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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings
+by Margaret Burnham
+
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+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings
+
+Author: Margaret Burnham
+
+Release Date: September, 2004  [EBook #6459]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on December 15, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE GIRL AVIATORS ON GOLDEN WINGS ***
+
+
+
+
+Scanned by Sean Pobuda (jpobuda@adelphia.net)
+No. 2 of a series.
+
+
+THE GIRL AVIATORS ON GOLDEN WINGS
+
+By Margaret Burnham
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE GREAT ALKALI
+
+
+"And so this is the great Nevada desert!"
+
+Peggy Prescott wrinkled her nose rather disdainfully as she gazed
+from the open window of the car out over the white, glittering
+expanse--dotted here and there with gloomy-looking clumps of sage
+brush--through which they had been traveling for some little time
+past.
+
+"This is it," nodded her brother Roy; "what do you think of it,
+sis?"
+
+"Um--er, I shall have to wait a while before I answer that,"
+rejoined Peggy judicially.
+
+"Well, here's Jimsy; let's ask him," cried Roy, as a lad of his own
+age, accompanied by a slender, graceful girl, came down the aisle of
+the car and approached the section in which the two young Prescotts
+were sitting.
+
+"Jimsy Bancroft," demanded Roy, "we are now on the great Nevada
+desert, or on the edge of it.  Does it meet with your approval?"
+
+"There's plenty of it anyhow," laughed Jimsy, "and really it's very
+much like what I expected it would be."
+
+"I feel like a regular cowgirl or--a--er--well, what the newspapers
+call a typical Westerner already," said Jess Bancroft, Jimsy's
+sister.
+
+"Only typical Westerners don't protect their delicate complexions
+from dust with cold cream," laughed Peggy, holding up a finger
+reprovingly.  "As if any beauty magazine won't tell you it's a
+woman's duty to take the greatest care of her complexion," parried
+Jess.  "Roy and I have been sitting out on the observation platform
+on the last coach--that is, we sat there till the dust drove us in."
+
+She shook the folds of a long, light pongee automobile coat she wore
+and a little cloud of dust arose.  They all coughed as the pungent
+stuff circulated.
+
+"Ugh," cried Roy, "it makes your eyes smart."
+
+"That's the alkali in it," quoth Jimsy sagely, "alkali is--"
+
+"Very unpleasant," coughed Peggy.
+
+"But as we are likely to have to endure it for the next few weeks,"
+struck in Roy, "we might as well lose no time in getting accustomed
+to it."
+
+"Well girls and boys," came a deep, pleasant voice behind them, "we
+shall be in Blue Creek in a short time now, so gather up your
+belongings.  I'll take care of the aeroplane outfits and the other
+stuff in the baggage car," he went on, "and here comes Miss Prescott
+now."
+
+The lady referred to was a sweet-faced woman of some fifty years of
+age, though it was easy to see that the years had dealt kindly with
+her during her placid life in the village of Sandy Beach, on Long
+Island, New York, where she had made, her home.  Miss Prescott was
+the aunt of the two Prescott children, and since their father's
+death some time before had been both mother and father to them--their
+own mother having passed away when they were but small children.
+
+As readers of the first volume of this series know, Mr. Prescott had
+been an inventor of some distinction.  Dying, he had confided to his
+son and daughter his plans for a non-capsizable aeroplane of great
+power.  His son had promised to carry on the work, and had devoted
+his legacy to this purpose.
+
+In that volume, which was called "The Girl Aviators and the Phantom
+Airship," it will be recalled, it was told how Peggy had been of
+material aid to her brother in his plans and hopes, and had, in
+reality, "saved the day" for him when he fell into the hands of some
+enemies.  This occurred on the eve of a great aeroplane contest in
+which Roy had entered in the hopes of winning the first prize.  With
+the money thus obtained he planned to pay off a mortgage held on
+Miss Prescott's home by an unscrupulous old banker, whose son was
+the prime mover in the plots against Roy.
+
+One of the means adopted to force him to sell his secrets was the
+manipulation of a phantom aeroplane which, for a time, sadly puzzled
+the lad and his sister.  The mystery was solved in a strange way,
+however, and almost at the same time, the baffling problem of what
+had become of Mrs. Bancroft's jewels was also unraveled.  All this
+did not take place without many adventures being encountered by the
+four chums. Among these was the encounter with the old hermit, Peter
+Bell, who, through Peggy's agency, was restored to his brother,
+James Bell, the millionaire western mining man.
+
+James Bell became much interested in the Prescotts and their
+aeroplanes.  Finally he made an advantageous proposal to Roy to
+travel West and operate for him a line of aeroplanes from some
+desert mines he had discovered on a trip which almost cost him his
+life.  As autos could not cross the alkali, and transportation of
+the product by wagons would have been prohibitive in cost, as well
+as almost impossible to achieve, Mr. Bell had hit on the happy idea
+of conveying the precious product of his property by aeroplane.
+
+At the same time, it so happened that Mr. Bancroft, the father of
+Jess and Jimsy, was summoned West by an important railroad deal.
+This being the case, Jess and Jimsy at once set to work plotting how
+they could gain their father's consent to their accompanying Peggy
+and Roy.  It was finally gained, although Mrs. Bancroft shook her
+head over the matter, and, at first, would by no means hear of such
+a thing.  But Mr. Bancroft urged that it would be a good thing for
+the children to see the great West, and that as Miss Prescott was to
+accompany the party, there would be no risk of their running wild.
+
+But while the youngsters had all been so eager for the time to come
+for starting on their long journey that they could hardly eat, much
+less sleep, Miss Prescott had viewed with alarm the prospects ahead
+of her.  In her mind the West was a vague jumble of rough cowboys,
+Indians, highwaymen and desperate characters in general.  But there
+was no help for it.  In addition to feeling it was her duty to
+accompany her young charges, her physician had also recommended her
+to seek the dry, rarefied air of the great Nevada plateau.
+
+"It will be the very thing for your lungs, my dear madame," he had
+said; "they are by no means as strong as I could wish."
+
+"Oh, but doctor, the Indians, the--the--" Miss Prescott had begun,
+when the physician cut her short.
+
+"The only Indians left in the West now are all busy working for Wild
+West shows," he said, with a laugh; "and as for any other fancied
+cause of alarm, I dare say you will find the Western men quite as
+chivalrous and courteous as their Eastern brethren."
+
+And so it happened that the dust-covered train was rolling across
+the arid solitudes at the edge of the great alkali desert with our
+party of friends on board.  All were looking forward to adventures,
+but how strange and unexpected some of the happenings that befell
+them were to be not one of the party even dreamed.
+
+The only member of the adventurous little band not now accounted for
+is Peter Bell, the former recluse.  Peter was forward in the smoking
+car enjoying his old black pipe, which was his delight and solace
+and Miss Prescott's particular abomination.  Among Peter's other
+peculiarities, acquired in a long and solitary life, was a habit he
+had of sometimes making, his remarks in verse.  He entered the car
+just as the conversation we have recorded was in progress.
+
+"Soon, my good friends, o'er the desert, so bold, we all shall be
+flying with excellent gold."
+
+A general laugh from the young folks greeted him, and Roy struck in
+with:
+
+"That's if we don't fall to the earth from the sky, and land up in a
+smash on the white alkali."
+
+The merriment that greeted this was cut short by the raucous voices
+of the trainmen.
+
+"Blue Creek!  Blue Creek!"
+
+Instantly the liveliest bustle prevailed.  Belongings of all sorts
+were hastily bundled together.  So intent, in fact, was our party on
+its preparations for its plunge into the unknown that not one of
+them noticed two men who stood watching them intently from the
+opposite end of the car.
+
+"So we've run the old fox into the ground," remarked one of them, a
+tall, heavily built fellow with a crop of short, reddish hair that
+bristled like the remnants of an old tooth brush.  He was clean-shaven
+and had a weak, cruel mouth and a pair of narrow little eyes, through
+which he could, however, shoot a penetrating glance when anything
+interested him.  Both he and his companion, a sallow, black-haired
+personage with a drooping pair of moustaches, were just then, seemingly,
+much engrossed.
+
+"Yes, some place off thar'," rejoined the black-haired man with a
+wave of his hand toward the west--in which the sun, a ball of red
+fire, was now dropping, "some whar off thar, across that alkali, Jim
+Bell has his golden-egged goose."
+
+"Hush, not so loud, Sam; one of those kids is looking at us."
+
+"Pshaw, they hain't got sense to suspect nuthin'," was the scornful
+reply.  "Wonder if Buck Bellew will be hyar ter meet us."
+
+As he spoke the train wheels ceased to revolve and the cars came to
+a standstill in Blue Creek, a sun-bitten outpost of the "Big
+Alkali."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+AT THE NATIONAL HOUSE
+
+
+Blue Creek was experiencing a spasm of excitement unusual to it.  As
+a general thing, the dwellers on the edge of the great alkali
+wastes--once the bed of a mighty inland sea--were by far too much
+occupied in keeping reasonably cool, to betray even a passing
+interest in anything; except the arrival of a train of
+desolate-looking mules bearing gold from the barren, melancholy
+hills that rimmed the far-reaching alkali solitudes.
+
+But the dust-whitened train, which twice a day puffed into Blue
+Creek and twice a day puffed joyfully out again, had, on this
+particular afternoon, set down a party which had caused unusual
+speculation among the Blue Creekites.
+
+"Thar's Jim Bell, frum out the desert, an' an old gent who looks
+like he might be some kin to Jim, and then thar's them likely
+lookin' lads an' those uncommon purty gals.  Never know Jim hed a
+fam'ly afore.  Ef he hez he's kep it mighty quiet all these ya'rs."
+
+These remarks emanated from the throat of Cash Dallam, owner of the
+National House, Blue Creek's leading, and likewise only, hotel.  The
+National was a board structure, formerly painted--with some
+originality of taste--a bright orange hue, relieved with red
+trimmings round doors, windows and eaves.  But the sun had blistered
+and the hot desert winds had cracked and peeled its originally gaudy
+hues, and it was now a melancholy monotone of dull, pallid yellow.
+Here and there the paint had vanished altogether, and the bleached
+boards showed underneath.  Like most of the other structures in Blue
+Creek--which boasted a general store, post office and Chinese
+laundry and restaurant combined the National House was coated with a
+thin layer of gray alkali dust, the gift of the glittering desert
+beyond its gates.
+
+Cash Dallam's companions on the porch, which faced the railroad
+station and so was a favorite lounging place for the prominent
+citizens of Blue Creek and the guests of the hostelry, seemed only
+languidly interested.
+
+"Thet's a powerful pile of baggage they're toting round," observed
+"Shavings" Magoon, who owed his nickname to the peculiar color and
+length of his hair, which looked as if it might have been gathered
+up bodily from the floor of a carpenter's shop and transferred to
+the top of his wrinkled countenance, about which it hung like a
+dubious aureole.
+
+"You say that the tall chap yonder is Jim, Bell?"
+
+The question, asked with some appearance of interest, came from a
+slender, dark-haired man in a blue shirt and leather "chaps," his
+face overshadowed by a big sombrero, who up to this time had not
+spoken.  He had been leaning against the front wall of the National,
+thoughtfully removing some more of its paint by scraping it with the
+big rowelled Mexican spurs which he affected.  These spurs, heavily
+mounted with Silver, together with a red sash he wore in the Mexican
+style about his waist, rather marked him out from his fellows on the
+National's porch.
+
+Cash Dallam looked round as if in astonishment at the voice.
+
+"Why hal-lo, stranger," he said, "whar you bin hidin' all these
+moons?  Yes, that's Jim Bell, sure enough.  Wouldn't think he wuz a
+millionaire ter look at him, would yer?"
+
+The other shook his head.
+
+"Can't most always sometimes tell," he remarked humorously; "that's
+a right pretty gal yonder, too.  Any of you heard what Jim Bell's
+doing in Blue Creek?"  The question came abruptly.
+
+"Don't rightly know," was Cash's reply, "but I heard thet before he
+went Fast Jim Bell worked his way further inter ther desert than any
+man has ever bin.  What he wuz arter I dunno, but it wouldn't be
+like Jim Bell ter risk his life fer muthin'."
+
+"Do you reckon it was gold?"
+
+The slender young man's dark eyes kindled in the word he used there
+was some potent fascination for him.
+
+"Donno 'bout gold," said Cash, thoughtfully; "Thar's silver, yes,
+and platinum back younder.  So ther Injuns say anyhow.  But thar's
+mighty few white men hes ever got thet fur, an' if they did, they
+never come back to tell."  He gazed out over the crystalline,
+quivering desert, burning whitely as a spangled Christmas card under
+the scorching sun.  In his day Cash had seen many set out across it
+who never reappeared.
+
+"Pity thar hain't no way of gitting thar without having ter use
+stock."
+
+"Ortermobiles?" suggested a withered old man with the desert tan and
+wrinkles upon him.
+
+"Tired 'em," struck in another of the same type.  "No go.  Sunk to
+ther hubs in mud holes an' then if it wusn't thet ther wuz ther sand
+to shove through and they hed ter give it up.  No, ther vehicle or
+ther critter hain't invented that's goin' ter get away off thar back
+of beyond whar the gold lies--or whar they say it does," he added
+rather doubtfully.  "When I was a kid back East my poor mother used
+ter tell me that gold lay at ther end of ther rainbow.  I began
+huntin' it then and I've kep' it up ever since, an' will to ther
+end, I reckon."
+
+"You say the vehicle isn't invented that will cross that stretch of
+alkali?" asked the tall young man, with a jingle of the metal
+ornaments hanging from the chased shank of his spurs.
+
+"Thet's what.  No rig, er devil wagon, er critters neither."
+
+The reply was given with the emphasis of conviction.
+
+"How about airships?"
+
+The remark was dropped carelessly almost, by the spur-wearer.
+
+"Airships!  By ginger, thet's so!"
+
+The pessimist spoke in a rather crestfallen tone.
+
+"Seems ter me I read in an Eastern paper a while back suthin' about
+Jim Bell's bin at a place near New York and engaging a young chap
+ter build him some aeroplanes.  Thar was a good bit of mystery about
+it.  Say, boys, I wonder ef that's what Jim Bell's in Blue Creek
+fur?"
