The Secret of Shadow Ranch

Happy Drews-day and today is one of my personal favorites, The Secret of Shadow Ranch.  Or The Secret AT Shadow Ranch for the original text.

OT on the left, and my two RT copies on the right.  I just got the one in the middle a couple of months ago at a used book store in Old Colorado City.  I think it's interesting that the book's title changed slightly.

The Secret at Shadow Ranch is the first OT Nancy Drew that I ever read, though it's not the first one I purchased.  I love the cover of it with the bright colors and you can tell instantly that this mystery takes place away from River Heights.  Also this book has that awesome vintage book smell and I love it.

The RT cover is similar in composition but with a darker color palette and, of course, the phantom which isn't in the OT.  I find it interesting that Nancy's depicted riding a bay horse on the OT when it doesn't specify what color her horse is, while in the RT it specifically says bay and yet they show her on a black horse.

I give both covers five stars, I don't have a favorite between the two because they're both awesome.  Let's take a look at the contents.

Case file:
Elizabeth "Bess" Marvin and her cousin George Fayne (a girl who happens to have a boy's name) beg their friend Nancy to come spend the summer with them at Shadow Ranch in Arizona, which was recently acquired by their uncle Richard "Dick" Rawley as payment for a debt.  Aunt Nell is going to check out the ranch and put things in order to most likely sell it, and she's taking Bess, George, and their other cousin Alice Regor, who is Dick's niece (Bess and George are Nell's nieces).  They tell Nancy that Alice's dad disappeared 8 years ago when Alice was 7 and no one knows why.

Nancy gets permission from Carson to go on the trip (he wants to go fishing in Canada anyway) so then we have a chapter of the girls buying new clothes and packing for the trip, then taking the train to Chicago where they meet up with Aunt Nell and Alice.  They continue on together and Nancy makes the acquaintance of Ross Rogers, who lives in Mougarstown near Shadow Ranch.  They arrive at the Mougarstown station and are met by George Miller, the ranch foreman, who refuses to call girl George by her first name (this turns into a running bit throughout the book).  The ranch is run down and all five cowboys employed there are over 40, to Bess's dismay.

George Miller gives the girls riding lessons and then clears them to go riding on their own on the ranch and neighboring Shadow Mountain.  On a 15-mile trail ride with cowboy Jack Glenwell as a guide, a storm comes up and swells a creek which they have to ford.  Bess freezes in fear midstream so Nancy has to go back and grab her horse's bridle and lead her safely across.  They stop at a small cabin on the mountain for shelter, but the cabin's occupant, Martha Frank, is extremely unfriendly.  Nancy is intrigued by the 12-year-old girl living there with Martha who doesn't look like she's related to her.

Back at the ranch, they decide to do a round-up of all the cows on the ranch so Nell can sell them, which is a good distraction for Alice who's bummed about her missing dad.  Nancy is (of course) the best of the girls at helping with the round-up.  In Mougarstown the next day, Nancy sees Martha Frank argue with a junk shop owner with the singularly amazing name of Zany Shaw and wonders what they're arguing about.

A few days later, the girls decide to ride into the mountains and have a picnic; Aunt Nell insists they take a revolver with them, which Nancy carries because she's the best shot (of course).  After their picnic lunch, the girls fall asleep and then a lynx spooks their horses, who bolt.  Nancy shoots the lynx, but they have to walk 7 to 8 miles back to the ranch since the horses skedaddled.  George twists her ankle so once again they stop at Martha's cabin, who's probably wondering why she can't get rid of these four nosy girls.  A rescue party comes from the ranch to get them so they don't have to walk all the way back.  The next day, Ross Rogers visits but he's a bit awkward and Nancy realizes he's unsure of his own name, which makes her even more curious about him.

Days go by and the girls keep going on trail rides and have encounters with a rattlesnake and a bear, and try fishing but they stink at it.  They go into Mougarstown to attend a dance and all three attract local admirers, who suggest that they do a moonlight ride sometime soon.  The next day, Nancy is riding solo when another storm rolls in, so she stops again at Martha's cabin and this time gets to talk to Lucy, the girl who lives there.  They go through a trunk of items that Martha told Lucy to never mess with and Nancy finds a fancy doll and clothes with labels from Philadelphia.  She theorizes that Lucy was kidnapped and sends a telegram to Carson asking him to look into abduction cases in Philadelphia.

