.sed me so about that lunch box that when I went to bed that night I cried myself to sleep."

"Poor Bessie," Laura sympathized. "You were such a proud little thing that I never in the world thought I'd ever be able to get along with you."

"Get along with Bess!" Nan exclaimed, "if you had ever heard what Bess said about you that night, you would have been surprised that she ever spoke to you again."

"What did you say, Bess?" Laura looked positively impish as she looked at Bess's reflection in the mirror.

"Oh, I don't remember." Bess was obviously concealing the truth.

"You do too," Amelia joined in as she wound the pretty little travelling clock that had been given her the week before.

"If you don't tell, I will," Nan was enjoying the situation as much as the rest, for she saw that Bess was not really embarra.s.sed.

"Go ahead then and see if I care," Bess retorted, giving a few final strokes to her hair.

"Well, you said," Nan began slowly, "that that homely red-headed Polk girl was just as mean as she could be!"

"Did she say that?" Laura laughed heartily. Even in those days she would have been the first to laugh at herself. Now she could laugh doubly, for the homely red-headed girl had, since then, blossomed out into a pretty, fair complexioned curly headed miss with a very pleasing personality.

And so the girls continued for some time to talk over events and happenings that are recounted in other books of this series until Laura turned to Nan, "Anyway," she said, "if we may return to the present and Laredo, Texas, will you please tell us just how your cousin managed to extract those pa.s.ses from the authorities this afternoon? I respected his abilities to get what he wanted from the moment mother capitulated and let me come down here with what she called, 'a perfect stranger,'

but I never respected them as much as I did when I saw that white uniformed official bowing you people out of that office as though you were the President's party itself."

"Wasn't he just grand!" Nan's eyes were alight at the recollection.

"That man was none other than a special aid to the Mexican consular office here in Laredo, and he nearly fell all over trying to help us after cousin Adair ceased his storming and told those people who he was.

I never saw anything like it in my life.

"It was 'Si, senor, this,' and 'Si, senor, that' until Alice and Walker and I began to think that we were really somebody, if only by reflected glory."

"Well, you certainly looked like somebody very important when you came out," Bess agreed. "I wondered for a moment whether I had really heard allright when you went in."

"Then you did hear us?" Nan laughed.

"All Mexico did," Laura put in. "Really, at first we thought another revolution was taking place. Grace here was looking around for someplace to hide herself. Amelia was clutching her watch to her with a look of determination which said as plainly as anything 'no foraging rebel is going to get this' and Rhoda looked as though she wished she had brought her trusty six shooter along. And then when we had gotten ourselves all worked up to the point of accepting the inevitable, who should come round the corner but you and Mr. Jamieson, Alice and her father!"

"You sound as though we disappointed you," Nan remarked.

"Oh, not at all." Laura hastened to correct this impression. "I don't believe Mr. MacKenzie has ever disappointed anyone in his life. He just couldn't. Not with that cane, that roar, and that honesty which stops at nothing. He's a dear. Now tell us, Nan, all you know about this place we are going to."

"I've done that a thousand times since I met you in St. Louis," Nan responded as she pulled off her dress and slipped her arms into the lounging robe that the Lakeview Hall girls had given her at a surprise party in her honor more than a year before.

"Oh, no, you haven't," Laura denied. "We made you spend most of the time telling us about this angel of a cousin that appeared out of a clear sky and offered to take us all to Mexico. Doesn't sound real even now when we're here."

"There's one thing about it," Amelia added, "if one can't have rich relations oneself, the next best thing in the world is to have charming friends who have them."

"Here, here!" Laura raised a protesting hand. "You're out of order. The first thing you know Nan will be thinking we're fond of her."

"Oh, you old ducks," Nan looked at them all fondly. "Don't you know that cousin Adair knew that if he didn't invite all of you that I wouldn't come at all? Now, let's forget all of this grat.i.tude stuff. It embarra.s.ses me."

"All right then," Bess agreed, "but you really haven't told Rhoda anything at all about the hacienda, Nan."