+
+"Thar's one thing sartin," spoke up "Shavings" Magoon, "ef Jim
+Bell's got ther means ter git an aerial gold line he'll be safe
+enough frum them ornery road agents like ther fellers thet stuck up
+ther Laredo stage only last week an' got away with the specie box
+from Red River Falls.  I reckon thar ain't no stage robbers with
+acroplanes yet a while."
+
+"Queer thing about that Laredo robbery," put in Cash thoughtfully,
+"thar was several inter it, an' it seems thet they've all got clar
+away."
+
+"Good thing for them, eh?" said the stranger, jingling his spur
+ornaments harder than ever.
+
+Cash sniffed.
+
+"Good thing.  Wall, stranger, I'd hate ter tell you what 'ud be the
+least of what 'ud happened to them, it would freeze your blood."
+
+"Not an unpleasant thing to have happen to day," said the stranger,
+carelessly, and carefully flicking some gray dust from his "chaps"
+with his rawhide quirt, "so you think that Jim Bell means to start
+some sort of an air line from whatever he has discovered in the
+interior into this place?"
+
+"Don't know nothing about it," snapped Cash, rather impatiently;
+"you're a heap interested in Jim Bell, stranger."
+
+"Naturally.  He's quite a famous man in his way.  I suppose he is
+one of the greatest mining authorities in the West."
+
+But at this point Cash perceived that Mr. Bell's party had finished
+seeing to the disposal of their piles of baggage and were headed for
+the hotel.  The operation had been a long one, as they bestowed
+particular attention upon sundry wooden boxes of oblong shape which
+might have held almost anything.  Whatever their contents might be
+they were evidently held in some esteem by the Bell party.
+
+A few seconds after Cash had broken off the conversation so
+abruptly, he was greeting the new arrivals.  The other porch
+loungers stood sheepishly at some distance, some of them uneasily
+twisting their fingers.  The presence of the young girls in the
+party filled them with a bashful terror such as the had never
+experienced in the numerous adventures and perils through which most
+of them had passed.
+
+"The young ladies are Miss Prescott and Miss Bancroft," Mr. Bell
+said, introducing his companions, after the fashion of the Western
+country, to the hotel proprietor; "this is Roy Prescott and his
+chum, Jimsy Bancroft, and this," indicating the man whose
+resemblance to himself had already been remarked upon, "this is my
+brother, Mr. Peter Bell."
+
+"Glad ter meet yer, miss; glad ter meet yer all, I'm sure,"
+sputtered out Cash with one of his finest bows, and Cash was
+reckoned to be "a right elegant chap" in that primitive society.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+VOICES IN THE NIGHT
+
+
+After supper--a queer meal to their Eastern tastes--the young folks
+were glad enough to retire to their rooms.
+
+"Oh, what a funny place!" cried Jess, as she and Peggy, carrying a
+glass lamp which reeked of kerosene, entered their chamber.  The
+walls were of rough boards with no attempt at ornamentation, a
+gorgeous checked crazy-quilt covered the bed--for though the days
+are hot on the desert, the nights are quite sharp.  The floor, like
+the walls, was bare, and when the girls peered at themselves in the
+tiny mirror they gave little squeals of amused disgust.  The heat of
+the sun, too, had drawn out the resinous qualities of the raw wood,
+and the room was impregnated with an aroma not unlike that of a pine
+forest under a hot sun.
+
+"I expect we'll see some much funnier places before we get back
+East," said Peggy decidedly, and beginning to unpack her
+silver-fitted dressing-bag, which was the one luxury she had allowed
+herself.
+
+"I expect so, too; and I think it's jolly to rough it," chimed in
+her chum; "but it's hard to get used to it all at once.  Stepping
+right off a Pullman into this is rather a sharp contrast, you must
+admit."
+
+"It is," agreed Peggy, heartily.  She stepped to the window and
+gazed out on an uncovered porch outside.  It was, in fact, the roof
+of the one below.  On it flourished quite a little grove of scraggly
+plants of various kinds, which were carefully tended by Cash's wife.
+They were, perhaps, the only green things in Blue Creek.
+
+But Peggy had little eye for all this.  Her lips parted in a quick
+gasp of admiration as she gazed upon the night spell of the desert.
+The dark sky was sprinkled with countless stars, large and luminous
+and beaming with a softer, stronger light than in the North.  A
+brooding silence hung over the town--the silence of the desert.  The
+hush was broken only by the droning notes of a song, accompanied on
+a guitar, which came from off in the distance on the outskirts of
+the little settlement.  The music emphasized rather than broke the
+silence.
+
+Jess came to Peggy's side, and upon her, too, descended the feeling
+of awe that the "Great Alkali" casts over all who encounter it for
+the first time.
+
+"Peggy," she said at length, "I'm--I'm the least bit frightened."
+
+Her chum felt a slight shiver run through the girl as she pressed
+against her.
+
+"Frightened, girlie?  Frightened of what?"
+
+"I don't just know.  That's what makes it feel so bad.  I guess it's
+the silence, the sense of all that loneliness out beyond there that
+upsets me.  It feels almost as if there were some living presence
+off over the alkali that meant us harm."
+
+"I think I know what the matter is," said Peggy gently, "you're
+tired and overwrought.  Come, let us get to bed, for Mr. Bell has
+ordered in early start in the morning."
+
+Just how long afterward it was the awakened Peggy had no means of
+telling, but as she lay sleepless she felt a longing to look out
+over the light-shrouded desert once more.  Arising she tiptoed to
+the window, and drawing the shade without making more than the
+merest rustle of noise she looked out.  As she did so Peggy almost
+uttered a startled exclamation, which, however, she instantly
+checked.
+
+Three men had just emerged upon the balcony from an adjoining
+window.  They brought chairs with them and sat there smoking.  Peggy
+could catch the rank, strong odor of the tobacco.
+
+"It's better out here and we can talk more quietly," said one of
+them, as they sat down.  "You say that Bell and his outfit start
+to-morrow?"
+
+"That's what I overheard him say when I was listening to 'em talking
+arter supper," struck in another voice, "so I guess it's the early
+trail for us, too."
+
+"Reckon so," came in a third speaker; "Jim Bell is going to travel
+fast.  He's got the best horses and mules in this part of the
+country, and he won't spare 'em."
+
+"You mean the alkali won't, I guess," put in the first speaker with
+an unpleasant laugh; "but he won't go far with ther stock.  At the
+last waterhole he'll leave 'em and go on by aeroplane."
+
+"You're crazy!"
+
+"Never more sensible in my life.  I--"
+
+"Hush!  Don't make such a racket.  Fer all we know some of them may
+be awake and hear us.  Now the old Steer Wells trail--"
+
+But here the speaker sank his voice so low that it was impossible to
+hear his further words.  But Peggy, as she crept back to bed with
+her heart throbbing a little bit fast, felt vaguely that the
+conversation boded some ill to the mining man and his party of gold
+seekers.
+
+"I'm sure I recognized one of those voices," she said to herself;
+"it was that of the tall, dark young man with the immense spurs and
+that picturesque red sash, who was eyeing us so at supper.  Jess and
+I thought he looked like a romantic brigand.  What if he should turn
+out in real earnest to be a desperate character?"
+
+Determining to speak to Jim Bell in the morning about the
+conversation she had overheard, Peggy dropped off into a deep
+slumber at last, but her dreams were disturbing ones.  Now she was
+traversing the Big Alkali, with its pungent dust in her nostrils and
+her feet crunching its crusty surface.  She was lost, and would have
+cried out had she been able to open her lips.  Then she was dying of
+thirst.  Her lips were parched and cracked and the sun beat
+pitilessly down.  So the hours passed till the stars began to pale
+and a new day was at hand.  Before sunrise the party had been
+called, and, filled with excitement, made the wooden walls of the
+National Rouse resound with the hum of preparation.
+
+Now, though Peggy at midnight had fully determined to tell Mr. Bell
+all she had overheard, Peggy, in the bright, crisp early dawn, felt
+that to do so would be absurd.  After all, the men might merely have
+been chatting about the party, whose expedition was surely an
+adventurous and interesting one.  It might make Mr. Bell think her a
+victim of girlish fancies if she went to him with the story, so
+Peggy decided to remain silent.  Afterward she was sorry for this.
+
+As arrangements had been made with the ubiquitous Cash for burros
+and ponies before the party left for the West, there was little or
+no delay in getting started.  The girls uttered delighted
+exclamations as their little animals were led up to the hotel steps
+by a long-legged Mexican who was to accompany the party to Steer
+Wells, where the ponies were to be abandoned and a permanent camp
+formed.  From that point the dash into the alkali would be made by
+aeroplane.
+
+For Peggy there was a lively little "calico" animal which both girls
+pronounced "a darling."  But Jess was no less pleased with her
+little animal, a bright bay with a white star on its forehead.  For
+the boys similar animals had been provided, while Miss Prescott's
+mount was a rather raw-boned gray of sedate appearance.  In her
+youth Miss Prescott had done a good deal of horseback riding, and
+the manner in which she sat her mount showed that she had not
+forgotten her horsemanship.  Mr. Bell and his brother bestrode
+rather heavier animals than the rest of the party, while Juan, the
+guide, contented himself with a remarkably small burro.  When in the
+saddle his lanky legs stuck out on either side of his long-eared
+steed and appeared to be sort of auxiliary propellers for the
+creature.
+
+Six pack burros had been obtained, and on two of these the camp
+equipment and utensils were carried.  The remainder of the little
+animals carried the wooden cases in which the three monoplanes were
+packed, and the boxes containing mining instruments and tools.  One
+of these was painted red, and in it was carried a supply of "giant"
+powder--a kind of dynamite used in mining operations.
+
+"I shall keep my eye on that particular burro," remarked Jimsy, "and
+if he ever runs away I shall gallop off in the opposite direction."
+
+But Mr. Bell explained that the explosive stuff was packed in such a
+manner that even the most violent shock would not set it off.
+
+"Still, we won't experiment," declared Roy.
+
+Ten minutes after the cavalcade had drawn up in front of the hotel,
+attracting the attention of the entire population of Blue Creek, the
+party was ready to set out on the first stage of their adventurous,
+journey.  The girls looked very natty in corduroy skirts, neat
+riding boots, with plain linen waists and jaunty sombreros.  The
+boys, like Mr. Bell and his brother, were in khaki, and each carried
+a fine rifle, the gift of Mr. Bell.  Miss Prescott had at first
+wished to resuscitate her old riding habit, but instead, before she
+left the East, the girls had persuaded her to have an up-to-date one
+made of cool, greenish khaki.
+
+"You look like a modern Diana," said Mr. Bell, with a gallant bow,
+which brought the color Miss Prescott's blooming cheeks.
+
+"Really, Mr. Bell, that is too bad of you, when you know I am trying
+to grow old gracefully," retorted Miss Prescott.
+
+"And now," said Mr. Bell, running a watchful eye over the entire
+outfit, "we are all ready to start."
+
+A cheer, which the girls took up, came ringing from the boys'
+throats.
+
+"Hooray!" they shouted.
+
+"Good luck!" cried Cash Dallam from his porch, and several in the
+crowd caught up the cry..
+
+Juan uttered a series of extraordinary whoops, and working his legs
+like the long limbs of a seventeen-year locust, he dashed to the
+head of the procession.  The next minute they were off, the pack
+burros trotting behind in a sedate line.
+
+But just as they started an odd thing happened.  Peggy experienced
+that peculiar feeling which sensitive persons feel when they are
+being watched.  Glancing quickly round she encountered the
+penetrating glance of the tall, dark young man who had formed one of
+the group on the porch the previous evening.  He turned his eyes
+away instantly as he perceived that his interested gaze had been
+intercepted.  As he did so, Peggy, despite the heat, felt a little
+shiver run through her.
+
+But the emotion passed in a moment under the excitement of the dash
+forward.  Before long, the rough habitations of Blue Creek lay far
+behind them, and in front there lay, glittering under the blinding
+sun, the far-reaching expanse of the desert.  Off to the southwest
+hovered what seemed to be a blue cloud on the horizon.  But they
+knew that in that direction lay the Black Rock hills, a desolate
+chain of low, barren mountains.
+
+As if by instinct they all drew rein as the solitudes closed in
+about them.  Rising in his stirrups Mr. Bell pointed into the
+distance.  "Yonder lies the end of the rainbow!" he exclaimed with a
+touch of rude poetry.
+
+"And back there are the wings to fetch forth the pot of gold,"
+laughed Jess, indicating the packing cases on the burros' backs.
+
+"Yes, the golden wings," struck in Peggy, but there was a wistful
+note underlying her light tone.  The spell of the desert, the
+unreclaimed and desolate, was upon her.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE DESERT HAWKS
+
+
+While our little party had been making its way so arduously across
+the almost impenetrable waste of sand and alkali, another party
+equipped with tough, desert-bred horses and a knowledge, so intimate
+as to be uncanny, of the secret ways and trails of the sun-bitten
+land, had made preparations for departure.
+
+It had been no fancy on Peggy's part when she imagined that she
+heard the partial details of a plot against Mr. Bell on the night
+during which she had lain awake in the rough hotel of Blue Creek.
+Had the party possessed the power of seeing through partitions of
+solid timber, they would have been able to behold within that room a
+scene transpiring which must, inevitably, have filled them with
+uneasiness and even alarm.
+
+Red Bill Summers, one of the best known of the desert hawks, as the
+nefarious rascals who ply their highwayman's trade on the desert are
+sometimes called, had been one of the passengers on the train whose
+keenly observing eyes had surveyed the little party as they
+disembarked.  His companion, the man with the drooping moustache was
+likewise invested with a somewhat sinister reputation.  But probably
+the worst of the trio who foregathered that night at the National
+House was the romantic looking young man with the red sash and the
+silver spurs whom the others called Buck Bellew.
+
+Mr. Bell and his expedition into the desert formed the topic of
+their conversation.  It was evident, as they talked, that their main
+desire was to trap or decoy him on his way, but as they discussed
+plans this intention gradually changed.
+
+"He's got kids with him, and young gals, too;" said the
+dark-mustached man, who seemed to be a little less ruffianly than
+his companions, "we don't want to do them no harm."
+
+"Not if we can help it," rejoined Red Bill Summers, wrinkling his
+low forehead, "but I ain't goin' ter let them stand in our way."