A few days later, George plans a trail ride but they get lost, so they end up taking shelter in a cave overnight.  The next morning they come across Lucy out picking berries and she helps them get back to the correct trail to return to Shadow Ranch.  Nancy wants to bring Lucy to stay at Shadow Ranch, but Martha won't allow it.

The girls' admirers from the dance come over on the night of a full moon for the moonlight ride and they happen to take the trail up by Martha's cabin.  They see Lucy run away from the cabin with Martha chasing her and threatening her; Lucy runs right off a small cliff, and she's knocked unconscious and has a broken arm.  Luckily Nancy's beau is a doctor, so he splints Lucy's arm and insists on taking her back to Shadow Ranch since Martha was clearly abusing her.  Nancy finally gets a response from Carson:  there was one kidnap case that matches Lucy--Louise Bowen, who was 3 1/2 and whose parents are now both deceased.

The next day, Martha demands Lucy's return and while she's camped out at the ranch, Nancy sneaks out the back and goes back to look through the trunk at Martha's cabin.  She finds a tiny child's ring with the initials LB on it and decides that's proof that Lucy Brown is Louise Bowen.  Zany catches her at the cabin, but she punches him under the chin (way to go, Nancy) and flees back to the ranch. 

Martha refuses to answer questions about Lucy until Nancy threatens her with the authorities.  Martha finally says that Zany, her brother (real name is Zeke Work which isn't as good as Zany Shaw), kidnapped Louise to get back at Louise's father, who had unfairly accused him of stealing.  A good Samaritan tried to stop them, but Zany hit him on the head; they thought he was dead so they ran with the child.  Turns out the good Samaritan was Ross Rogers, who lost his memory after the blow to the head.  Nancy decides that she won't press charges against Martha and Zany if they leave and never come back, which they do.

Nancy figures out somehow that Ross Rogers is actually Robert Ross Regor, Alice's long-lost dad (Aunt Nell had never met him, that's why she didn't recognize him); his identity is confirmed when Uncle Dick shows up.  Alice and Mr. Regor are excited to be reunited and also plan to adopt Lucy/Louise.  When the foreman George Miller takes Nancy and everyone else to the train station to leave, he finally calls girl George by her first name.  Uncle Dick and Aunt Nell decide to hold onto the ranch for now.

Notes:  I swear my "summaries" of the books are getting longer and longer.  Anyway, like I said, this is the very first original text Nancy Drew I ever read, and it was quite the experience.  There was a marked effort in the beginning to establish the personalities of Bess and George, who are introduced in this book, which was nice.  Bess is timid and loves food and boys, George is brash and frequently rude to Bess about her weight (the fat shaming starts here and goes on for decades, which I wish wasn't a thing).  If I recall correctly, George and Bess were the invention of Edward Stratemeyer's secretary to be Nancy's friends, and they pretty much pushed Helen out of the series (Helen getting married was added in the revised texts as a reason why she's no longer Nancy's mystery-solving BFF).  I recommend Melanie Rehak's book Girl Sleuth for more information on the behind-the-scenes of Nancy's creation.

The plotline with Alice and her missing dad is interesting but does have some holes.  If her dad disappeared when Alice was 7, I doubt she would still be so depressed about it 8 years later; after that much time, I think it would be normal to her for him not to be in her life.  In my opinion she acts more like he disappeared sometime in the last year, not more than half her life ago.  Finally we get someone who suffers some ill effects from being struck on the head since Mr. Regor loses his memory.  Also it's very convenient that the Regors decide to adopt Lucy/Louise without even discussing it with Alice's mom first.

I feel like this book is more of an adventure story than a mystery on the whole.  Most of the book is about Nancy, Bess, George, and Nancy riding around the ranch and having adventures in the mountains; the mysteries don't show up until pretty late in the book and the only detective work that Nancy does is rifle through the trunk in Martha's cabin and ask Carson to look into abduction cases in Philadelphia.  I was also surprised by Nancy using a pistol in this book, since I hadn't read the OT versions of the first four when I first read this one and she does handle a gun in a couple of other books.  Still, it's fun to read something written in the 1930s and read about things like Pullman cars on the train and how Aunt Nell doesn't like it when George uses slang like "Oh, man!"  I know I'm clutching my metaphorical pearls at that verbal outburst.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, OT Edition:  
She manages to stay conscious for this entire book, so the tally still stands at
Blunt force trauma:  2
Near suffocation:  1

Let's take a look at the RT.

