Whatever happened to Margaret Jones?

A friend in my junior high and senior school high years, Margaret Jones, lived on a small ranch with her mother and an older sister. She was kind of tall and slender, and I guess you could call her a "tomboy." She loved nature, outdoor activities, sports, and horses.

Our friendship was just that. No romance was involved. She was crazy about an old white gelding named "Rocky" that her mother had bought for her.

Margaret lived only a couple of miles down the highway from our place. Almost every evening she would saddle up Rocky and ride him over to my house to pick me up. We would ride back over our 80 acres of woods and fields, both of us astride Rocky.

Usually we visited our backwoods pond and, if it was hot weather, we'd take a dip -- clothed, of course, or we would catch bullfrogs for a while. Other times, we would play games with my young sisters, either outside or inside, depending on the weather.

Margaret always seemed happy, but sometimes she seemed on the verge of crying. Her parents were divorced, and her father would not or could not help her mother financially.

We talked about that and other topics that neither of us would talk about with anyone else, such as the fact that her father was in prison for robbing a bank in Montana.

When Margaret was a sophomore in high school, her mother suddenly moved with Margaret to another town about 40 miles away. She never gave a reason for the move.

Margaret and I wrote letters every week. We didn't have telephones then in the rural areas. My mother took me to visit Margaret a couple of times, because she knew what good friends we were.

Then, just as suddenly, Margaret and her mother moved back to their small ranch. We were delighted. Margaret still had Rocky, and she could ride over again to visit me and my sisters.

We realized that we were changing, but we tried to ignore it. I couldn't help staring at Margaret during study hall at school some days. I began to notice how pretty she was.

One evening Margaret rode over to our house and we wound up playing "Hide and Go Seek." We used our dug cellar for home base, and I was "it." I laid on one of the cots in the storm cellar -- my eyes closed -- and counted to 100.

I opened my eyes, and there was Margaret -- leaning over me face to face. I was rather uncomfortable for a moment, and then she whispered, "Looby, you know I love you, don't you?"

I jumped up, shocked to hear her say that, and fled from the cellar. She rode home that evening, and rarely ever came back again, but we remained friends.

Not long after that, she started dating a good guy named "Bobby" who was one of my friends. I thought they were serious about each other until the day Margaret did not come to school, and Bobby had no idea where she was. The teacher then asked me to drive with her to Margaret's house so we could check on her.

We got to the house. It was unlocked and the doors were open. All the furniture was gone. We checked the barn. No Rocky, no feed.

It was a month until graduation, and no one knew where Margaret, her mother, her sister, and Rocky could be.

I never heard from Margaret again, but I remembered that she had recently mentioned to me that her mother was having the interior of their house painted by a man that had been in prison with her father, and that he was rather "scary."

Although I talked to the police, the sheriff, the FBI, and the Texas Rangers, no one seemed interested enough to investigate the disappearance. The attitude seemed to be "oh, she'll show up one of these days."

Something had to have happened to her. I wish I knew what.

-- Louis Houston is a resident of Siloam Springs. His book "The Grape-Toned Studebaker" is available locally and from Amazon.com. Send any questions or comments to [email protected] or call 524-6926. The opinions expressed are those of the author.

Editorial on 05/20/2015