+
+"Of course not," chimed in Buck Bellew, playing with the tassels on
+his red sash, and jingling his silver-mounted spurs in a somewhat
+dandified fashion, "pretty girls, too," he added.
+
+"Ther point's just this," struck in Red Bill, apparently paying no
+attention to the other's conversation, "Jim Bell's got a desert mine
+some place out thar yonder.  This young chap he had with him, what's
+his name--"
+
+"Prescott," suggested Buck Bellew.
+
+"Ay, Prescott, that's it.  Wal, this yer Prescott has invented some
+sort of an air ship, I read that in the papers.  It's pretty clear
+to my mind that this air ship is going to be used in getting the
+gold out of the desert.  That's plain enough, eh?"
+
+"Yes, if your first idee is right.  If he's got a paying mine in
+reality," agreed Bellew.
+
+"Oh, I'm satisfied on that point.  Jim Bell's too old a fox to go
+inter the desert onless he had stithin' worth going arter."
+
+"Well, what are we going to do about it?" asked the third man with a
+grin, "build an aeroplane, too.  For myself I'm free to confess I
+ain't no sky pilot and don't never expect to be one."
+
+"This ain't a minstrel show," scowled Red Bill.
+
+"Couldn't help laffin' though," said the black-mustached one,
+"talkin' uv aviators reminded me of that story of the feller who
+went ter see I lier doctor and git some medicine.  Ther doc he says,
+'I want you to take three drops in water very day.'  Ther young chap
+fainted.  When he recovered they asked him what the matter was.  He
+says, 'I'm an aviator. Three drops in water would finish me in a
+week.'"
+
+"That'll do from you," grunted Red Bill, without the trace of a
+smile at this little anecdote, "let's git down to bizness.  Those
+folks leave here to-morrow.  They'll go early in the morning.  "We
+can't follow them too close without excitin' suspicion.  The problem
+is to keep track of them without they're knowing it."
+
+"Don't they take any servants or help?" asked Bellew after a pause.
+
+"Yes, they do."
+
+"You're certain?"
+
+"I made it my business to find out.  They are going to take a guide.
+Have him engaged, in fact."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"Oh, a no good Mexican, a chap named Juan Baptista."
+
+"Juan Baptista!" exclaimed Bellew slapping his leg, "that's fine.
+Couldn't be better."
+
+"You know him?"
+
+"So well that he'll have to do anything I say."
+
+"You can make him obey you then?"
+
+"I know of a horse stealing case in which he was mixed up.  If he
+won't do what we tell him to I'll threaten him with exposure."
+
+"Good.  He is sleeping in the corral with their ponies.  Let's go
+down there now and rouse him out.  Then we'll have part of the
+business settled."
+
+"I'm agreeable.  Come on."
+
+As noiselessly as possible the three plotters crept from the room
+and tip-toed down the corridors.  Following a long passage they
+presently emerged into a star-lit stable-yard.  In that part of the
+west doors are not locked at night, so they could go out without
+bothering about a key.
+
+"Where's the corral?" whispered Buck as they came out of the hotel.
+
+"Right over there.  See that haystack.  The greaser's asleep this
+side of it.  Right under where that saddle is hanging on the fence."
+
+"All right.  Come on."
+
+Led by Buck Bellew, whose spurs gave out an occasional jingle, they
+crept across the yard.  Presently they came upon a dark bundle lying
+huddled at the foot of the corral palings.
+
+Bellew stirred the inanimate bundle with his foot.  The spurs gave
+out a tinkling, musical jingle.  The thing moved, stirred and
+finally galvanized into life.  It was finally revealed as the figure
+of a rather ill-favored Mexican, unusually tall for one of his race
+who are, as a rule, squat and small.
+
+"Buenas tardes, Juan!" greeted Buck Bellew.
+
+"Buenas tardes, senors," was the response.  "But what for do you
+disturb me in thees way.  Know that to-morrow with the rising of
+the sun I have to awake and saddle the beasts, and fare forth into
+the alkali with party of gringoes."
+
+"That's all right.  That's what we came to talk to you about, Juan,"
+said Bellew.  He bent low and pushed his face almost into the
+Mexican's brown and sleepy countenance.
+
+"Do you know me!" he grated out.
+
+"Todos Santos!  Caramba!  It is the Senor Bellew!"
+
+"Not so loud Juan.  There may be somebody around who would recognize
+that name.  It is enough that you know me."
+
+"What do you wish with me, senor?"
+
+The Mexican's voice shook.  Evidently he feared this tall,
+good-looking, though dissolute, young Gringo.
+
+"You are to escort a party of gringos headed by a Senor Bell as far
+as Steer Wells, are you not?"
+
+"Si senor.  As I said to-morrow before the rising of the sun must I
+be awake.  I must saddle and pack, and--"
+
+"All right.  Never mind that.  I have a little bit of work for you
+to perform, too.  If you do it well you will be rewarded.  If not--"
+
+"If not senor--?"
+
+"If not--well don't let us dwell on unpleasant subjects.  I want you
+to ride with these gringos.  Listen to all that they say.  Talk to
+them and learn from them all that you can."
+
+"Of what?"
+
+"Of their destination--of where they are going--what they are going
+to do when they get there, and so on.  You understand?"
+
+"Perfectly senor.  But they have paid me well and promised more.
+Senor Bell is a good man.  He is--"
+
+"Will you do what I tell you?"
+
+The voice was sharp and imperious.
+
+"Senor, I would do much for you.  But this--"
+
+The Mexican spread his hands helplessly.
+
+"I cannot.  It would be too bad a thing to do."
+
+"Very well.  I'll call Cash Dallam.  Tell him who you are and how it
+was you who was concerned in the theft of those horses from Diablo
+River.  You know what would happen to you then.  You know--"
+
+But the Mexican was down on his knees.  His hands were raised in
+mute appeal.  His teeth' chattered like the busy heels of a clog
+dancer.
+
+"No, no, senor.  Santa Maria, no, no!" he begged.
+
+"It's entirely up to you," was the cold response.  "Now will you do
+as I say?"
+
+"Yes, yes.  A thousand times yes, senor.  Anything you say--
+anything."
+
+"I thought so," rejoined Bellew grimly.  He turned with a look of
+triumph to the two silent spectators of the scene, who nodded
+smilingly.  The Mexican's pitiful agitation seemed only to amuse
+those callous hearts.
+
+"You will travel, as I said, with these gringos," pursued Bellew,
+"and glean all the information you can.  Then, when you have found
+out all about where they mean to go, and how long they mean to stay
+and so on, you will find an opportunity to drop out of their
+company."
+
+"Si senor," quavered the man, "and then--"
+
+"And then you will be met by us.  We shall take care of you."
+
+"But Senor Bell and the senoritas?"
+
+"We will take care of them, too," was the grim response.
+
+It was not till the next day, at noon, that the three desert hawks
+left the hotel, long after the departure of the Bell party.  They
+rode slowly in the opposite direction to that in which the other
+party had gone, till they had gotten out of sight of the little
+town.  Then, taking advantage of every dip and rise in the surface
+of the plain, they retraced their steps and soon were riding on the
+track of the Bell outfit.
+
+"Whar wa'ar you all ther forenoon?" asked the black-mustached man
+of Red Bill as they rode along.
+
+"I was doing a bit of profitable business," was the rejoinder.
+
+"Selling something?"
+
+"No finding something out.  Boys, Jim Bell's in our power."
+
+"In our power," laughed the other, a laugh in which Bellew chimed
+in.  "I reckon you don't know him yet."
+
+"Don't eh?" snarled Red Bill, stung into acrimonious retort.  "I
+reckon your brain works just a bit too quick, Buck."
+
+"Waal, ef you know so much, let's hear it?"
+
+The red-sashed, silver-spurred Buck Bellew reined in closer to his
+companions, rowelling his little active "paint" horse as he did so,
+till it jumped and curvetted.
+
+"It's just this," said Red Bill Summers, unconsciously lowering his
+tone although there was no one about to hear but his companions, a
+few, blasted-looking yuccas and, far overhead, a wheeling buzzard.
+
+"Jim Bell ain't never filed no location of ther mine with ther
+guv'ment."
+
+If he had expected to produce a sensation, he must have felt
+justified by the results of this announcement.  Buck Bellew
+whistled.  The black-mustached man gave a low, long-drawn-out
+exclamation of:
+
+"Wo-o-o-w!"
+
+"Thought you'd sit up and take notice," grinned their leader.
+"Sounds foolish-like, but it's true.  I searched ther records, but
+it ain't on 'em."
+
+"Maybe he's filed a claim some place else," suggested the
+black-mustached man.
+
+"There you go, throwing cold water as usual," snorted Buck Bellew.
+
+"Taint cold water.  It's common, ornery hoss sense.  That's what it
+is.  Do you s'pose that any man 'ud be foolish enough to locate a
+rich mine an' then not file a claim to it?"
+
+"Heard of sich things been done," commented Red Bill.  "Maybe he
+ain't over and above anxious fer anyone ter go in alongside of him
+afore he's had a chanct ter take up some more land.  Maybe--"
+
+"Waal, no use guessing at sich things," rejoined Buck; "fer my part
+I guess Red is right.  Jim Bell ain't had the hoss sense te file a
+claim.  And if he ain't--"
+
+"That makes it all the easier fer us.  Wonder ef thet feller Juan is
+learning much?"
+
+Bill Summers was the speaker.
+
+"He's sharp as a steel trap," volunteered Bellew, "when he wants to
+be."
+
+"I guess arter that dressing down you giv' him las' night he'll want
+to be, all right," opined the black-mustached man.
+
+"Guess so," grinned Buck; "if he ain't, it'll be the worse fer him."
+
+As he spoke they topped a little rise.  Over in front of them, and
+on all sides--the desert, vast, illimitable, untrod of man, lay, a
+desolate expanse of nothingness.
+
+Far, far off could be seen a tiny blue cloud, resting on the
+horizon--the desert range.
+
+"Thar's whar Jim Bell's mine is, I'll bet a hoss and saddle," said
+Bellew reining in his horse and pointing to the distant azure mass.
+
+"Guess you'd win," nodded Red Bill Summers, "and," he added, his
+keen eyes narrowing to slits he gazed straight ahead, "and thar, I
+reckon, is Jim Bell himself and his party."
+
+They followed the direction of his gaze.  Far off across the
+glittering ocean of sand and alkali a yellowish cloud--almost
+vaporish, arose.  It seemed to be a sort of water spout on land.  It
+drifted lazily upward.  The experienced desert hawks knew it for
+what it was.  The dust cloud raised by a company of travelers.
+
+As their glances rested on it intently, not one of the three figures
+toping the crest of the little rise, spoke.
+
+Their tired horses, too, stood absolutely still.  Men and animals
+might have been petrified figures, carved out of the desolation
+about them.  There was a something impressive about them as they
+stood there in the midst of the desert glare.  Silent, hawk-like,
+and intent.  Their very poses seemed to convey a sense of menace--of
+danger.
+
+Suddenly they wheeled and turned, and their mounts, as the spurs
+struck their damp sides, broke into a lope.  As they galloped, Red
+Bill burst into a song.  A lugubrious, melancholy thing, like most
+of the songs of the plainsmen.
+
+"Bury me out on lone prair-ee
+Out where the snakes and the coyotes be;
+Drop not a tear on my sage brush grave
+Out on the lone prair-e-e-e-e-e!"
+
+Then the others struck in, their ponies' hoofs making an
+accompaniment to the gruesome words:
+
+"The sands will shift in the desert wind;
+My bones will rot in the alkali kind;
+I'll be happier there than ever I be
+In my grave, on the lone prair-e-e-e-e-e!"
+
+It began to sound like a dirge, but still the leader of the hawks of
+the desert kept it up.  He bellowed it out now in a harsh, shrill
+voice.  It rasped uncomfortably, like rusty iron grating on rusty
+iron.
+
+"Maybe upon the judgment day;
+When all sinners their debt must pay;
+They'll find me and bind me and judge poor me;
+All in my grave, on the lone prair-e-e-e-e-e-e!"
+
+As the last words of this dismal chant rang out, an echo seemed to
+be flung back at the singer from behind a neighboring ridge, upon
+which the lone yuccas stood upright, like, so many figures of formed
+bits of humanity.
+
+"Ye-e-e-e-e-e-e!"
+
+It came in a long drawn out wail that fairly seemed to make the
+desert ring with its gruesome echoes.  All at once it was taken up
+from another point.  Then another echoed it back.  It seemed to be
+proceeding from a dozen quarters of the compass at once.
+
+Strong nerved as all three of the riders were, it appeared to make a
+strange impression on them.
+
+"What in the name of Kit Carson wuz that?" demanded Red Bill drawing
+rein.
+
+"Dunno.  It sounded like someone havin' fun with that ther cheerful
+little song of yourn," said the black-mustached man.
+
+"That's what it did.  I'd like to find the varmint.  I'd make some
+fun fer him."
+
+The man scowled savagely.  His nerves had been unpleasantly shaken
+by the wild, unearthly cries.
+
+"It didn't sound human," he said at length; "tell you what, let's
+jes' look aroun' and see if we kin find any trace of who done it."
+
+Buck Bellew said nothing but he grinned to himself.  Plainly
+something amused him hugely.
+
+"All right;" he said, "we'll look."
+
+They rode about among the desert dips and gullies for some time, but
+they could discover no trace of any agency that could have produced
+the weird cries.  Both Red Bill and the black-mustached man were
+plainly nonplussed.
+
+"This beats all," opined Summers.  "I don't even see a track any
+place."
+
+"Nor don't I," rejoined his companion seriously.  Both were
+superstitious men, a failing apparently not shared by Bellew, who
+stood regarding them, seated easily sideways in his saddle, with an
+amused look.
+
+"Hey Bellew, why don't you come an' look.  You alters wuz a good
+tracker?" demanded Red Bill looking up suddenly.
+
+"Not fer me, thanks," was the easy response, "ef you want to hunt
+spooks--"
+
+"Who said it wuz a spook or any such pack uv nonsense?" glared back
+Summers.
+
+"I didn't," declared the black-mustached man with great
+positiveness.
+
+"No more did I," angrily sputtered Red Bill "thar ain't no such
+things nohow."
+
+"I dunno," said the black-mustached man seriously.  "I do recollec'
+hearing my old grandmother, back East, tell about a ghost what she
+seen once.  Want ter hear about it?"
