Previously on Nancy Drew: The Secret of Shadow Ranch: Jesus, a lot of stuff happened. Let’s see: we met all of our suspects. Ned is Sir Not Appearing in This Game, which leaves Nancy free to talk about how much she wants to mack it with Dave Gregory, the foreman. For shame, Nancy. But for real, what the hell happened to Ned? Oh, and we saw the phantom horse. I guess that’s the real mystery here.
So now it’s the next day, and we’re on the phone with the Rawleys. Nancy tells them her suspicions about the horse, and the Rawleys suggest that she go home. After all, there’s a criminal at the ranch, and they’re hours away from the nearest town. Surely Nancy isn’t safe here? Ha, just kidding, she’s Nancy Drew. Silly Rawleys! We call the sheriff next, and he says that it just looked like the pump had already been deteriorating, and nobody noticed. I can believe that, since Dave spends all his time dicking around the chicken coop instead of foremanning or whatever his job entails.
Shorty isn’t in the kitchen, so let’s poke through his stuff. He has a map of mineral deposits in the area on the table, which is curious. Is Shorty a miner? Is he a descendant of those miners Dirk Valentine stole from? Is he out for REVENGE? I’m getting ahead of myself. Shorty comes up and busts us, and says he was hoping there might be gold mines somewhere around here. Uh…the Gold Rush was a little further west, Shorty. But nope, there’s nothing. Then his voice gets vaguely threateny, and he tells us that he never wants to catch us looking through his stuff again. As soon as we apologize, though, he snaps back to overly friendly. There’s crazy lurking behind that weirdly Southern accent.
Anyway, we can ask what he thinks about the pump house. He agrees with the sheriff that the pipes were rusted through, and the “bad vibes” from the phantom horse made them burst. I’m suspicious that he keeps trying to convince us that the horse’s supernatural powers are actually a thing. Also, he wants us to do errands for him again. It’s the usual vegetables and eggs, although we also have to bake a cake for Tex, as you will recall it’s his birthday. Aw. Shorty cares, you guys!
The pump house is roped off, as it’s a crime scene, but the sheriff just gives us permission if we ask. Way to enforce the law there, dude. Actually, he knows that Nancy’s such an awesome detective that he’s willing to let her poke around the crime scene. Bless. It turns out that Dave has been gushing about Nancy, because he liiiiiikes her. And I mean, apparently Ned’s out of the picture in this game, soooooo…well, anyway. The sheriff says he’s known everyone working at Shadow Ranch for years, and he vouches for all of them. Well, at least one of them is our villain, so I’m thinking maybe I don’t wanna trust his character judgment? Unless the game has just revealed that Mary Yazzie is the culprit. Mary! *shakes fist*
So now we can check out the pump house. There’s an arrowhead on the floor, which I’m just mentioning since you have to collect a bunch of them over the course of the game. We also find a secret passage, because why not. We come out in the cellar of the main house, where Dave is poking around. See? Does Dave ever do his actual job?
Work it, Dave.
Dave does that thing where he asks Nancy where she came from, which just allows her to turn it around on him all, “Where did YOU come from?” Don’t try to outwit Nancy Drew, Dave. He’s not stealth at all and immediately spills that he’s looking for Dirk Valentine’s treasure. But when we asked him about the ghost horse earlier, he said he’d never heard of Dirk Valentine! Dave’s all shamefaced at being caught lying to Nancy Drew, as he should be. He tells us that his great-aunt was related to Frances Humber, and she left Dirk a bunch of stuff, including some of Frances’s letters. So now Dave knows about the treasure, and he wants to find it on account to help out his brother, who is broke and also sick. That’s not moral enough for Nancy, though, and she guilts him into telling the Rawleys about the treasure on their property once they come back.
Then he shows us his only clue, which is conveniently the other half of that “Green bottle under” note (“stairs to cellar”). Nancy asks if he’s been using the horse to distract everyone from his treasure hunt, but he denies it. Then I guess Nancy’s moralizing and interrogating are too much for him, because he runs away and leaves his clue behind. Wow, he gives up easily.
We can poke around the nook he was looking in, which has a beaded purse and a bottle of acid. “Wonder what someone’s been using that for,” Nancy derps. Do you think mayyyybe the acid was like…used to corrode the pipes? Mayyyyybe?