Case file:  
Nancy Drew arrives in Arizona to be met by Bess and George for a vacation at Shadow Ranch, but they tell her that they'll all have to leave the following day as someone is trying to sabotage the ranch and Uncle Ed says it's not safe.  They tell her about a phantom horse appearing and a windmill being pulled down, and then Nancy notices a man eavesdropping on their conversation.  They find a note warning them away from the ranch when they get to the ranch wagon to start their 150-mile drive to the ranch.

On the way, they get stopped by a sandstorm and then the ranch wagon overheats; the girls discover that the water bottle that was supposed to be filled up by Shorty Steele (one of the ranch hands) is empty, so they have to be rescued by Dave Gregory, another of the ranch hands.  They finally arrive at the ranch and Uncle Ed and Aunt Bet agree to let the girls stay to investigate.  Nancy meets Alice Regor, Bess and George's cousin, whose father disappeared six months ago after a bank robbery.

The first night at the ranch, Nancy wakes up and sees a prowler go into the kitchen, but he disappears, and the next morning the water pump has been sabotaged.  Nancy goes to the town of Tumbleweed with Dave to report to the sheriff and get parts for the pump.  While in town, Nancy foils the attempted robbery of a shop belonging to Mary Deer, who gives Nancy a watch that once belonged to Frances Humber.  Frances lived on Shadow Ranch decades ago and was in love with the outlaw Dirk Valentine (excellent name), but her dad the sheriff shot Valentine dead and no one has found the outlaw's treasure.  Also, the phantom horse is supposed to belong to Dirk Valentine; he cursed Shadow Ranch when the sheriff shot him.  Nancy also buys a pastel drawing at the shop, which Alice later recognizes as the work of her missing father.

Later that evening, Nancy gets her first look at the phantom horse; the ranch dog Chief runs after the horse and disappears, and the girls' room is ransacked while everyone is out trying to chase the phantom.  The next day, the girls take a ride with Shorty as their guide to investigate a cabin on the mountain, but he takes a "shortcut" and keeps them from getting to the cabin.  He's really good at attracting suspicion.  Later Nancy finds a message inside Frances' watch that references a green bottle.  The girls go riding and check out a nearby ghost town, where they see a couple of men running away and find a crushed pastel crayon in the street.  Nancy goes inside a building and a rockslide takes it out but she's fine because she's mostly indestructible.  They find the cabin that Shorty tried to keep them away from, and Chief comes running out.  On the way back to the ranch, there's a big storm which swells a creek, and just like in the OT Bess freezes and has to be rescued by Nancy.

That night, Nancy wants to have her horse saddled and ready to chase the phantom, but someone locks her in the tack room.  She sees a light in the spring house but no one is there, so she deduces that there's a secret passage from the spring house to the cellar of the main house.  The next day, the girls and all the cowboys go to Tumbleweed to pick up some horses Uncle Ed bought, and Nancy meets Mr. Diamond at Mary's shop, who is very interested in the Dirk Valentine treasure.  That night, Nancy finds Dave digging up the floor of the cellar and he admits that he's looking for the treasure because he's one of Frances Humber's descendants.  Dave was the prowler in the kitchen on Nancy's first night at the ranch.  Pooling their knowledge of the legends about Dirk Valentine and Frances Humber, Nancy figures out that Frances hid something in an oil lamp which is conveniently still in a storage room--they find a letter about the treasure.

As they're reading the letter, the lights go out and the phone line is dead; Nancy heads for the stable and is ready to go when the phantom appears, but it runs through the herd of new horses and Nancy falls off her horse and gets knocked out.  The fences have been cut so now all the ranch hands are busy trying to round up the horses and fix the fences.  The next day while all the men are working, Nancy and her friends go to town and buy "squaw dresses" (ugh) to wear to a rodeo-barbecue-dance that they're going to with the ranch cowboys.

Nancy and Alice want to investigate the cabin where they found Chief; Shorty saddles the horses and puts a nettle under Nancy's saddle so the horse rears, but Nancy manages not to fall off this time and Shorty denies doing it.  They remove the nettle and go to the cabin, where they find a man named Bursey who claims to be the pastel artist despite the obvious fact that he doesn't know anything about art.  Nancy calls the sheriff who says he'll go arrest Bursey because Nancy thinks that he's keeping Alice's dad prisoner somewhere.  (If I was the sheriff, I would want more proof than what Nancy has.)