+
+No one replied, and taking silence for consent, he went on.
+
+"Grandmother was married to a decent old chap that was a teamster.
+He used to haul farm stuff to the city in the day and it was often
+pretty late afore he got out again.  Well, on his way he had to pass
+a cemetery, a buryin' ground you know, and I tell you he didn't like
+it.  It sort of got on his nerves to think that some night one of
+them dead folks lying there all so quiet might arise from ther
+graves.
+
+"It seems as how it allers haunted him ter think that some night as
+he wuz drivin' by that ther buryin' ground--"
+
+"Yer said that once before," snapped Summers looking nervously about
+him, "get on with your story."
+
+"Well I am, ain't I?"
+
+"Not fast enough."
+
+"Waal this is a ghost story and ghosts don't move fast."
+
+"Ho! ho!" laughed Bellew hollowly.
+
+"As I was sayin', grandpop didn't like the idee of some night seeing
+a tall form, all in white, come gliding down among them tombstones,
+and raising its hand cry to him in a solemn voice--"
+
+"Wow."
+
+The shout came from Summers.  He had suddenly felt something light
+on his shoulder.  Thence it had crawled to neck and laid clammy feet
+upon him. It was an immense dragon fly, but he had evidently
+mistaken it for something else, to judge by the start and
+exclamation he had given.
+
+"Ain't gittin' on yer nerves, be I?" asked the black-mustached man
+innocently.
+
+"No, no.  Get on with your fool story for goodness sake."
+
+"You wuz a sayin' thet your fool grandpop wuz supposin' that ef
+something said to him as he wuz-oh, go on and tell it yourself!"
+
+"All right.  Well then grandpop was jes' a thinkin' how awful it 'ud
+be ef anything like that ever did happen.  He'd come home and talk
+to grandma'am at nights about it.  I tell you his nerves was
+powerful upsot.  Suthin' like yours."
+
+"Like mine, you long-legged lizard!"
+
+"I mean like yours might hev bin ef you'd bin in my grandpop's
+place, Red."
+
+"Oh, all right.  Perceed.  What nex'?"
+
+"Waal, one night jes what he'd bin a dreadin' did come ter pass.  He
+was goin' by ther graveyard when he hearn the awfulest screech you
+ever hearn--"
+
+"Yow-e-ow-ee-ow-ow!"
+
+Red Bill Summers started and turned pale.  It was a repetition of
+the cry that had interrupted his song.  Without wasting time on
+ceremonies, he dug his spurs into his horse and dashed off.  The
+narrator of the ghost story, as badly scared as his companion,
+followed him at post haste.  Ther Bellew laughing heartily, turned
+and followed them.  But at a more leisurely speed.  From time to
+time, as he pursued the flying forms, his big frame shook with
+mirth.  Somebody once said that a man who gives a hearty laugh was
+not all bad.  If this is true, there must have been considerable
+good in Buck Bellew.
+
+After about a mile of riding he overtook the other two.
+
+"What's the hurry?" he inquired easily.
+
+"Nuthin', nuthin'," said Summers, still a bit shaky, "my pony scairt
+at suthin, I reckon, and jes' naturally dashed off.  I had a hard
+job te pull the cayuse in."
+
+"Same hyar, same hyar," said the black-mustached man.
+
+"Rot!" laughed Bellew.  "In my opinion, you're both a pair of
+cowards.  Don't pull your gun on me, Summers.  You wouldn't fire at
+me, and you know it."
+
+Summers sullenly put up his gun.
+
+"Say, what's ther matter with you, Buck?" he asked grumpily.
+
+"What's the matter with you two, you mean?  Why, you dashed off like
+a girl in a red sweater with a bull on her heels."
+
+"I tole you ther ponies ran away," said Summers, shifting his little
+eyes.  Somehow he couldn't look Bellew in the face.
+
+"Yes, and I guess what made 'em run was suthin' like this--"
+
+A quizzical look stole over Bellew's lean, handsome features.  All
+at once the air became filled with the same mysterious sounds that
+had so alarmed Summers and the other man.
+
+"Ye-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-ow-w-w-w-w-w-e-e-eeeee!"
+
+"Buck!  You consarned old ventriloconquest!" shouted Summers, vastly
+relieved as Bellew burst into a roar of hearty laughter.
+
+"Forgot I used to be ventriloquist with a medicine show, eh?"
+chuckled Bellew, rolling about in his saddle.  "Come in handy
+sometimes, don't it?"
+
+"Waal, next time yer goin' ter practice, jes' let us know in
+advance."
+
+Summers' face held rather a sheepish grin as he spoke.  The
+black-mustached man looked even more foolish.
+
+"Make a good signal, wouldn't it?" asked Bellew presently.
+
+"Yes.  By the way, reckon you could imitate a coyote, Buck?"
+
+"Easy.  Listen!"
+
+A perfect imitation of a coyote's yapping, hyena-like cry rang out.
+
+"Great.  Maybe we can use that sometime."
+
+How soon that cry was to be used, and to what disastrous effect on
+our little party of adventurers, we shall see as our story
+progresses.  But the next time Buck Bellew gave that thrilling,
+spine-tightening cry, was to be under far different circumstances,
+and with far different results--results fraught with great
+importance to our young adventurers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE DIVINING RODS
+
+
+"What wonderful clouds.  They remind one of the fantastic palaces of
+the Arabian Nights!" exclaimed Miss Prescott.
+
+It was at the close of the noonday halt that she spoke, reclining
+with the rest of the party under a canvas shelter, beneath which
+lunch had been eaten.
+
+Off to the southwest the clouds she referred to had been, in fact,
+gathering for some time.  Domed, terraced and pinnacled, they rose
+in gloomy grandeur on the far horizon.  But Miss Prescott had not
+been the first to notice them.  For some reason Mr. Bell, after
+gazing at the vaporous masses for a few minutes, looked rather
+troubled.  He summoned Juan, who was feeding his beloved burro, and
+waved his hand toward the clouds, the same time speaking rapidly in
+Spanish.
+
+"What is it?  Is there a storm coming?" asked Jess, noting Mr.
+Bell's somewhat troubled look.
+
+"I do not know, and Juan says he is not certain yet either," was the
+response.  "Let us hope not, however."
+
+"I don't see why it should trouble us," said Peggy.  "We have good
+tents and shelter, and as far as a good wetting is concerned I
+should think it would do this dried up place a lot of good."
+
+"That is not what was worrying me," confessed Mr. Bell with a smile;
+"if it was to be an ordinary Eastern storm I should not mind any
+more than you.  But the desert has many moods--as many as--you will
+pardon me--a young lady.  Even the storms of the Big Alkali are not
+like others.  They are dry storms."
+
+"This would be no place for an umbrella dealer then," remarked Jimsy
+airily.
+
+"No, I am speaking seriously," went on Mr. Bell; "frequently such
+storms do great damage through lightning, although, during their
+progress, not a drop of rain falls.  The electrical display,
+however, is sometimes terrific.  That is what I mean when I say 'a
+dry storm."'
+
+"I can't bear lightning," cried Jess; "I always go in the cellar at
+home when it comes."
+
+"Never mind, Jess, Roy and I will dig you one if the storm hits us,"
+put in her brother gallantly.
+
+"And one for me, too, please!" cried Miss Prescott; "I'm dreadfully
+afraid of lightning."
+
+"Well, let us hope that we shall none of us have any cause for
+alarm," put in Peter Bell, the former hermit.  "When I lived my
+solitary life I often used to wander out in the height of a storm.
+It was beautiful to watch the lightning ripping and tearing across
+the sky.  The lightning and the thunder did not scare me a bit.
+But--."
+
+"You'd soon have changed your mind if by lightning you'd been hit,"
+struck in Jimsy before the old man could complete his verse.  A good
+natured laugh, in which Peter Bell joined as heartily as the others,
+followed this bit of improvisation.
+
+"Well, let us be pressing on," said Mr. Bell presently; "we are not
+carrying any too heavy a water supply, and I am anxious to replenish
+it by nightfall.  By the way, that means a new experience for you
+youngsters.  You will get your first taste of alkali water."
+
+"But how are you going to get water in this desert?" exclaimed Roy
+wonderingly.
+
+"You will see before many hours," was the reply with which they had
+to be content.
+
+All that afternoon they pressed on without anything of interest
+occurring.  The distant clouds grew more imposing and blacker in
+hue, but they seemed to draw no closer.  The heat, however, was
+oppressive, and the glare of the desert hurt Peggy's eyes.
+
+"If they didn't look so hideous, I wish I'd brought along those old
+smoked glasses I wore on the beach at Atlantic City," she thought
+more than once.
+
+Sundown found the party skirting along the foot of rough, broken
+hills clothed with a scanty vegetation.  Juan nodded approvingly and
+at once suggested making the camp there.
+
+"We'll see if there is any water first," said Mr. Bell.
+
+"It looks as if you need not take the trouble," declared Roy, "it's
+as dry as a week-old crust."
+
+"Not quite so fast, young man," laughed Mr. Bell, "appearances are
+often deceitful, especially on the desert."
+
+He dismounted, and reaching into one of the packs drew forth a
+slender forked stick.  Then, while they all gazed in a puzzled
+silence at his actions, he passed it hither and thither over the dry
+floor of the desert.
+
+"Oh, I know what it is now!" cried Peggy suddenly.  "It's a divining
+rod!"
+
+"A divining rod?" echoed Roy.  "What's that?"
+
+"Oh, look!" cried Jess, before Peggy could answer; "it's moving!"
+
+The slender switch held by Mr. Bell was certainly behaving in a very
+odd manner.  It could be seen to bend and sway and hop and skip
+about as if it had been suddenly endued with life.  Mr. Bell, who
+was by now at some distance from the party, looked up with a
+satisfied expression.
+
+"Get a shovel and dig here!" he ordered Juan.  But the Mexican had
+fallen into a deep slumber from which it took not a little effort to
+awaken him.  When he was finally roused and made to understand what
+was required of him, he set to work with a will, however, and made
+the dirt fly.
+
+The boys pitched in, too, and before long quite a deep hole had been
+excavated.  The girls, peeping cautiously over its edge, gave a
+delighted cry.  Actual water was beginning to drain into it from the
+side.  True, it was not of the color or temperature they had been
+used to associating with the fluid, but still the sight of it was
+welcome enough to the travel-stained wayfarers.
+
+"You can come out now, boys, and leave the hole to fill up, which it
+will soon do," declared Mr. Bell.
+
+The interval of waiting for the water to flow in a goodly quantity
+was spent in adjusting the girls' tent, and in setting the camp to
+rights generally.  A sort of blue-colored bunch grass grew in
+considerable quantities about the water hole, and this the burros
+seemed to find quite palatable.  The ponies and horses, however,
+would not touch it, and had to be regaled on the pressed hay and
+grain which were carried for the purpose.
+
+In the midst of all this there came a sudden sharp cry from the
+water hole, followed by a loud splash.
+
+"It's old Mr. Bell!  He's fallen into the water hole!" shrilled
+Peggy.
+
+"Head over heels, too.  Hurry and we'll get him out," cried the
+boys.
+
+Roy seized up a lariat, and followed by the others started for the
+hole.  It was as they had guessed.  Venturing too close to the brink
+of the excavation, old Mr. Bell had slipped, and the former hermit
+was floundering about like a grampus in the water when his rescuers
+appeared.  Luckily, it was not deep, and they soon had him out of it
+and on his feet.  The old man, with great good nature, declared that
+he had rather enjoyed his involuntary bath than otherwise.  He was
+so mud-stained and drenched, however, that it was necessary for him
+to make an immediate change of clothes.  When he emerged from his
+tent with dry apparel, the aged recluse felt moved to compose a
+verse, which he did as follows:
+
+"Within the mud hole's watery depths,
+A grave I almost met,
+But luckily I was pulled out Alive, but very wet."
+
+"Well, Peter," laughed his brother, "you certainly are a poetic
+philosopher.  But now, if you are quite finished with the water
+hole, we will draw some for our own use, and then Juan can let the
+stock have a drink."
+
+As the first bucket for camp use was drawn, Peggy hastened up with a
+cup and extended it.
+
+"Oh, do let me have a drink," she exclaimed; "I'm dying with thirst
+and can't wait for tea."
+
+"Same here," cried Jess, eagerly.
+
+Mr. Bell smiled and eyed them quizzically.
+
+"I wouldn't advise you young ladies to try it till it has been
+boiled," he said, "but of course if you insist--"
+
+"We do," cried both girls.
+
+"Fill the cups, Juan," ordered Mr. Bell.
+
+The guide did so, and Peggy and Jess eagerly raised the receptacles.
+But hardly had they taken a swallow before they hurriedly ceased
+drinking.
+
+"Oh, what awful stuff!" sputtered Peggy, while Jess simply gasped.
+
+"Bah!  It tastes like aged eggs added Roy, who had also taken a
+swallow.  "Is it poisonous?"
+
+"Not a bit of it," laughed Mr. Bell; "it is simply alkali water, and
+when you have drunk as much of it as I have you'll be used to it and
+not mind it.  But I must admit that on first introduction it is
+rather trying.  It is better when it is boiled, though.  It seems to
+lose that acrid flavor."
+
+And so it proved; and Miss Prescott declared that she had never
+enjoyed a cup of tea so much as the one she drank that evening at
+supper on the desert.  As dusk fell, Juan produced a battered guitar
+from a case which was strapped to the back of his saddle, and
+seating himself cross-legged in the midst of a semi-circle of
+enthusiastic listeners he banged out a lot of Spanish airs.
+
+Then Jimsy danced a jig with incomparable agility and Roy did some
+tricks with cards and handkerchiefs that were declared superior to
+anything heretofore seen.  But the little entertainment was to come
+to an abrupt conclusion.  So engrossed had they been in its progress
+that they had not noticed that the sky had clouded over, and that it
+had suddenly grown insufferably oppressive.
+
+All at once a red glare enveloped the camp.  It lasted only for the
+fraction of a second, but in its brief existence it displayed some
+very white and alarmed faces.
+
+The electric storm that Mr. Bell had dreaded was upon them.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A DRY STORM
+
+
+In describing what immediately followed, Peggy has always declared
+that her sole impression was of continuous "flash and crash."
+
+The first red glare, as a jagged streak of lightning tore across the
+sky, was followed by an earsplitting thunder roll.  Almost instantly
+the entire heavens became alive with wriggling serpents of light.
