The Mystery of Misty Canyon

  Contents

  * * *

  1 A Warning

  2 Renegade

  3 Twister

  4 Vanished!

  5 Bad Blood

  6 A Silver Buckle

  7 Accused!

  8 Clue in the Chronicle

  9 This Party’s a Blast

  10 Hiss!

  11 Sidewinder!

  12 Bullwhip

  13 Another Escape

  14 Renegade Ride

  1

  A Warning

  “We’re here!” Nancy Drew said from the backseat of the jeep as it bounced down the rutted lane. Laughing, she held onto her Stetson hat as the jeep roared under an arched sign that read “Calloway Dude Ranch.”

  “Finally,” Bess Marvin groaned. She was clutching the seat next to Nancy. “It seems like we’ve been on the go for days.”

  Bess’s cousin, George Fayne, sat in the front passenger seat, next to the driver, Mike Mathews. “Come on, Bess, we only left River Heights this morning. It’s not even the middle of the afternoon yet!”

  “Early this morning seems like an eternity ago,” Bess said. But she offered George and Nancy a good-natured smile.

  “Welcome to Misty Canyon,” Mike said. He was a ranch hand for Calloway Dude Ranch. His hair was straw blond, and Nancy guessed he was about twenty-five.

  “Misty Canyon?” Nancy repeated. The three girls stared at the Montana ranch land stretching to the surrounding hills. The sun was hot, the air clear and dry.

  “Yep. Calloway Ranch is just one of several ranches surrounded by those hills. The whole area is named Misty Canyon because of the steam from the hot springs in the foothills over there.” He pointed to a ridge in the distance.

  The jeep lurched, and Bess’s pale blond hair whipped across her eyes. “I’m not so sure this was such a hot idea,” she said.

  George glanced over her shoulder and winked at Nancy. “If you think this is bad, Bess, wait till you ride a real bronco.”

  “I’ve ridden before,” Bess replied, shuddering a bit.

  “Yes, but not on a Montana-range mustang,” George pointed out, her brown eyes gleaming with mischief. Athletic George loved to needle her cousin.

  Nancy smothered a smile. “I’m sure not all the horses at the ranch are wild, Bess.”

  “Not all of them.” Mike peered over his shoulder and gave Bess an encouraging grin. “We’ve got horses for everybody—even tenderfeet.”

  “Good!” Bess said, sending her cousin a triumphant look.

  “There must be a few wild mustangs,” George commented.

  Mike’s eyes narrowed as he stared through the grimy windshield. “A few.”

  In spite of the wind, George managed to open the slick brochure for Calloway Dude Ranch. “What about this one?” she asked, pointing to a picture of a rearing black stallion. “Renegade.”

  “Renegade?” Bess’s blue eyes rounded. She glanced nervously at Nancy.

  “No one rides him,” Mike said curtly.

  “According to this, no one can,” George replied. “It says here he was billed as ‘the horse no man can ride.’ ”

  “That was in his rodeo days—he’s retired.”

  Nancy was fascinated. “Will we get to see him?” she asked.

  Mike’s gaze met hers in the rearview mirror. “Take my advice, Nancy. Stay away from Renegade. He’s trouble!” He stepped on the gas, and the jeep leapt forward, shimmying on the rutted lane and leaving a plume of dust behind.

  Bess giggled. “I think I’ll stick with carousel horses.”

  But Mike’s cryptic comments about Renegade intrigued Nancy. As the jeep passed several corrals, she studied the horses, hoping for a glimpse of Renegade. She saw long-legged foals scampering beside mares, dust-covered horses, and red cattle with white faces grazing in the grassy fields. But no sign of a black stallion.

  Mike parked the jeep in front of the main house, a two-story structure that had once been painted white. But the paint had peeled and cracked near the windows. The shingled roof had been patched in several spots, and red shutters hung at odd angles from the windows. A covered front porch ran the length of the house and disappeared around one corner. Several of the porch rails sagged.

  The girls jumped to the dusty ground. From the yard, Nancy could see the stables, barns, and bunkhouse. All the buildings had once been painted white but now were a weathered gray. The fences leaned, and the whole place had a worn look.