Nancy announces that the Dirk Valentine treasure has to be in the cliff houses which used to be a part of the ranch, because the letter said it was in the oldest house on the ranch.  The girls and cowboys all go to the rodeo-barbecue-dance thing and win a square dancing competition; Nancy announces to the entire crowd that she knows where the treasure is because she wants to pull a trick on the men who are sabotaging the ranch.

Back at the ranch the next day, Uncle Ed and some of the cowboys send out a diversion party with shovels to trick Bursey and his conspirators as to where they're looking for the treasure.  Nancy, Bess, George, and Alice ride around the mountain for most of the day and find the phantom horse's paddock near the cabin before they finally go to the cliff houses at dusk to look for the treasure.  They find Alice's dad immediately, who tells them that the bank robbers have kept him prisoner for six months and include Bursey, Diamond, and Shorty Steele.  Nancy finds the treasure in another cliff dwelling and lights a signal fire to notify Uncle Ed, but then she gets caught by the bank robber gang.  The villains monologue and argue about who gets what, and that gives Uncle Ed and the sheriff enough time to show up and capture them.  Nancy refuses to take any of the treasure despite being the one who found it.

Notes:
I was an incredibly horse crazy kid so this book was one of my childhood favorites.  It's also the debut for Bess and George, who are Nancy's ride-or-die friends for many many more books.  The glowing phantom horse is straight out of a Scooby-Doo episode, but I love Scooby-Doo so that's not really a criticism.  I love the Old West legends about Dirk Valentine (excellent outlaw name, five stars) and hidden treasure.

One thing that's funny when you read the books in order is that in the revised text, Nancy's boyfriend Ned is mentioned and she doesn't meet him for the first time until #7, The Clue in the Diary.  At the beginning of the book, Nancy is knitting a sweater and in the matte cover book, it's for Ned whereas in the flashlight version (the one I had as a kid), the sweater is for Carson.  They still left in another mention of Ned though:  in the middle of the book, when discussing the cute cowboys, Bess and George ask Nancy what Ned would think and she says he's in Europe so he wouldn't know anyway.

The original text had zero mention of indigenous people, so I thought the inclusion of Mary as a native character (and owner of her own business) and the cliff houses was an improvement.  However, Nancy and the girls buying "squaw dresses" for the dance is...not great.

Martha Frank and the abducted child are completely gone from the revised version, but I found it interesting how they still worked in the cabin on the mountain as the bank robbers' hideout.  I still have issues with the Ross Regor storyline though; this time he's been held prisoner of the bank robbers for six months.  No way would real criminals keep him alive that long and drag him all over the countryside--they would have gotten rid of him when he accidentally saw them robbing the bank!  Also, Shorty is a very obvious suspect from the jump.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, RT Edition:  3, she adds one this time thanks to falling off her horse

Nancy's Skills:
Nancy is an excellent rider and bakes excellent chocolate cakes.  She also stays calm when Chief growls at her on their first meeting and soon has the dog practically eating out of her hand, to the amazement of Uncle Ed and the cowboys.

Nancy Drew, Fashion Model:
When she arrives in Phoenix, Nancy is wearing an olive green knit dress with matching shoes and beige accessories; George wears a brown linen dress and Bess wears pale blue (which is usually Nancy's color).  Later, Nancy wears a yellow blouse and skirt with a matching pullover sweater.  After rescuing Bess from the flooded creek, the girls all clean up and Nancy wears a powder blue sweater and skirt; George wears a dark green linen dress, and Bess wears a yellow sweater and skirt (wonder if she and Nancy just switched clothes).  Finally Nancy wears jeans sometimes!  When they buy the dresses for the rodeo-barbecue-dance thing, Nancy's is turquoise blue with silver trim; George buys a bold red one, Bess a yellow skirt with a black bodice, and Alice chooses a pumpkin-colored dress.

Cooking with Hannah:
We only get a phone conversation with Hannah, but she has to be the one who taught Nancy how to bake chocolate cakes.

Rating:  
Five stars for both because horses.  Hey, I make the rules for the rating system!