+The criss-cross work of the bolts ranged in hue from a vivid
+eye-burning blue to an angry red.  And all the time the thunder
+roared and crashed in one unceasing pandemonium.  A smell of
+brimstone and sulphur filled the air.  The tethered stock whinnied
+and plunged about in mad terror.
+
+"Juan, look to the stock!" shouted Mr. Bell above the turmoil.  But
+Juan, at the first crash, had flung himself face downward on the
+sand and lay there trembling and praying.
+
+As there seemed no possibility of getting him up, the boys and Mr.
+Bell set to work on the by no means easy task of securing the
+terrified animals more carefully.
+
+In the meantime, the girls, in Miss Prescott's tent, were having a
+hard time to convince that lady that the end of the universe was not
+at hand.
+
+"Oh, dear, why did we ever come out here!" cried the terrified
+woman; and then the next minute:
+
+"Just hark at that!  We shall all be killed!  I know it!  Oh, this
+is terrible!"
+
+"It will soon be over, aunt, dear," exclaimed Peggy bravely, though
+her own head ached and her eyes burned cruelly from the glare and
+uproar.
+
+"Yes, dear Miss Prescott," chimed in Jess; "it can't last; it--"
+
+There was a sudden blinding glare, followed by a crash that seemed
+as if the skies must have been rent open.  With it mingled a loud
+scream from Miss Prescott and cries and shouts from outside the
+tent.
+
+"Something in the camp has been struck!" exclaimed Peggy rushing to
+the tent door.
+
+"It's Juan's burro!" cried Jess, who had followed her; "look at the
+poor thing, off over there."
+
+In the radiance of the electric display they could see quite plainly
+the still form of the little animal lying outstretched on the
+ground. Juan heard the girl's cry, and for the first time since the
+storm had begun he moved.  Directly he perceived the motionless form
+of his mount he appeared to lose all his terror of the storm, and
+sprinted off toward it on his long legs.  As he ran he called aloud
+on all the saints to look down upon his miserable fate.
+
+But as he reached the side of his long-eared companion, the
+creature, which had only been stunned by the bolt, suddenly sprang
+to its feet and, no doubt crazed by fear, began striking out with
+its hind hoofs.  As ill luck would have it, poor Juan came within
+direct range of the first kick, and was sent flying backward by its
+force.
+
+Behind him lay the water hole, and before he could stop the cowardly
+guide found himself over the brink and struggling in the muddy
+water.  His cries for help were piercing, but as Mr. Bell and the
+boys were busy, and as they knew that the Mexican was in no actual
+peril, they left him there for a time.
+
+In the meantime, the first terrific violence of the storm had
+subsided, and before long it passed.  As it growled and muttered off
+in the distance, lighting up the desert with an occasional livid
+glare, Juan came scrambling out of the mud-hole.  He did not say a
+word, but went straight up to his burro.  He saddled it in silence,
+strapped his old guitar on its back and, swinging himself into the
+saddle, dashed off across the alkali, his long legs working like
+pendulums on either side of the little creature.  It actually seemed
+as if he were propelling instead of riding it.
+
+ The boys wanted to know if they should set off in pursuit of their
+errant guide, but Mr. Bell said that it would be the best thing to
+let him go if he wished.
+
+"He was more of a hindrance than a help," he declared, "and he and
+his burro between them ate far more than their share of food."
+
+"But won't the poor man become lost or starve?" asked Miss Prescott,
+who, now that her alarm had passed with the storm, had joined the
+group.
+
+"Not much danger of that," laughed Mr. Bell, "a fellow of Juan's
+type can subsist on next to nothing if he has to, and his burro is
+as tough as he is, I suspect."
+
+"At any rate, he must have thought so when he got that kick,"
+laughed Peggy.
+
+"It reminded me of a verse I once heard," put in the former hermit.
+
+And then, without waiting for anyone to ask him to repeat the lines
+in question, he struck up:
+
+"As a rule, never fool
+With a buzz saw or a mule."
+
+"I expect that's excellent advice," laughed the old man's brother,
+"but now, ladies and gentlemen, as the excitement of the night seems
+to be over, I think we had better retire.  Remember, an early start
+to-morrow, and if all goes well we ought to be at Steer Wells by
+nightfall."
+
+"If we steer well," muttered Jimsy, not daring to perpetrate the pun
+in a louder tone of voice.
+
+Fifteen minutes later, silence entrenched the camp, which seemed
+like a tiny island of humanity in the vast silence stretched round
+about.  As they slumbered, the girls, with their silver-mounted
+revolvers--gifts from Mr. Bell--under their pillows, the clouds of
+the dry storm rolled away altogether, and the effulgent moon of the
+Nevada solitudes arose.
+
+Her rays silvered the desolate range of barren hills and threw into
+sharp relief the black shadows which marked the deep gulches,
+cutting the otherwise smoothly rounded surfaces of the strange
+formation.
+
+Suddenly, from one of the gulches, the figure of a man on horseback
+emerged and stood, motionless as a statue, bathed in moonlight on an
+elevation directly overlooking the camp.  For perhaps five minutes
+the horseman remained thus, silent as his surroundings.  But
+suddenly a shrill whinny rang out from one of the horses belonging
+to our party, who had seen the strange animal.
+
+Instantly the figure turned and wheeled, and when Mr. Bell, ever on
+the alert, emerged from his tent to ascertain what the noise might
+portend, nothing was to be seen.
+
+"That's odd," muttered the mining man, "horses don't usually whinny
+in the night except to others of their kind who may suddenly appear.
+I wonder--but, pshaw!" he broke off; "the thing's impossible.  Even
+if our mission were known nobody would dare to molest us.
+
+"But just the same," he continued, as, after a careful scrutiny, he
+returned to the tent he shared with his brother, "but just the same
+I'd like to know just why that animal whinnied."
+
+Whoever the watcher of the camp had been, he did not reappear that
+night, but while old Mr. Bell prepared breakfast, and the girls were
+what the boys called "fixing up," the mining man summoned the boys
+to him and observed that he wished them to take a little stroll to
+see if better grass for the stock could not be found in the hills.
+This was so obviously an excuse to get them off for a quiet talk
+that the lads exchanged glances of inquiry.  They said nothing,
+however, but followed Mr. Bell as he struck off toward the barren
+range.
+
+As soon as they were out of earshot of the camp the mining man
+informed them of his suspicions and of what he had heard the night
+before.
+
+"On thinking it over I am more than ever convinced that somebody
+must have been hovering about the camp last night," he declared,
+"but it is no use alarming the others unnecessarily, and, after all,
+I may be mistaken.  In any event, from now on, we will post
+ourselves on sentry duty at night so as not to be taken by surprise
+in the event of any malefactors attacking us."
+
+"Then you really think, sir, that somebody may have wind of the
+object of our journey and molest us?" inquired Roy soberly.
+
+"I don't know; but it is always best to be on the safe side," was
+the rejoinder; "the towns on the edge of the desert are full of bad
+characters and it is possible that in some way the reason of our
+expedition has leaked out."
+
+By this time they had walked as far as the mouth of one of the bare
+canyons that split the range of low, barren hills.  Roy, whose eyes
+had been thoughtfully fixed on the ground, suddenly gave a sharp
+exclamation.
+
+"Look here, Mr. Bell," he exclaimed, pointing downward, "what do you
+make of that?"
+
+He indicated the imprints of a horse's hoofs on the dry ground.
+
+"You have sharp eyes, my boy," was the reply; "those hoof-prints are
+not more than a few hot old, and certainly clinch my idea that
+someone on horseback was in the vicinity of the camp last night."
+
+Jimsy looked rather grave at this.  Roy, too, had a troubled note in
+his voice as he inquired:
+
+"What do you make of it all, Mr. Bell?"
+
+"Too early to say yet, my boy," said the mining man, who had been
+studying the hoof-prints, "but I can tell you this, that only one
+man was here last night."
+
+"We have nothing to fear from one man," exclaimed Jimsy.
+
+"I know that," was Mr. Bell's response, "but this lone visitor of
+last night may have been only the scout or forerunner of the others,
+whoever they may be."
+
+"That's so," agreed Roy, "at any rate he must have had some strong
+object in spying on us."
+
+ Nobody would come out into this desolate place without an aim of
+some sort."
+
+"No question but that you are right there," agreed Mr. Bell, whose
+face was grave, "I have half a mind to turn back and not bring the
+ladies further into what may prove to be a serious situation."
+
+"So far as Peggy is concerned you'd have a hard time trying to get
+her to turn back now," declared Roy; "her mind is bent upon helping
+to get the air line from the mine into working order, and I guess
+Jess feels the same way about it."
+
+"It would be a sad blow to them to have to go back now," agreed
+Jimsy; "suppose, Mr. Bell, we wait and make our suspicions more of a
+certainty before we decide upon anything."
+
+"Perhaps that would be the best course," agreed the lad's elder,
+"but I must confess I feel sorely troubled.  It is agreed, is it
+not, that not a word of our suspicions are to be breathed to the
+ladies?"
+
+"Oh, of course," agreed Roy; "after all," he added cheerfully, "the
+man who left those tracks may have been a prospector or a desert
+traveler of some kind, and have had no sinister motives."
+
+"I am inclined to think that, too," said Mr. Bell, after a pause;
+"after all, nobody could have any object in attacking us at such a
+time."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+PROFESSOR "WANDERING WILLIAM"
+
+
+The ponies, and the larger steeds ridden by the elders of the party,
+were pushed forward at a rapid gait all the morning.  As had been
+explained by Mr. Bell, it was necessary for them to reach Steer
+Wells by sundown, as they could not hope to encounter any more water
+holes till they gained that point.
+
+In the meantime, water was carried by means of an ingenious
+arrangement of Mr. Bell's.  This was nothing more or less than two
+large bags of water-proof fabric, which could be filled and then
+flung on the pack burros' backs.  In this way enough was carried for
+each of the animals to have a scanty supply, although there was none
+too much left over.  That day's luncheon halt was made near a stony,
+arid canyon in the barren hills, along whose bases they were still
+traveling.
+
+While the others set about getting a meal, Peggy and Jess linked
+arms and wandered off a short distance from the camp, bent on
+exploring.  All at once Peggy gave a sudden, sharp little cry.
+
+"Oh, Jess, look! What a funny little creature!"
+
+"Ugh, what a horrid looking thing!  What can it be?" exclaimed
+Jimsy's sister.
+
+"It's--it's like a large spider!" cried Peggy suddenly, "and what
+horrid hairy legs it has, and--oh, Jess--it's going to attack us!"
+
+"I do believe it is o-o-o-h!"
+
+The cry was a long drawn out one of shrill alarm as the "large
+spider," as Peggy had termed it, tucked its legs under its fat,
+hairy body and made a deliberate spring at the two girls.  Only
+their agility in leaping backward saved them from being landed upon
+by it.  But far from being dismayed apparently, the creature was
+merely enraged by this failure.  It was gathering itself for another
+spring when:
+
+Crack!
+
+There was a puff of smoke and a vicious report from Peggy's little
+revolver, and the next instant the thing that had so alarmed the two
+young girls lay still.  At the same moment the rest of the party,
+frightened by the sound of the sudden shot, came running up.
+
+"A tarantula!" cried Mr. Bell, "and one of the biggest I have ever
+seen.  It is fortunate for you, young ladies, that he did not bite
+you or there might have been a different tale to tell.  Which of you
+shot it?"
+
+"Oh, Peggy of course," cheerfully admitted Jess; "I can't pull the
+trigger yet without shutting my eyes."
+
+"Hurrah for Peggy Prescott, America's premier girl rifle and
+revolver shot!" shouted Jimsy in blatant imitation of a show man.
+
+"What a pair of fangs!" cried Roy, who had picked up the dead
+tarantula and was examining it carefully.
+
+The girls could not repress a shudder as they looked at the dead
+giant spider, lying with its great legs outstretched, on Roy's hand.
+
+"The Mexicans have a superstition that even if one does not die from
+the effects of their bites that the tarantula can inoculate a person
+with dancing poison," said Mr. Bell.
+
+"Dancing poison?" they all cried in an astonished chorus.
+
+"Yes," explained the mining man, "that is to say, that its poison
+will cause a sort of St. Vitus's dance."
+
+"Good gracious!  How unpleasant!" cried Jess.  "I'm awfully fond of
+dancing, but I wouldn't care to come by my fun that way."
+
+"Better than being bitten by the kissing bug anyhow," teased Roy
+mischievously.
+
+The episode of the tarantula furnished plenty of conversation
+through the luncheon hour, and caused Miss Prescott many shudders.
+The poor lady was beginning to think that more dangers lurked in the
+desert than on any of her most dreaded street crossings in New York.
+
+But little time was spent over the midday meal, and then the final
+"leg" of their dash across the alkali to Steer Wells began.  The sun
+was low, bathing the desert in a crimson glow, when Mr. Bell, who
+was riding in advance, gave a sudden shout and pointed ahead to a
+patch of forlorn looking trees in the distance.
+
+"Steer Wells," he announced.
+
+The boys gave a cheer and plunged forward, with Peggy and Jess close
+behind.  But the others advanced more sedately.
+
+But as they drew closer to the clump of trees standing so oddly
+isolated amid the waste of alkali, they noted with surprise that
+they were not to be the only persons to share the hospitality of the
+oasis.  From amid the foliage a column of blue smoke was rising,
+betokening the presence of other wayfarers.  Instantly speculation
+became rife among the young folks.  Who could be the sharers of
+their excursion into the untraveled wastes?  They were soon to
+discover.
+
+A strange figure stepped from the trees as the ponies, in a cloud of
+dust, dashed up.  It was that of a tall, angular man with a pair of
+iron-rimmed spectacles perched on a protuberant nose.  He was clean
+shaven, except for a goatee, and his wrinkled skin was the color of
+old leather.  Long locks of gray hair hung lankly almost to his
+narrow, sloping shoulders.  Above these straggly wisps was perched
+jauntily a big sombrero of regulation plainsman type.  But the
+strangest feature of this strange personage lay in the remainder of
+his attire, which consisted of a long black frock coat hanging
+baggily to his knees and a pair of trousers of the largest and most
+aggressive check pattern imaginable.  His feet were encased in
+patent leather boots, over which were gaiters of a brilliant yellow.