  A plump woman with gray hair was waiting near the front door. Nancy wondered if she was Peggy Holgate, the ranch’s housekeeper and an old school friend of George’s mother. Peggy had invited the three best friends up to the ranch and had promised them room and board in return for a little help in the kitchen.

  “Boy, this place sure looks different from the pictures in the brochure,” Bess whispered.

  “George!” the woman on the porch called, her round face breaking into a smile at the sight of the three girls.

  George grabbed her bag and hurried up the steps. “Hi, Peggy,” she said. “This is—”

  “Bess!” Peggy interrupted. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” Then her gaze swung to Nancy. “And you must be Nancy Drew. Glad to meet you!” She shook Nancy’s hand with a firm, warm grasp.

  A van roared up and parked near the porch. Like the jeep, it was marked with green letters spelling out “Calloway Ranch” and the silhouette of a rearing black horse.

  Just as several people trickled out of the van, a young woman of about twenty with red hair, a smattering of freckles, and a genuine smile pushed open the creaking screen door. “Hi,” she said, extending her hand to Nancy as she stepped off the front porch. “I’m Tammy Calloway.”

  Nancy introduced herself and her friends.

  “Glad to see you here.” Tammy’s green eyes were warm and friendly, but there were tiny lines of strain at the corners of her mouth. “Why don’t you go inside while I greet the other guests? You already know Peggy. She’s the cook, housekeeper, nurse, and bookkeeper around here. I don’t know what I’d do without her!” With another smile, Tammy hurried down the steps to the people gathered around the van.

  “I guess you’re the right-hand woman around here,” Nancy said.

  Peggy pressed the wrinkles from her apron. “Oh, Tammy exaggerates! Come on in, and I’ll get you settled in your rooms. Then you can come downstairs for some lemonade.”

  “That sounds like heaven,” Bess said.

  Nancy reached for her duffel bag, but Peggy said, “Don’t worry about your bags. Hank and Mike will take care of them.”

  The girls followed the plump housekeeper into the ranch house. Inside, the entryway branched off into four different directions. Stairs led up to the bedrooms. Past the staircase, a hall went to the back inside entrance of the kitchen. To the left of the entry was the dining hall with its long tables. Swinging doors opened directly from there into the kitchen. On the right side was the living room, paneled in knotty pine, with worn furniture and braided rugs on the wood floors. Open beams ran the length of the ceiling, and charcoal etchings of covered wagons were mounted on the walls. A river-rock fireplace stood at one end of the room, and its mantel was covered with trophies.

  “Did Tammy win all these?” George asked as the friends surveyed the room.

  “Every last one of them. She’s the best trick rider in the country!” Peggy said proudly. “She learned to ride bareback before she could walk. By the time she was twelve, she was winning at all the local rodeos. She even toured nationally, before she came back here to help out.”

  “Help out?” Nancy repeated.

  Peggy cleared her throat. “Her father needed some help after his, uh, accident,” she explained
quickly. “Come on, now, let’s get you settled.” She herded the girls up the wide steps to the second floor.

  As she climbed the stairs, Nancy looked at some photographs lining the walls. At the landing, she paused to study a framed black-and-white snapshot. “Is that Tammy’s dad?” she asked, pointing at a weathered-looking cowboy.

  Peggy’s smile faded. “Yes, that’s him. He raised Tammy alone. The poor child’s mother passed away when she was only five.”

  “The way Mom tells it, Tammy’s like a daughter to you,” George said.

  Sadness stole over Nancy. She, too, had lost her mother at an early age. Her father, Carson Drew, a lawyer in River Heights, had raised Nancy with the help of Hannah Gruen, the Drews’ housekeeper. “Were Tammy and her father close?” she asked Peggy, wondering about Tammy’s father’s accident.

  “They were very close,” Peggy said from the top of the stairs.

  A worn runner covered the long corridor. Nancy noticed another staircase at the end of the hall.

