One summer the heat was stifling at the cattle station. Mary was pale and listless, and her three beloved dogs—Ajax, the wild, golden half-dingo; Ben, the terrier; and Algy, the bulldog—lay in the shade all day, panting. Mary's parents were delighted when old Tom, the bullocky, stopped by with a load and offered to take Mary and the dogs on a trip through the mountains.

Tom was proud of the patient, sturdy bullocks that pulled his wagon, and Mary thought it was exciting enough just to help Tom care for them. But before long they began to run into adventures, the strangest of which involved the legend of a haunted mountain, Barree. At night, camping on the slopes of Barree, Tom and Mary thought they could hear the faint tinkle of ghostly bullock bells above the sound of the wind. Then one of Tom's rare bullock bells suddenly disappeared, and Mary felt certain there was a ghost. She set out with Ajax, her golden dog, to solve the mystery—but the answer was even stranger than she imagined!

In Ajax and the Haunted Mountain, Mary Elwyn Patchett again uses the exotic Australian bush country as her setting and combines a deep understanding of animals and nature with a mastery of suspense that will hold all young readers until the last page.

From the dust jacket