+
+Under the trees could now be seen a small wagon painted a bright
+red, which bore upon its sides the inscription:
+
+ "Professor Wandering William, Indian Herb Remedies.  They make the
+desert of life to bloom like the Rose Gardens of Mount Hybla.  50
+cents per bottle or half a dozen for $2.50."
+
+The professor's angular mule team were browsing on the scanty grass
+that grew within the circle of trees, while above a fire of chips
+and twigs there hung an iron pot, which evidently contained the
+professor's supper.  As for the professor himself, he clearly stood
+revealed in the person of the strange character who now, taking off
+his sombrero, waved it three times around his head in solemn rhythm,
+and then, raising a high pitched voice, shouted:
+
+"Welcome!  Thrice welcome to this fertile spot amid the stony
+desert.  Like the Great Indian Herb Remedy, it blooms like the Rose
+Gardens of Hybla.  Ahem!"
+
+The conclusion of this speech was a dry cough, after which the
+professor solemnly readjusted his hat, and coming forward, said in
+quite ordinary tones:
+
+
+"Howdy-do."
+
+By this time the remainder of the party had galloped up, and arrived
+just as the young folks, hardly knowing what to say, had responded
+"howdy-do" likewise.
+
+"I hardly expected to find anyone else here," said Mr. Bell, and
+then by way of introduction, he rattled off their names, the
+professor bowing low as each was presented.
+
+"And now," said he, "allow me to present myself, Professor Wandering
+William, proprietor and originator of the Great Indian Herb
+Medicine, good alike for man or beast, child or adult.  Insist on
+the original and only.  Allow me," and the speaker suddenly whisked
+round with unexpected agility and darting toward his wagon opened
+the back of the vehicle and presently reappeared with several small
+bottles.  He handed one to each of the new arrivals.
+
+"Samples!" he explained, "and free as the birds of the air.  If you
+like the samples, make a purchase.  Money back if not exactly as
+represented."
+
+With as grave faces as they could assume, they all thanked this
+queer character, and then Mr. Bell asked.
+
+"May I inquire what you are doing in the desert, Professor.  I
+should think you would find this part of the country a most
+unprofitable field."
+
+"My dear sir," rejoined the professor, "twice a year I make a
+pilgrimage into the desert to gather the ingredients of The Remedy.
+You behold me now almost at the conclusion of my labors.  In a few
+days I shall return to the haunts of civilization and gladden the
+hearts of mankind by disbursing The Remedy on my terms as quoted on
+the wagon yonder."
+
+The professor lent a hand in unsaddling and unpacking the stock of
+the adventurers, and proved to be of great assistance in several
+ways.  Evidently he was an experienced plainsman and he suggested
+many ways in which their equipment might be lightened and adjusted.
+His odd manner of talking only possessed him at intervals, and at
+other times he seemed to converse like any rational being.
+
+This put a queer idea into Peggy's head.
+
+"I wonder if he's acting a part?" she thought to herself.  But the
+next minute the professor's exaggerated gestures and tones convinced
+her to the contrary.  Although his manner was as outlandish as his
+choice of clothes, still there was a certain something about it
+which negatived the idea of its being assumed, unless the professor
+was a most consummate actor.  He informed the party that he had set
+out to cut across the desert from California and had had several
+narrow escapes from death by reason of lack of water.
+
+I le appeared much interested when Mr. Bell in formed him that the
+party had started out from Blue Creek, adding--as he deemed wisest--
+that they were a party of tenderfeet anxious to explore the desert
+at first hand.
+
+"So you were in Blue Creek recently, eh?" he said, with an entire
+lack of his exaggerated manner, but in crisp tones that fairly
+snapped; "didn't hear anything there of Red Bill Summers, did you?"
+
+With a half smile Mr. Bell replied that they had not had the
+pleasure of the gentleman's acquaintance.
+
+"Don't know about the pleasure part of it," shot out the professor,
+"he's the most desperate crook this side of Pikes Peak.  I'd give a
+good deal for a look at him myself.  I--I have a professional
+interest in him," he added, with a queer smile which set his eyes to
+snapping and crackling.
+
+"A medical interest, I suppose?" inquired Mr. Bell, "you think he'd
+make an interesting study?"
+
+"Most interesting," was the reply in quiet, thoughtful tones.
+
+But the next instant the professor was back at his old pompous,
+high-flown verbal gymnastics, and after supper he entertained them
+till bedtime with tales of his experiences, to which both boys and
+girls listened with wide-eyed astonishment.
+
+"The oddest character I have ever encountered," declared Mr. Bell,
+as the professor, after bowing low to the ladies and apostrophizing
+the male portion of his audience, retired to his red wagon, within
+which he slept.
+
+They all agreed to this, but Peggy said rather timidly:
+
+"Somehow I don't think he's quite as odd as we think him."
+
+"What do you mean, my dear?" asked Mr. Bell.
+
+"Why, when he spoke about that Red Billy whatever his name was, did
+you see how different he looked?  Younger somehow, and--and oh,
+quite different.  I don't know just how, but he wasn't the same at
+all."
+
+"Oh, Peggy's trying to work up a romantic mystery about the
+professor," teased Jess; "maybe he's a wandering British lord in
+disguise or the interesting but wayward son of a millionaire with a
+hobby for socialism."
+
+The others burst into laughter at Jess's raillery, but Miss Prescott
+gently said:
+
+"There is a great deal in womanly intuition, my dear, and for my
+part I had the same feeling as you.  I mean that that man was not
+just what he appeared to be, namely, a chattering, ignorant quack."
+
+"Well, as we may have him for a neighbor for some days we shall have
+a chance to watch him closely," said Mr. Bell.
+
+But in this the leader of the party of adventurers turned out to be
+wrong, for when they awoke the next morning the grove did not
+contain the professor or his red wagon.  Only the ashes of his fire
+were there to tell of his sojourn.  But on one of the trees they
+found pinned a note.
+
+"Sorry to leave so abruptly, but circumstances compelled.  Perhaps
+we shall meet again.  Who knows!"
+
+And that, for many days, was to be the last they saw of the
+professor.  When they re-encountered him--but of the surprising
+circumstances under which this was to take place we shall learn
+later.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+A DESERT FIGHT
+
+
+There was too much before them for the party to spend much time in
+speculation concerning the professor's sudden disappearance.
+Immediately after breakfast Mr. Bell called the boys aside and said:
+
+"How long will it take to get an aeroplane ready?"
+
+The question came briskly, as did all Mr. Bell's speeches.
+
+"I think I can promise to have a machine ready for flight by noon,"
+was Roy's rejoinder after a brief interval of thought.
+
+"Good!  In that case we will waste no time in getting to work.  I am
+anxious to reach the mine and stake it out properly for claim filing
+purposes.  The less delay the better."
+
+It was news to both boys that the definite legal claim to his
+discovery had not yet been made by Mr. Bell.
+
+"Well, at any rate you are not likely to be bothered by claim
+jumpers away off here," commented Roy.
+
+"No, I hardly think so," was the response, "but in these matters one
+cannot be too careful.  Since the news spread that I have struck it
+rich there are men capable of enduring any hardship if there exists
+a possibility of wresting it from me."
+
+"I should have thought that in order to be on the safe side you
+would have filed your claim before you came East," put in Peggy, who
+had joined the little group of consultants.
+
+"I would have done so were it not for the fact that to have filed my
+claim and given the location would have set on my track the entire,
+restless gold-seeking horde that hangs about desert towns," said Mr.
+Bell, with some warmth.  "It is an outrageous thing, but
+nevertheless a fact, that the moment one files a claim it becomes
+public property.  In my opinion the government should protect the
+locator of a gold find."
+
+"But would that be quite fair to the others," said Peggy softly.
+"Shouldn't everybody have an opportunity to develop natural
+resources?"
+
+Mr. Bell gazed at her admiringly.
+
+"You are right, my dear, and I'm a selfish old bear," he said, "but
+just the same, not all gold-seekers make desirable neighbors.  Many
+desperate men are among them."
+
+Peggy's mind wandered back to that midnight conversation she had
+overheard on the porch of the National House.  But the same dread of
+ridicule that she had experienced then still held her, and she
+refrained from mentioning it.
+
+By noon, with such good will did they work, that not only was one of
+the monoplanes erected and ready for flight, but a second was
+partially assembled, and only required the finishing touches to be
+in readiness for its aerial dash.  While the boys, with the girls
+eagerly helping them, worked on the flying machine, Mr. Bell
+carefully studied a map he had made of the mine's location, and
+tested his compass.  This done he--as sailors say--"laid out a
+course" for himself.  From the springs the mine lay about due
+southeast and some hundred and twenty miles away.
+
+In case of accidents the mining man traced carefully a second map,
+which was to be left behind in the camp so as to be constantly
+available in case anything happened to the first one, it had been
+decided that Jimsy, who by this time had become quite a skillful
+aviator, was to accompany Mr. Bell in the preliminary flight.
+
+Roy and Mr. Peter Bell were to be left in charge of the camp, and in
+the event of the first aeroplane not returning that night the
+second, one was to be dispatched in search of it.
+
+As an old plainsman, Mr. Bell had not laid his plans without taking
+into consideration the possibility of accident to the aeroplane, and
+none realized better than he did what serious consequences such an
+accident might have.
+
+In the chassis of the machine with the travelers were placed a stock
+of canned goods, a pick and shovel and several hundred feet of fine
+but tough rope.  A supply of water in stone jars and an extra stock
+of gasoline were also taken along.  At the conclusion of the noon
+meal the motor was started and found to be working perfectly.
+Nothing then remained to be done but to bid hasty "au revoirs" and
+wing off across the barren wastes.
+
+"If all goes well we may be back to-night," said Mr. Bell as he
+slipped into the seat set tandem-wise behind Jimsy.
+
+"And if not?" inquired Roy.
+
+"In that case," and Mr. Bell's voice held a grave note, "in that
+case you will take the other monoplane and start out to look for
+us."
+
+The roar of the motor as Jimsy started it drowned further words.
+Blue smoke and livid flames burst from the exhausts.  The structure
+of the flying machine shook and quivered under the force of the
+explosions.  The next instant the first aeroplane to invade the Big
+Alkali scudded off across the level floor of the desert, and after
+some five hundred feet of land travel soared upward.  In fifteen
+minutes it was a fast diminishing speck against the burnished blue
+of the Nevada sky.
+
+There was some feeling of loneliness in the hearts of those left
+behind as they turned back toward the camp under the straggly
+willows.  But this was speedily dissipated by that sovereign tonic
+for such feelings-namely, work.  Much was to be done on the
+remaining monoplane, and with the exception of brief intervals of
+"fooling" the young people spent the rest of the day on finishing
+its equipment.  Sunset found the machine ready for flight and the
+girl aviators and Roy very ready indeed for the supper to which
+Peter Bell presently summoned them by loud and insistent beating on
+a tin pan.
+
+You may be sure that as the sun dipped lower, the sky toward the
+southwest had been frequently swept by expectant eyes, but supper
+was served and eaten, and the purple shadows of night began softly
+to drape the glaring desert and still there came no sign of the
+homing aeroplane.
+
+"Reckon they don't want to risk a night flight and so have decided
+to camp at the mine," suggested old Peter Bell in response to Miss
+Prescott's rather querulous wondering as to the reason of the
+non-return.
+
+"That must be it," agreed Roy easily, demolishing the last of a can
+of chicken.
+
+Truth to tell, inwardly he had not expected the travelers back that
+night, and perhaps there lingered, too, in his mind, a faint desire
+to test out the other aeroplane in a task of rescue, in the event of
+the one Jimsy was driving breaking down.
+
+But when morning came without a sign of the missing monoplane
+speculation crystallized into a real and keen anxiety.  It was
+determined to delay no longer but set out at once in search of it.
+To this end the recently equipped airship was stocked with food and
+water, and shortly before noon Roy finished the final tuning up of
+the engine.  The others watched him anxiously as he worked.  It
+seemed clear enough that some real accident must have occurred to
+the other machine.
+
+"James would never keep us in suspense like this," said Mr. Bell,
+"if he could reach us and relieve our anxiety."
+
+Roy was just about to clamber into the chassis when Peggy and Jess,
+who had been missing for several minutes, emerged from their tent.
+Each girl wore an aviation hood and stout leather gauntlets.
+Plainly they were dressed for aerial flight.  Roy gazed at them
+quizzically.
+
+"I hate to disappoint you girls," he said, "but I've got to play a
+lone hand in this thing."
+
+"No such thing," said Peggy in her briskest tones; "what if anything
+happened to you?  Who would run the machine if we weren't along?"
+
+"That's quite true, Roy," struck in Jess, "and besides if--if
+anything has gone wrong with Jimsy who has a better right to be near
+him than I?"
+
+Roy looked perplexed.
+
+"What am I to do, Aunt Sally?" he appealed, turning to Miss
+Prescott.
+
+To Peggy's astonishment, as much as anyone else's, Miss Prescott did
+not veto their going.
+
+"I think it would be great folly for you to go on an expedition of
+this kind alone," she said, addressing Roy.  "As Peggy says, if
+anything went wrong what could you do alone?"
+
+"Oh, aunt, you're a dear!" cried Peggy, giving the kindly old lady a
+bear hug.
+
+"But I make one condition," continued Miss Prescott, "and that is,
+that whatever you find, you do not delay, but report back here as
+soon as possible.  I could not bear much more anxiety."
+
+This was readily promised, and ten minutes later the three young
+aviators were in the chassis of the big monoplane.  After a moment's
+fiddling with levers and adjustments Roy started the motor.  Heavily
+laden as it was the staunch aeroplane shot upward steadily after a
+short run.  As it grew rapidly smaller, and finally became a mere
+black shoe button in the distance, Miss Prescott turned to old Peter
+Bell with a sigh.
+
+"Heaven grant they all come back safe and sound," she exclaimed.
+
+"Amen to that, ma'am," was the response, and then unconsciously
+lapsing into his rhythmical way of expressing himself, the old man
+added: "Though flying through the air so high they'll come back
+safely by and by."
+
+And then, while old Peter shuffled off to water the stock, Miss
+Prescott fell to continuing her fancy work which the good lady had
+brought with her from the Fast.  An odd picture she made, sitting
+there in that dreary grove in the desert, with her New England
+suggestion of primness and house-wifely qualities showing in
+striking contrast to the strange setting of the rest of the picture.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+AGAINST HEAVY ODDS
+
+
+"Any sign of them yet, Roy?"