  “That leads directly down to the kitchen,” Peggy said, following Nancy’s gaze. “And these other doors are rooms for the rest of the guests. This”—she opened a door to the right of the stairs—“is yours.” Peggy cracked open a window, and warm air, heavy with the scent of freshly mown hay, wafted inside. “If you ask me, the trouble at this ranch started with that devil horse.”

  “What devil horse? Renegade?” Nancy asked.

  “I don’t know why Tammy keeps him around.” Peggy pursed her lips together and shouldered open a connecting door. “And this next room,” she said, stepping through, “is for the cousins.”

  George grinned. “Thanks, Peggy.”

  Nancy’s room was furnished with a single bed, a braided rug, a rocking chair, and a bureau. The cousins’ room was a little larger and, except for the extra bed, was decorated just as Nancy’s was. There were pictures of western landscapes on the walls and stiff muslin curtains on the windows.

  “This is great,” George decided. “I’ll take the bed by the window!” She plopped onto the sagging mattress as if claiming a prize. “That way, I can hear the crickets chirping and the coyotes crying.”

  “Fine with me,” Bess replied.

  Peggy opened the door to the hall. “After you’ve cleaned up, come on down for a snack.”

  “We will,” Nancy promised.

  George stuck her head out the window. “If you ask me, this place looks more like a ghost town than a dude ranch.”

  “It is deserted, isn’t it?” Nancy mused. She sat on George’s bed and followed her friend’s gaze. A few ranch hands were hard at work exercising horses, cleaning saddles and bridles, and repairing fences, but Calloway Dude Ranch was certainly not teeming with activity. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know the details, but Peggy told Mom that Tammy’s father was badly hurt in a riding accident. He couldn’t work and let the ranch slide. Tammy gave up her rodeo career and came back to help.” George frowned thoughtfully. “Unfortunately, it was too late. The guests began going to the other ranches in the canyon. And then Tammy’s father died.”

  “How sad,” Nancy murmured, thinking of her own father and how much he meant to her.

  “Did you notice the van that pulled up behind our jeep?” Bess asked. “I’m sure it could hold a lot more people, but only five climbed out, and one was the driver. The brochure said this ranch could accommodate sixty guests. I’ll bet there are only about ten of us altogether.”

  Nancy’s brow furrowed. She, too, had thought there would be more people. “Maybe more guests will show up later. There’s still a couple of hours before dinner.”

  “Maybe,” George agreed. But she didn’t sound convinced.

  Just then, Mike Mathews, laden with the girls’ luggage, appeared in the doorway. “Here you go.”

  “I’ll take this one,” Nancy offered, reaching for a duffel bag with her first name stitched boldly across the canvas. Bess and George claimed their bags, too.

  “Looks like you packed for the entire summer,” George observed, staring pointedly at Bess’s three bags.

  “I believe in dressing for every occasion,” Bess shot back.

  “And then some. This is a ranch,” George reminded her as Mike left.

  Ignoring her cousin, Bess unzipped her bag and pulled out a pink bottle of shampoo. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m going to take a long bath.”

  “And I want to check this place out,” Nancy said. She stashed her duffel bag in her room. Then she and George headed downstairs.

  In the kitchen, Nancy and George finished tall glasses of lemonade while they asked Peggy questions about the layout of the ranch. Good-naturedly, the housekeeper pointed through the screened window to the stallion barn, bunkhouse, tack room, and foaling shed. Refreshed, the two girls went to explore the ranch and ended up leaning against a fence, watching a ruddy-faced ranch hand train a nervous gray colt.

  The colt bucked and reared but finally stood still and accepted the weight of the saddle on its back.

  “Want to try and break him?” the ranch hand asked. “Howdy. I’m Will Jennings.”

  “I think I’ll pass,” Nancy said with a grin.

  “He’s a feisty one, that he is,” the man said, shoving his hat back and wiping the sweat from his brow.

  “Is he related to Renegade?” Nancy asked.

  Will’s mouth tightened. “No. Not this one.”

  “Isn’t Renegade the most famous horse on the ranch?”

  “And the most dangerous,” Will said. Then, tipping his hat, he pulled on the lead rope and turned the young horse toward the barn. “I’d better cool this one down. Nice talking to you.”