We find the green bottle under the cellar stairs, which is full of more sappy love letters written in Dirk’s fourth-grade handwriting. He derps that Frances is just so smart ‘n pretty, and remember that time they were in “Cappy’s”, eating crackers, and Frances said those crackers would always be her favorite because they reminded her of Dirk? And one time she made him a cake, and now that cake recipe is his favorite in the whole wide world. Oh my God, these two are such teenagers. Does the game ever say how old they were? I guess sixteen is kind of young to be a stagecoach-robbing outlaw, but then again, it’s not like there were any child labor laws.
So the letter from Dirk that we found in the chest told us that to start looking for his treasure, we have to know Frances’s favorite flowers, and the flowers on her “favorites.” Papa Humber’s diary told us that Frances’s favorite flower was the “Harrison Yellow”, and these letters from Dirk tell us that the items we need to be looking for (to find the “flowers on her favorites”) are a shawl, purse, crackers, cake, and stationery.
Conveniently, the cake Shorty wants us to bake for Tex uses Frances’s recipe. He cut a design for the top using Frances’s old cookie cutters, and when we put it together, Nancy will note that it’s a tulip. So that’s one of Frances’s flowers.
Shorty pops up and we can talk to him about the treasure. He doesn’t think it’s on the ranch — but if it WERE…wait, are we saying we know something about it? Nancy covers up and says it’s just a thing she’s heard about. Shorty says if it were real, he’d be tearing the place apart looking for it — but he thinks Dirk was probably just trolling Frances. Fair enough.
Nancy can look at the shawl Frances is wearing in her portrait, and then Google different types of knitting stitches on her phone, and she’ll say, “The daisy stitch!” when we look at the page. I mean, it literally does not say “the daisy stitch” anywhere on the page, but okay. So that’s another flower. We have 3/6!
Anyway, over at the chicken coop, where Dave whiles away the day doing literally nothing, we can have a short conversation with him. He gives us another errand to run, which is patching up the coop. He impresses upon us the GRAVE IMPORTANCE of doing it before the day is out, otherwise the coyotes will eat the chickens, and we will be in MUCH TROUBLE.
Yeah, I totally forgot to do it the first time around. I am a chicken murderer 🙁 Anyway, we agree, and then we ask if he has the letter Frances wrote to his great-aunt. He does — he started keeping it on his person when he found out Nancy was a detective, as he was afraid she’d go looking through his stuff. Hee! Dave knows what’s up. Anyway, he forks the letter over and we can look at it. Frances, unlike her boyfriend, actually knew how to write in cursive, so that’s something. Her letter’s all like, “Dear Cousin, I am going East and NEVER COMING BACK, not even when my father dies, because he RUINED MY LIFE and I HATE HIM THE MOSTEST. Dirk left me something but I am TOO HEARTBROKEN TO BOTHER LOOKING FOR IT. GOODBYE FOREVER.” Man, this girl was totally fourteen years old.
Anyway, the flower on top of the stationery is a lily. 4/6! We ask Dave where we can find the jail Dirk was in, and he says it was probably in Dry Creek, which is a ghost town now. “This got something to do with the treasure?” he asks. You can either say yes or no. I decided to be sneaky and say no, because I don’t want to give away my clues to our suspects, you know?
Blah blah errands blah. When we go visit Tex to ask if we go riding, he also has chores for us. Et tu, Tex? But first, let’s ask if anyone has ever tried to wrangle the phantom horse. That’s his job, right? Tex tells us that he never considered it — “always something else going on”, which further supports the horse-as-a-distraction theory. For that matter, the horse is apparently super speedy. “Probably couldn’t catch it anyway.” But how do you know if you’ve never at least tried, huh, Tex?
He says he’s never heard of Dirk Valentine’s treasure. Fair enough. Anyway, we have to put together some feed sacks for the horses and chickens. Tex is all, “Could be fatal if you mess up, so DON’T.” Why is everyone always giving these important farm chores to Nancy “From the Big City” Drew? I thought Tex didn’t trust our ability to ~survive~ ranching life? Well, whatever. The horse feeding is super fun, because I’m still a horse nerd at heart, I guess. Tex lets us go riding, but there’s one more thing that requires some backstory here:
So during day one, I rode out to the petroglyph rock that Mary Yazzie told us about. I didn’t include it in the first part because it was getting way too long, and all you do is run around the base of the rock and take note of where the glyphs are, and write them down on that map Dirk Valentine left for Frances. But! There’s an upper level of the rock that we need to get to, and we need a lariat to climb up there. Therefore, we must ask Tex for one. Naturally, he won’t just give us one — we have to prove that we’re ready for the GRAVE RESPONSIBILITY of lassoing.