+
+Peggy leaned forward and gently touched her brother's arm.
+
+"I can't see a solitary speck that even remotely resembles them," he
+said.  "It looks bad," he added with considerable anxiety in his
+tones.
+
+Peggy took a peep at the plan which was spread out before Roy on a
+little shelf designed to hold aerial charts.  Then she glanced at
+the compass and the distance indicator.
+
+"We must be close to the place now," she said; "it's somewhere off
+there, isn't it?"
+
+"There" was a range of low hills cut and slashed by steep-walled
+gullies and canyons.  In some of these canyons there appeared to be
+traces of vegetation, giving rise to the suspicion that water might
+be obtained there by digging.
+
+Roy nodded.
+
+"That's the place, and there's that high cone shaped hill that the
+plan indicates as the location of the mine."
+
+"But there's not a trace of them-oh, Jimsy!"
+
+Jess's tones were vibrant with cruel anxiety.  Her face was pale and
+troubled.  As for Peggy, her heart began to beat uncomfortably fast.
+But she wisely gave no outer sign.
+
+"Don't worry, girlie," she said in as cheerful and brisk a tone as
+she could call up on the spur of the moment, "it will be all right.
+I'm sure of it."
+
+Circling high above the range of barren hills they took a thorough
+survey of them.  There was no sign of the missing aeroplane or her
+occupants, but all at once beneath them they saw something that
+caused them all to utter an astonished shout.
+
+In one of the shallower gullies there was suddenly revealed the
+forms of an immense pack of animals of a gray color and not unlike
+dogs.
+
+"Wolves!" cried Peggy.
+
+"No, they are coyotes," declared Roy; "I recollect now hearing Mr.
+Bell say that these hills were frequented by them."
+
+While they still hovered above the strange sight, a sudden swing
+brought another angle of the gully into view, and there, hidden
+hitherto by a huge rock, was the missing aeroplane.
+
+But of its occupants there was not a trace.
+
+"We must descend at once," decided Roy.
+
+"But, Roy, the coyotes!"
+
+It was Jess who spoke.  The sight of the immense pack of the brutes
+thoroughly unnerved her.  As they swung lower, too, they could hear
+the yappings and howlings of the savage band.
+
+"I don't think they will bother us," said Roy.  "I've heard Mr. Bell
+say that they are cowardly creatures."
+
+"If they do we'll have to fly up again," said Peggy; "but we simply
+must examine that aeroplane for some clue of the others'
+whereabouts.  Besides we have our revolvers."
+
+"And can use them, too," said Roy with decision.  "Now look out and
+hold tight, for I'm going to make a quick drop."
+
+The gully seemed to rush upward at the aeroplane as it swooped down,
+coming to rest finally, almost alongside its companion machine.
+Luckily, the big rock before mentioned concealed the new arrivals
+from the view of the pack gathered further up the gully.
+
+No time was lost in alighting and examining the machine, but beyond
+the fact that none of the food or water had been disturbed there was
+no clue there.  Another puzzling fact was that the rifles Mr. Bell
+and Jimsy had brought with them still lay in the chassis.  This
+seemed to dispose of the theory that they had been attacked.  But
+what could have become of them?  Was it possible that the coyotes--?
+Roy gave an involuntary shiver as a thought he did not dare allow
+himself to retain flashed across his mind.  And yet it was odd the
+presence of that numerous pack all steadily centered about one spot.
+
+"I'm going to try firing a shot into the air," said Roy suddenly;
+"if they are in the vicinity they will hear it and answer if they
+can."
+
+"Oh, yes, do that, Roy," begged Jess. "Oh, I'm almost crazy with
+worry!  What can have happened?"
+
+The sharp bark of Roy's pistol cut short her half hysterical
+outbreak.  Following the report they listened intently and then:
+
+"Hark!" exclaimed Peggy, her eyes round and her pulses beating
+wildly.  "Wasn't that a shout?  Listen, there it is again!"
+
+"I heard it that time, too," exclaimed Roy.
+
+"And I!" cried Jess.
+
+"It came from down the canyon where those coyotes are," went on
+Peggy.
+
+"That's right, sis, and it complicates our search," said Roy, "but
+we've got to go on now.  You girls wait here for me while I
+investigate, and--and you'd better take those rifles out of the
+other aeroplane."
+
+"Oh, Roy, you're not going alone?" Peggy appealed.
+
+"I'm not going to let you girls take a chance till I see what's
+ahead, that's one sure thing," was the rejoinder.
+
+Before another word could be said the boy, revolver in hand,
+vanished round the big rock.  Hardly had he done so, when there was
+borne to the girls' ears the most appalling confusion of sounds they
+had ever heard.  The bedlam was, punctuated by several sharp shots,
+and Roy appeared running from round the rock.  His hat was off, and
+as he approached he shouted:
+
+"Get back to the aeroplanes!  The pack's after us!"
+
+At the same instant there appeared the leaders of the onrush.
+Great, half-famished looking brutes, whose red mouths gaped open
+ferociously and whose eyes burned wickedly.
+
+But Roy had hardly had time to shout his warning before an accident,
+entirely unexpected, occurred.  His foot caught on a stone and he
+came down with a crash.  The next moment the pack would have been
+upon him, but Peggy jerked the rifle she had selected to her
+shoulder and fired into the midst of the savage horde.  With a howl
+of anguish one of the creatures leaped high in a death agony and
+came toppling down among his mates, a limp, inanimate mass.  This
+checked the surging onrush for an instant, and in that instant Roy
+was on his feet and sprinting briskly toward the girls.
+
+Straight for the aeroplanes they headed.  Reaching them they
+entrenched themselves in what they could not but feel was an
+immensely insecure position.
+
+"Thank you, sis," was all that Roy, with a bit of a choke in his
+voice, was able to gasp out before the leaders of the pack were on
+them.
+
+More by instinct than with any definite idea, the young people began
+desperately pumping lead into the seething confusion of gray backs
+and red gaping mouths.
+
+All at once poor Jess, half beside herself with terror, gave a
+throaty little gasp.
+
+"I think I'm going to faint," she exclaimed feebly.
+
+Peggy gave her a sharp glance.
+
+"You'll do no such thing, Jess Bancroft," she said sharply, although
+the pity in her eyes belied the harshness of the words, "if you do
+I'll--I'll never speak to you again!"
+
+The words had their calculated effect, and Jess made a brave rally.
+At almost the same instant a shot from Roy's rifle brought down the
+largest of the creatures of the desert, a big hungry looking brute
+with tawny, scraggy hair and bristling hackles.  As he rolled over
+with a howl of anguish and rage a sudden wavering passed through the
+pack.  It was like a wind-shadow sweeping over a field of summer
+wheat.
+
+"Hooray, we've got them beaten!" shouted Roy, enthusiastically.
+
+The lad was right.  Their leader fallen, the remainder of the pack
+had seemingly no liking for keeping up the attack.  Still snarling
+they began to retreat slowly--a backward movement, which presently
+changed into a mad, helter skelter rush.  Panic seized on them, and
+down the dry arroyo they fled, a dense cloud of yellow, pungent dust
+rising behind them.  In a few seconds all that remained to tell of
+the battle in the gulch were the still bodies of the brutes that had
+fallen before the boy and girl aviators' rifles.
+
+They were contemplating the scene when, from further up the gully,
+there came a sound that set all their pulses beating.
+
+It was the shout of a human voice.
+
+"Thank heaven you were not too late!"
+
+While they were still standing stock still in startled immobility at
+the recognition of Mr. Bell's voice, there came another hail.
+
+"Hello, Jess!  Hello, Peggy and Roy!"
+
+Emerging from the cloud of dust which was still thick, there
+staggered toward them two uncanny looking figures in which they had
+at first some difficulty in recognizing Mr. Bell and Jimsy Bancroft.
+But when they did what a shout went up!
+
+It echoed about the dead hills and rang hollowly in the silent
+gully.  An instant later the reunited adventurers were busily
+engaged in exchanging greetings of which my readers can guess the
+tenor.  Then came explanations.
+
+"On arriving in the arroyo," said Mr. Bell, "Jimsy and I decided to
+set out at once to examine the mine site, and lay if off for
+purposes of proper location with the United States government.  I
+must tell you that the mine--or rather the site of it--is located in
+that cavern yonder further up the arroyo."
+
+"Why it was round the entrance to that that the coyotes were
+gathered when we first dropped!" cried Peggy.
+
+"Exactly.  And very much to our discomfort, too, I can tell you,"
+rejoined Mr. Bell dryly.
+
+"They had you besieged!" exclaimed Roy.
+
+"That's just it, my boy.  They must have been famished, or they
+never would have gathered up the courage to do it, for, as a rule,
+one man can put a whole pack of the brutes to flight.  I suppose,
+however, they realized that they had us cornered, for, with a sort
+of deadly deliberation, they seated themselves round the mouth of
+the cavern, seemingly awaiting the proper time for us to be starved
+out or driven forth by thirst.  Luckily, however, we had canteens
+with us and a scanty supply of food, otherwise it might have been
+the last of us."
+
+Jess shuddered and drew very close to Jimsy.
+
+"And you had no weapons," volunteered Roy.
+
+"Ah, I see you encountered our guns in the chassis of the aeroplane.
+No, foolishly, I'll admit, we omitted to arm ourselves for such a
+short excursion.  Of course we never dreamed of any danger of that
+sort in this lonely place, and least of all from the source from
+which it came.  But I can, tell you, it was an ugly feeling when, on
+preparing to emerge with some specimens of the ore-bearing rocks, we
+found ourselves facing a grim semi-circle, banked dozens deep, of
+those famished coyotes. They greeted our appearance with a howl, and
+when we tried to scare them off they just settled down on their
+haunches to wait."
+
+"Their silence was worse than their yapping and barking, I think,"
+struck in Jimsy.
+
+"It certainly was," agreed Mr. Bell; "both of us tried to keep up
+good hearts, but when the night passed and morning still found the
+brutes there, things began to look bad.  Of course we knew that you
+would set out to look for us when we did not return, but we did not
+know if you would reach here in time."
+
+"But you did," cried Jimsy, regarding the dead bodies of coyotes the
+vanquished pack had left behind.
+
+"And excellent work your rifles did, too," declared Mr. Bell warmly.
+
+"Our rifles and--the Girl Aviators," said Roy, and proceeded to tell
+the interested listeners from the cavern some incidents which caused
+them to open their eyes and regard our girls with unconcealed
+admiration.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+RESCUED BY AEROPLANE
+
+
+"What's that down there?"
+
+Roy pointed downward from the aeroplane to a small black object
+crawling painfully over the glistening white billows of alkali far
+below them.
+
+The lad, his sister and Jess were on their way back from the arroyo
+in which the battle with the coyotes had occurred.  Mr. Bell and
+Jimsy had been left behind, for the former was anxious to "prospect"
+his mine as thoroughly as possible in order to ascertain if it gave
+indications of living up to its first rich promise.  A brief
+inspection of the cave had thoroughly disgusted Peggy and Jess.
+
+"Is this a rich gold mine!" Jess had cried, indignantly regarding
+the dull walls on which the torches had glowed unflatteringly; "it
+looks more like the interior of the cellar at home."
+
+"All is not gold that glitters," Mr. Bell had responded with a
+smile.  At the same moment he had flaked off a chunk of dark colored
+metal with his knife.
+
+"There, Miss Jess," he exclaimed, handing it to the girl, "that is
+almost pure gold, and I am in hopes that there is lots more where
+that came from."
+
+And they had been kind enough not to laugh too immoderately at
+Jess's discomfiture.
+
+A short time later, having located a water hole and partaken of a
+good lunch, Roy and his companions had re-embarked and started back
+to camp with the joyful tidings that the missing adventurers had
+been found.  They had been under way but a short time when Roy's
+attention had been attracted by the moving dot which had caused him
+to utter the exclamation recorded at the beginning of this chapter.
+
+Against the flat, baking, quivering expanse of alkali the crawling
+splotch of black showed up as plainly as a blot of ink on a sheet of
+clean white blotting paper.  Peering over the edge of the chassis they
+all scrutinized it closely.
+
+"It's--it's a man!" cried Jess at length.
+
+"So it is!" declared Peggy, "and on foot.  What can he be doing out
+in this desert country without a horse?"
+
+"He's in trouble anyhow," declared Roy, excitedly.  "See, he's
+staggering along so painfully that it looks as if he couldn't go a
+step further.  I'm going to drop and find out what the trouble is."
+
+As he spoke the boy threw in the descending clutch, and the big
+monoplane began to drop as swiftly as a buzzard that has espied some
+prey far beneath him.
+
+As they rushed downward the whirr of their descent seemed to arouse
+the being so painfully crawling over the hot waste beneath them.  He
+looked up, and then, extending his hands upward in a gesture of
+bewilderment, he staggered forward and the next instant stretched
+his length on the alkali, falling face downward.
+
+"Oh, he is dead!" shrilled Jess, clasping her hands.
+
+"I don't think so," was Roy's grave reply, "but we must get to him
+as quickly as we can."
+
+There was no need to tell Peggy to get the water canteen ready.  Her
+busy little, fingers were fumbling with it.  As they touched the
+ground she leaped nimbly from the chassis and sped over the burning
+desert floor to the side of the recumbent wayfarer.  A second later
+Roy and Jess joined her.  Very tenderly they turned the insensible
+man upon his back and dashed the water upon his face.
+
+He was a short, rather stockily built man of middle age, and
+obviously, from his mahogany colored skin and lank black hair, a
+Mexican.  He was dressed in a tattered shirt with a serape thrown
+about the neck to keep off the blazing rays of the sun.  His feet
+were encased in a kind of moccasins over which spurs were strapped.
+Evidently, then, he had been mounted at some time--presumably
+recently, but where was his horse?  How did he come to be wandering
+under the maddening heat of the sun over the vast alkali waste.  But
+these were questions the answers to which had to be deferred for the
+present, for it began to appear doubtful if they had arrived in time
+to fan the wanderer's vital spark back into flame.
+
+But at length their ministrations met with their reward.  The man's
+eyelids flickered and a deep sigh escaped his lips.  Before long
+they could press the water canteen to his mouth.  He seized it with
+avidity and would have drained it.