  George watched him leave. “No one wants to talk much about Renegade,” she observed.

  “I’ve noticed. I wonder why?” Nancy studied the stallion barn, which was off limits to the guests. She noticed that the gate of the paddock was latched securely, to keep visitors from wandering into the dusty corral. “I sure would like to get a look at Renegade,” she told George as they walked back to the ranch house to change for dinner.

  “I knew it,” George said with a fond grin. “Now remember, Nancy, the famous amateur detective from River Heights is on vacation. No mysteries, right? That’s the deal.”

  “I remember,” Nancy said with a sigh, but Mike and Peggy’s attitude about Renegade had sparked her interest.

  “I’d better see if Bess fell asleep in the tub,” said George, leading the way upstairs.

  Nancy chuckled. “She’s probably just looking over the ranch hands. I’ll meet you in the dining room after I clean up.”

  After a quick shower, Nancy put on a fresh pair of jeans and a T-shirt. She started downstairs but stopped short on the upper landing.

  From below, a man’s gruff voice snarled angrily, “You’re running out of time, Tammy. You had better face facts!”

  Nancy peeked down the stairs. Tammy was blocking the front door. She stood rigidly, her fists planted firmly on her hips, her back to the stairs. There was a man on the porch outside—a short, round man with thin black hair and a flushed face.

  “I don’t have to take this from you,” Tammy said, her trembling voice low.

  “You don’t have a choice,” the man warned. His beady eyes were cold and hard.

  Nancy felt a chill dart down her spine as the small man’s lips curled. “Up against Vern Landon and Nathaniel Baines, you’re nothing, Tammy. Just a has-been rodeo rider with a mortgaged ranch that’s falling apart. Not to mention that black devil horse no one can ride!” He turned on his heel and marched across the porch and down the steps.

  Tammy’s shoulders slumped. She turned, and her eyes met Nancy’s.

  “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” Nancy apologized as she hurried downstairs. Through the open window, she heard an engine rumble and tires squeal as a long white car roared away from the house.

  Tammy shrugged, but her face was pale.

  “Are you a
ll right?” asked Nancy. “What was that all about?”

  “That was Rob Majors.” Tammy’s chin quivered, and she swallowed hard. “He’s trying to ruin me.”

  “Why would anyone want to ruin you?” Nancy asked.

  “He wants this ranch. It’s no secret. Anyone can see that the ranch is in financial trouble,” she admitted. “Dad and I took out a big loan a few years ago, when I was making money riding bareback. We bought some new stock, added on to this house, and spent more money than we should have.” Tammy sighed. “When Dad had his accident, he couldn’t manage this place alone—not even with Hank West, our ranch foreman, helping him. I quit the rodeo and came back to the ranch to give them a hand. That’s about the time everything went wrong.”

  “Why does Rob Majors care?”

  “He’s a loan officer for the bank. I’m just a few months behind on the loan payments, and he’s sure I’ll never be able to pay back the money. He’s threatening to close the place down.”

  Nancy studied Tammy’s worried face. “He mentioned a couple of other men,” she prompted as they walked into the living room.

  “Right. Nathaniel Baines. He owns the Circle B, which is a dude ranch nearby and Calloway Ranch’s biggest competition.”

  ‘ “Baines?” Nancy repeated thoughtfully. “Is he related to Stella Baines, the rodeo star?”

  “He’s her father.” Tammy glanced around the room at the trophies in glass cases. “When I retired, Stella stepped into my shoes and became the top trick rider and bareback racer.”

  Nancy remembered the last rodeo she’d seen. Contestants had ridden horses without saddles around a tight ring at breakneck speed.

  Tammy touched one of her trophies. “What Rob was saying is that the Calloway Ranch can’t compete with the Circle B. So he wants me to sell this place to Vern Landon, a land developer who wants to build condominiums in Misty Canyon.”

  Nancy glanced through the window at the panorama that stretched to the hills. “It would be a shame to spoil this ranch.”

  “I won’t let it happen!” Tammy said defiantly.

  “How are you going to fight back?”

  Tammy’s green eyes suddenly sparkled. “I’ve decided to retire from retirement,” she said.