We have to finish a barrel race in under 10 seconds and successfully lasso a sawhorse a few times to pass Tex’s tests — I think if you pass the barrel race test, the time he gives you is always 9.5, regardless of how long it actually took you. Nancy makes the weirdest noises ever while she races — like, she starts chanting “HIYA!” every time she rounds a barrel. What a dork. But anyway, now we have our own lariat! Tex grudgingly admits we’re getting to be pretty good at this whole ranch thing — but he’ll keep holding out hope for our hilarious failure, as our vacation isn’t over yet. Thanks, I guess.
I call Bess and George because I have to. They’re in St. Louis now! And their plane has more mechanical problems! They’re like, “We’re super bored,” and Nancy’s like, “Cool, I guess that means you’re willing to do some legwork for me.” Oh, Nancy. She tasks them with finding the bead pattern for that purse we found in the cellar, so we can put it together and see what flower is on it.
Now that we have a lariat, we can go back to the rock and find the rest of the glyphs. On our way out from the ranch, though, we see Mary Yazzie. Dig those graphics! What’re you doing here, Mary?
So once you find all the glyphs on the rock, they line up with the letters on the side to read, “Beneath Cappy’s keys Pappy’s name please.” Kay.
Let’s check in with Mary Yazzie, shall we? We ask if we saw her near the ranch this morning, and she ADAMANTLY DENIES it, then refuses to talk to us any further. Grouchy!
So now we can go check out Dirk’s jail cell, which is over in the ghost town. The music gets all creepy, and we hear ~scary noises~, and Nancy thinks that SOMEONE IS WATCHING US. So by all means, let’s keep hanging out here. Unfortunately, all the cells in the jail are locked, so we can’t get into them. We also find “Cappy’s”, which is a general store. Cappy’s is also locked, but by the sheriff, so we can just call him for the combination.
Now, technically, you aren’t supposed to be able to call anyone from the ghost town, but if you click “Web” first, and then click back to the phone directory, you suddenly have reception. I’m too lazy to go all the way back to the ranch just to call the sheriff, so I cheated. The sheriff tells us that he locked the building up because it’s falling apart, and he doesn’t want any “stupid tourists” going in there, because then it’ll probably collapse and he’ll have to pull them out. Heh. I like the sheriff in this game. He’s funny and he’s actually somewhat helpful. Anyway, he gives us the combo for the lock (9274).
“Cappy’s keys” refers to the piano in the store, but we don’t know who “Pappy” is yet, so we can’t do anything with it. That’s okay, though, because there’s a bunch of other stuff to look at here. There’s a sleeping bag in the corner, and an electrician’s manual with some dust on it, which we wipe off. Gosh, do you think our culprit might be hanging out here? You’d think the sheriff might’ve noticed that.
We also find a jar of Cappy’s crackers. Unfortunately, the label is mostly rubbed off, and there’s no reference to flowers anywhere. We can still see the slogan, though.
Let’s go back the ranch, where there’s cell phone reception. On our way back, we see Mary Yazzie and Tex! What could they be up to?
We can ask Dave if he’s ever seen Mary Yazzie hanging around the Rawleys’ property, but he says no — then again, he doesn’t leave the main area of the ranch much. “Tex is the one you should be asking.” Indeed. I’m suspicious.
Anyway, we basically have to call everyone in our contacts list, so let’s just get that over with. First up, Charleena Purcell. Her assistant puts us through right away, and is all surprised at how much Charleena wants to talk to us. “You really rate.” Aw yis. You know it, assistant dude. Charleena tells us that “Pappy” is Dirk’s dad, “Cashmeer Valentine.” We can also give her the slogan on the cracker tin, and she says she’ll research the name of the brand for us. The historical accuracy of her books is why she’s won so many awards! We have read her books, haven’t we? Oops. She lets it slide, though, as long as we promise to get on that soon. Charleena, I am trying to fight crime here. We also ask her about that token we won at Mary Yazzie’s, which she says was used for games. “You mean, like GAMBLING?” Nancy clutches her pearls. Oh, Nancy. Anyway, she’ll call us back with the name of the crackers.
Next up: the “Southwest Geo Survey”, whose phone number was on Shorty’s map of mineral deposits. You’ll recall that he claimed to be looking for gold mines, and doesn’t believe in Dirk Valentine’s treasure. But the geo survey guy says that Shorty did indeed ask about the treasure. You lied to us, Shorty! Also weirdly, when we ask for the full name of the person who requested the map, the geo survey dude says “Shorty Thurmond”, like that’s his legal name. Did his parents name him Shorty?
