Nan Sherwood on the Mexican Border Part 9

"Here, here, what's happening back there?" Adair MacKenzie turned from his place next to the driver and frowned at the girls. "Can't have this.

No blubbering on this trip."

Nan smiled a wan smile at the word.

"Thought you were a brave girl," Adair went on. "Now, dry away those tears," he ended, and turning, resumed his work of instructing the driver as to how to drive.

It was Laura who unthinkingly started them all off again.

"Makes you think, doesn't it," she remarked, "of the number of things you overlook doing for your mother when you're around her? Will I ever be good," she continued, "when I get home. I'll wash the dishes, set the table, run to the store, do anything and everything without question."

Laura sounded so serious and so unlike herself in her seriousness that even Nan had to smile, as she agreed. "That's just the way it makes me feel," she said.

"Oh, Nan," Bess protested, "and you're always so good to your mother.

I'm the one that's mean. Why, I never do a thing around the house if I can help it." And Bess spoke the truth. The daughter of a family that had plenty of money, Bess was a pampered child. As a general rule, she had little regard for either of her parents. Whatever she wanted, she asked for without regard for cost. What she couldn't get from her mother, she frequently managed to get from her father, and the two were well on the way toward spoiling her utterly when she went off to Lakeview with Nan.

There, away from home among strangers in a place where she had to live up to certain well-defined rules, Bess had improved considerably. Those that have watched her since her first appearance in "Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp" have seen a change come over her gradually. She is a little more thoughtful, a little more considerate of other people, but she still has a selfish streak which at times like the present confronts her so that her conscience p.r.i.c.ks her sharply.

"When I get home," Bess spoke more quietly than was her wont, "I'm going to do a little reforming myself. I'm going to pay more attention to what mother has to say. I'm going to be a better daughter."

"And I am too," Laura agreed.

"And I," Grace and Amelia said this together.

So even while Rhoda Hammond in a plane that was winging its way toward her western home, was remembering little, dear things about the mother she was so fond of, her friends were thinking of her and making resolution after resolution about their own conduct toward their parents.

CHAPTER X

FIRST MEXICAN EXPERIENCE

The days that followed were punctuated by telegrams received from Rhoda.

"Arrived safely." That was the first one. It told nothing at all of her mother's condition.

"Mother's condition very serious. Not much hope." That was the second and the girls scarcely had the heart to go on with Adair MacKenzie's party. Privately, they gave up hope entirely, but Adair tried to keep their spirits up. "Never can tell about these things," he said after reading the message.

"Some improvement. Pray. Love. Rhoda." The third one read, and everyone felt better.

Then for two days, there was no word, and everyone's hope just dwindled away to nothing. During these days, it was Walker Jamieson with his knowledge of Mexico and its ways that put what life there was into the party.

The eight hundred miles over the new Pan-American highway from Laredo to Mexico City was through gorgeous tropical and mountain scenery, and all the way Walker regaled the girls with stories and legends about Mexico and its history.

He told b.l.o.o.d.y stories of bandits coming down out of the hills, attacking travelers, kidnaping them and then robbing them, or holding them for huge ransom. He told of warfare between the Mexicans and the Indians back in the hills. He told of lost tribes who still wors.h.i.+pped the Sun G.o.d, talked their native tongue, still lived in the way those who had built the pyramids had lived.

Alice listened breathlessly to all he had to say. Nan and her friends hung on his every word. Adair MacKenzie listened and grunted noncommittally.

From Laredo to Monterey, he told these stories and from Monterey to Villa Juarez until everyone, whether he would admit it or not, felt deeply the spell of Mexico.

Then from Villa Juarez to Tamazunchale, across rivers that were bordered by heavy tropical foliage, everyone except Adair MacKenzie was more or less silent absorbing quietly the beauty about.

"Listen!" Nan had the temerity to interrupt one of Adair's outbursts against their chauffeur. Surprised by the command, Adair chuckled and kept quiet. Nan had heard the song of a tropical bird. Its call was picked up by another on the other side of the road. The chauffeur slowed down and then, at Adair's command, stopped.

For a few moments everyone listened, and then Nan pushed open the door of the car and got out. The others followed. To the right and to the left of them the luxuriant growth made the place like nothing else they had ever seen before. The birds that flew out of the thicket were gorgeous things in brilliant colors. The b.u.t.terflies that drifted from flower to flower were lovely too. But the biggest surprise of all was the orchids.

"Why, they grow wild!" Bess was amazed. The only ones she had ever seen before had been in the window of a florist's shop on Madison Avenue in Chicago and in a shoulder corsage worn by Linda Riggs at a school ball.

This last had made Bess exceedingly envious, despite the fact that Linda had been reprimanded afterwards, by Dr. Prescott, for wearing it. And now, here they were growing all about her, wild! Bess could scarcely believe her eyes.

Walker Jamieson laughed at her. "You like them?" he asked. "Didn't know, did you, that they grew any place outside of a hothouse?"

Bess shook her head. It was the first time in her life that she had ever really been moved by nature in any form. The others felt the same.

The air seemed quiet and heavy and yet full of all sorts of strange noises too. Grace was timid in the face of all the strangeness and held on to Nan's hand.

Nan's eyes were big and wondrous. It was like tropical jungles that she had read about. It was like something she had never even dared hope to see. She was quiet. Silently Adair MacKenzie watched her, and felt pleased with himself that he had shown it to her. In regarding her, he felt almost as though he himself had created it for her special benefit.

She caught his glance, looked up at him and grinned. "Wish I could take a piece of it home with me," she said.

"You can." Walker Jamieson sounded as though that would be the simplest thing in the world.

"How?" Nan asked in the tone of one who didn't believe a word of what she heard.

"Easy." Jamieson's eyes twinkled, for he knew that she thought that this was only another bit of his foolishness. "All you've got to do is get a camera and take a picture. Then you'll have it for life."

"But I can't," Nan was serious too now.

"Why?"

"First, I've no camera and secondly, I don't know how to take pictures."

"Oh, we'll take care of that," Walker Jamieson waved these difficulties aside as though they didn't amount to anything. "I've got a camera in the car, and, if you want, I'll show you how to get the best results.

I'm in your debt anyway," he whispered.

"Do you mean that about the camera and everything?" Nan was incredulous.

"Mean it? It's a promise, isn't it?" Walker drew Alice into the conversation.

She nodded her head happily. She knew, if Nan didn't, that Walker had made a hobby of photography and just the year before, had won a prize in a national show.

"We'll begin, just as soon as we get back in that car," Jamieson promised further. "When we get to Mexico City, we'll buy some more films and the camera is yours to do with as you will until we return to the States."

So, because of an impulsive wish and an impulsive promise, Nan began almost immediately to develop a hobby that, even before her Mexican adventure was over, was going to have amazing consequences.

From Tamazunchale to Mexico City, the drive was quite another experience. The road now was hewn out of sheer mountain rock. The car climbed and climbed, until the girls' ears felt strange and Bess declared that she could hardly breathe. She forgot this, however, when they, upon Alice's insistence, this time, got out again. All around them, huge mountain peaks rose to great heights making them all, except, perhaps, Adair MacKenzie, feel small and insignificant.

Straight down below them they saw rivers and waterfalls that looked small and white and unimportant, like a thread that some mighty hand had dropped carelessly in the greenness. Then they got in the car, went down the mountainside again, and they came to a lovely white village in a fertile green valley.

Here they stopped and ate.