Third: the Hardy Boys, just because I can. For once, they actually have a case, and aren’t just chumping around dogsitting. On the other hand, their case is looking for a stolen laptop, because the guy is a friend of their mom’s. Ha! They’re such losers. We tell them about the creepy, creepy ghost town, and how we think someone was WATCHING US. Frank is immediately all concerned, but Joe, God love him, is like, “I’m pretty sure you were hallucinating.” Hee. I love him. They don’t offer much in the way of actual help, so I hang up.
Fourth: the Rawleys. We ask about the land Mary Yazzie was trying to buy — apparently it’s nowhere near her store, and has nothing on it but rocks. HMMM. Anyway, they aren’t too worried about Jane Nash, as apparently she’s too lazy to carry out any of her threats. Bless.
Since I’m here, let’s ask Tex about Mary Yazzie, shall we? He’s all ~flustered~ that we think that they were riding together — he hasn’t said more than ten words to her since he got here! The creepy cowboy doth protest too much, methinks.
Back in the ghost town, we open up the piano and find another note from Dirk, this time telling us to look under “Beady Eyes Ranch”, and use forks and a crank on whatever we find. Alright.
So remember how back in part one, when Nancy saw the tuning forks in Mary Yazzie’s shop and was like, “Look at those tuning forks! Those are indeed tuning forks. I definitely know what a tuning fork is”? Right, so we go back to Mary’s shop, and Nancy COMPLETELY FORGETS we ever saw them. Seriously, they’re under a cover that has “FH” stamped on it, COME ON. But instead we have to talk to Mary first, and Nancy derps that she has no idea what Dirk could be referring to when he talked about forks. Mary tells us that she went out with a guy who dangled spoons off his face. “Like I said, I went out with him once.” Hee! We have to go pull back the cover on the forks again, and Nancy marvels, “Tuning forks!” like she’s never seen them before. We ask to borrow them, and Mary says she’ll trade them for our arrowheads. Sweet.
We can also tell her that we know about her and Tex. First she gets all bothered, then she shrugs. “We’re in love. What’s the big deal?” Quelle what. Actually, I ship it, now that I think about it. Nancy is like, “Right…in love…that’s totally what I meant.” Mary figures us out, though: “He didn’t tell you anything, did he? Oh, you’re good. You are GOOD.” Hell yeah we are! Nancy Drew rules. Mary says they have to keep their thing a secret, as Tex doesn’t want to get between the whole land dispute with her and the Rawleys. Speaking of, why does she want that land so badly? Mary tells us that there’s a bunch of petrified wood on it, and she’s been using it in her jewelry. Fair enough.
By the way, her thoughts on the treasure: “If I had a dollar for every lost mine or buried treasure story I’ve heard, I’d have ten horses, two cars, and possibly my own helicopter.” Alright.
So love is in the air! We decide to share our gossip with Dave, of all people. He admits stranger things have happened than Tex and Mary Yazzie hooking up. Speaking of…”You got a steady back home?” Oh, Dave. Nancy says, “Uh, well, sort of.” Sort of? Man, Ned is getting a rough deal in this game. We ask if he has a girlfriend, and he changes the subject. Dave liiiiiikes us.
Anyway, back at Dry Creek, “Beady Eyes Ranch” refers to a brand symbol that’s scratched onto a floorboard at Cappy’s. Underneath that is this weird contraption-thing, I don’t know. We stick the tuning forks into it in order, and when you turn the crank, the glass on a lamp bursts. Dirk’s next note tells us to look under “zebra rock”, and use a magnet on whatever’s under there. We can grab a magnet off of the fridge at the ranch, so let’s head back.
It’s nighttime when we get back to the ranch. Tra la la, let’s get the magnet — are those the sound of coyotes in the distance?
Aaaand all the chickens get eaten and I get kicked off the ranch. Oops.
So I actually fix the chicken coop for real this time. When we’re done, Nancy notes that her gloves are glowing. Weird! We get a flashback to wiping dust off the electrician book in the ghost town, just in case you didn’t realize that’s where the glowing powder came from. This weirdness triggers the arrival of the phantom horse again. This time, the electricity blows. Thus ends day two!
Up next: Nancy gets knocked on the head! Uh…again! And then Dave hits on us. Man, everyone’s trying to get it on at this ranch.
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