+
+"Only a little," cried Peggy; "I read once how a man, dying of
+thirst, was killed outright when he was given too much water to
+drink."
+
+So Roy wrenched the canteen from the prostrated man's feeble grasp
+before he had drained more than a mouthful or two.  But even that
+had revived him, and he was able to sit up and gaze about
+bewilderedly.  All at once his eyes rested on Peggy, and he seemed
+to regard her as the means of his salvation from a terrible death on
+the alkali.  Kneeling down he cried out in a pitifully cracked
+voice:
+
+"You missie angel from heaven.  Me Alverado your servant always.  No
+go away ever!"
+
+"By ginger, Peggy, you've made a conquest!" cried Roy, half
+hysterically.
+
+Now that the strain of the struggle between life and death was over
+Peggy flushed and looked embarrassed.  She was not used to the
+exaggerated character of the Mexican.  But if she feared another
+outburst it did not come.  Far too much exhausted to say more,
+Alverado--as he called himself--sank back once more on the alkali.
+
+"Quick!  Carry him to the aeroplane and get him into camp," cried
+Roy, raising the half-conscious Mexican's head.  "You girls take his
+feet and we'll put him in the bottom of the chassis on those
+cushions."
+
+Consequently, when the aeroplane once more took the air it was to
+fly lower than usual under its additional burden, but in the hearts
+of all three of its American occupants there rang the joy of having
+saved a human life from the unsparing alkali.
+
+"Aunt Sally!  Aunt Sally!  Everything's all right and we've got a
+patient for you," was Peggy's rather uncomplimentary greeting as the
+aeroplane alighted and came spinning across the dusty expanse toward
+the willow clump.
+
+Miss Prescott threw up her hands and old Mr. Peter Bell hastened
+from amidst his beloved horses.
+
+"Everything's all right but you've got a patient!" cried the New
+England lady, who looked very prim and unwesternlike in a gingham
+gown and sun bonnet to match.
+
+"No time for explanations now," cried Roy.  "Come on, Mr. Bell, and
+help us get our sick man out and then we'll tell you all about how
+we found Jimsy and Mr. Bell at the mine."
+
+With Mr. Bell's assistance it did not take long to transfer Alverado
+from the aeroplane to a cot, and Miss Prescott, who, as Roy said,
+would "rather nurse than eat," ministered to him to such good effect
+that by nightfall he was able to sit up and tell his story.  In the
+meantime the excited youngsters had related their narratives, which
+Miss Prescott interrupted in a dozen places by: "Land's sakes!"
+"Good gracious me!"
+
+"Oh, what a dreadful country!" and much more to the same effect.
+
+All the time he was relating his story Alverado kept his eyes fixed
+on Peggy's face, with much the same expression as that worn by a
+faithful spaniel.  At first this fixed gaze annoyed the young girl
+not a little, but soon she realized that it was entirely respectful
+and meant as a tribute, for the Mexican evidently regarded her as
+his rescuer in chief.
+
+Alverado's story proved vague and sketchy, but he could not be
+induced to enlarge upon it.  In brief his tale was that some years
+before, when crossing the desert on his way from a mine he owned, he
+had been attacked by a band of highwaymen.  They had wrecked his
+wagon and murdered his family, who were traveling with him.  They
+had attacked him because of their impression that he was carrying
+much gold with him, whereas, in reality, he had secured nothing but
+a living from his desert mine.  In their rage at being thwarted, the
+miscreants had wiped out the Mexican's family and left him for dead
+with a wound in his skull.
+
+But a wandering band of Nevada Indians had happened along while the
+Mexican still lay unconscious and, reviving him, carried him with
+them over the border into California.  He had parted from them soon
+after and drifted down into Mexico.  In time he accumulated a small
+fortune, but the thought of the wrong he had suffered never left his
+heart.  At last his affairs reached a stage where he felt justified
+in returning to Nevada to try to find some trace of his wrongers,
+and demand justice.  He had set out well equipped, but, a few days
+before the young aviators encountered him, his water burro had
+stumbled and fallen, and in the fall had broken the water kegs it
+carried.  From that time on his trip across the alkali had been a
+nightmare.  First his pony had died, and then his two remaining pack
+burros.  He had obtained a scanty supply of thirst quenching stuff
+from the pulpy insides of cactus and maguey leaves, but when the
+aviators had discovered him he had been in the last stages of death
+from thirst and exhaustion--the death that so many men on the alkali
+have met alone and bravely.
+
+"Do you know the name of the men who attacked you and treated you so
+cruelly?" asked Peggy, breaking the tense silence which followed the
+conclusion of the Mexican's dramatic narrative.
+
+A dark look crossed the man's swarthy features.
+
+"One name onlee I know, mees," he said, with a snarl which somehow
+reminded Peggy of the coyotes of the arroyo.
+
+"And his name was?"
+
+"Red Beel Soomers!"
+
+"'Red Bill Summers!" they all echoed, except Miss Prescott and old
+Mr. Peter Bell, the latter of whom had fallen into a reverie.
+
+As if they had been emblazoned in electric lights, the words of
+Professor Wandering William flashed across Peggy's brain.
+
+"The most desperate ruffian on the Nevada desert."
+
+And at the same time, with one of those quick, flashes of intuition
+which growing girls share with grown women, Peggy sensed a vague
+connection between that sinister conversation she had overheard on
+her wakeful night at the National House and the dreaded Red Bill.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE HORSE HUNTERS
+
+
+Bright and early the next day the aeroplane whizzed back to the
+arroyo, carrying a fresh supply of food and water, for Mr. Bell had
+decided to investigate his "prospect" thoroughly while he had an
+opportunity.  To his mind, he had declared, the lead, or pay streak,
+ran back far into the base of the barren hills, and might yield
+almost untold of riches if worked properly.  Among the supplies
+carried by the aeroplane, therefore, was a stock of dynamite from
+the red painted box.
+
+In the meantime Alverado had to be accepted perforce as a member of
+the party.  In the first place, he showed no disposition to leave,
+and in the second, even had he done so, there was no horse or burro
+that could be spared for him to ride.  When Mr. Bell heard of the
+new addition to the camp he was at first not best pleased.  Every
+additional mouth meant an extra strain on their supplies, but he
+surrendered to the inevitable, and finally remarked:
+
+"Oh, well, I guess he'll be useful enough about the place.  Anyhow,
+if we need him we can put him to work in the mine."
+
+Peggy and Jess had accompanied Roy over in the aeroplane to the
+mine, but Mr. Bell insisted on their returning.  "This is not work
+for women or girls," he said, much to Peggy's inward disgust.
+
+Jess, with her daintier ideas, however, was nothing averse to the
+thought of getting back to the creature comforts of the permanent
+camp in the willows.
+
+"But who's going to get you back, I'd like to know," exclaimed Mr.
+Bell, shoving back his sombrero and scratching his head perplexedly;
+"it's important, for reasons you know of, that I should prospect
+this claim so that I can record it to the limit, and to do that I'll
+need Roy.  Maybe after all, you'd better stay."
+
+Peggy's eyes danced delightedly, but Jess spoiled it all by saying:
+
+Why, Peggy can run the aeroplane better than either Roy or Jimsy,
+Mr. Bell."
+
+"O-h-h!  Jess!" shouted Roy derisively.
+
+"Well, she can, and you know it, too," declared Jess loyally.
+
+"Why that's so, isn't it?" cried Mr. Bell, glad of this way out of
+his difficulty.  After that there was nothing for Peggy to do but to
+give in gracefully.
+
+The two girls were ready to start back when Mr. Bell reached into
+his pocket and drew forth a bit of carefully folded paper.
+
+"I'll entrust this to you," he said to Peggy; "it's for my brother.
+It's a correct description of the mine's location so far as we have
+explored it.  The plan is a duplicate one, and I'll feel safer if I
+know that, beside the original, my brother has a copy.  In the event
+of one being lost a lot of work would be saved."
+
+Soon after this, adieus were said, and the aeroplane soared high
+into the clear, burning air above the desolate ridges.  Under
+Peggy's skillful hands the plane fairly flew.  At the pace they
+proceeded it was not long before the willows, a dark clump amid the
+surrounding ocean of glittering waste, came into view.  A veteran of
+the air could not have made a more accurate or an easier landing
+that did Peggy.  The big machine glided to the ground as softly as a
+feather, just at the edge of the patch of shade and verdure which
+made up Steer Wells.
+
+That afternoon, after the midday meal, a cloud of dust to the
+southward excited everybody's attention.  After scanning the
+oncoming pillar closely Alverado announced that it was caused by a
+party of horsemen, and it soon became evident that the willow clump
+was their destination.
+
+"Oh, mercy, I do hope they aren't Indians and we shall all be
+murdered in our beds!" cried Miss Prescott in considerable alarm.
+The good lady clasped her hands together distractedly.
+
+"We might be murdered in our hammocks, aunt," observed Peggy,
+indicating two gaudy specimens of the hanging lounges which had been
+suspended under the shade; "but only very lazy people could be
+murdered in bed at two o'clock in the afternoon."
+
+"You know perfectly well what I mean," Miss Prescott began with
+dignity, when Alverado, who, like the rest, had been watching the
+advancing cavalcade eagerly, suddenly announced:
+
+"They vaqueros--cowboys!"
+
+"Cowboys!" shrilled Miss Prescott.  "That's worse.  Oh, dear, I wish
+I'd never come to the land of the cowboys!"
+
+"You speak as if they were some sort of animal, aunt," laughed
+Peggy.  "I daresay there is no reason to be alarmed at them.  I've
+always heard that they were very courteous and deferential to
+ladies."
+
+"What would cowboys be doing away out here where there isn't a cow
+or a calf or even an old mule in sight?" inquired Jess.
+
+"Maybe on wild horse hunt," rejoined Alverado with a shrug.
+
+"Are there wild horses hereabouts then?" asked old Mr. Bell, and
+then quite absent-mindedly he began murmuring:
+
+"Masseppa, Masseppa tied to a wild horse;
+In the way of revenge, as a matter of course."
+
+"Plentee wild horse," was the Mexican's rejoinder.  "They cross the
+desert sometimes to get fresh range.  Cowboy trail them and cut them
+off and lasso them. Then they break them to ride."
+
+"Oh, what a shame!" cried Peggy, impulsively.
+
+"No shame go-od," declared the Mexican stolidly; "bye an' bye wild
+horse all gone.  Good."
+
+"I think it's hateful," declared Jess; "just the same I should like
+to see a wild horse hunt," she added with girlish inconsistence.
+
+"So should I if they'd let them all go again," agreed Peggy.
+
+Old Mr. Bell laughed, for which he was gently reproved by Miss
+Prescott.
+
+"I shall bring this matter to the attention of the Society for the
+Prevention of Cruelty to Animals back home," she said somewhat
+snappishly.
+
+But there was no opportunity to exchange more remarks on the
+subject.
+
+Uttering a shrill series of "ye-o-o-ows" the riders bore down on the
+little desert camp.  From the heaving sides of the ponies, plastered
+with the gray alkali of the desert, clouds of steam were rising.
+Their riders, with mouths screened from the biting dust with red
+handkerchiefs, were seemingly engaged in a race for the willow clump
+where water and shade awaited them.
+
+"Yip-yip-y-e-e-e-e-e-e!"
+
+The sound came raucously from behind a dozen bandaged mouths as the
+band swept down oil tile camp.  And then suddenly:
+
+Bang!  Bang!  Bang!
+
+A volley of revolver shots resounded as the jubilant horse hunters--
+as Alverado had shrewdly suspected they were--dashed forward.
+
+"Oh, Land of Goshen!" screamed Miss Prescott, as, with her fingers
+in her ears, she fled into her tent and pulled the flap to.  Peggy
+and Jess stood their ground boldly enough, although Jess's face
+turned rather pale and her breath heaved in perturbation.
+
+"Keep still, honey, they won't hurt you," comforted Peggy amid the
+uproar.
+
+Suddenly the leader of the horsemen drew his pony up abruptly,
+throwing the cat-like little beast almost back upon his haunches.
+
+"Boys!  Ladies!" he shouted.
+
+Instantly every sombrero came off and was swept round each rider's
+head in a broad circle.  It was a pretty bit of homage and the girls
+bowed in acknowledgment of it.
+
+"Hooray!" yelled the horsemen as they flung themselves from their
+steaming but still active little mounts.
+
+ "They're not so bad after all," breathed Jess, still, however,
+clinging to Peggy's shirt-waisted arm.
+
+But the leader, hat in hand, was now advancing toward the two girls.
+The others hung back looking rather sheepish.  They were not in the
+habit of meeting ladies, and to encounter two young and pretty girls
+in the midst of the alkali was evidently a shock to them.  The
+leader was a stalwart figure of a man, who might have stepped from
+the advertising matter of a Wild West show.  Leather chaparejos
+encased his long legs.  Round his throat was loosely knotted the red
+handkerchief which they all wore when riding to protect their mouths
+and nostrils from the dust.  His shirt was once blue, but it was so
+covered with the gray of the alkali that it was difficult to tell
+what color it might have been originally.  For the rest he wore a
+big sombrero, the leather band of which was spangled with stars
+worked in silver wire, and a pair of workmanlike-looking gauntlets
+covered his hands.
+
+"Beg pardon, ladies, for makin' sich a rough house," he said
+hesitating, "but, yer see, ther boys wall we didn't hardly expec'
+ter fin' ladies present."
+
+"I'm sure we enjoyed it very much," rejoined Peggy quite at ease and
+her own cool self now "It was like--er--like Buffalo Bill--"
+
+"Only more so," put in Jess, with her most bewitching smile.
+
+"Um--er--quite so," rejoined the plainsman, rather more at ease now;
+"ye see, we're a party that's out on a horse hunt.  We got on ther
+tracks of the band ther other side of ther San Quentin range, and
+figgering thet they'd cut across here ter git to ther feeding
+grounds on ther Pablo range on t'other side of ther desert we
+stopped in here fer water an' shade."
+
+"My name's Bud Reynolds," he volunteered tentatively.
+
+Peggy took the hint conveyed.
+
+"And we are part of a scientific exploring party," she said.
+
+"College gals, by gee!" breathed Bud in what he thought was an
+inaudible aside.
+
+"The party is in charge of Mr. James Bell.  This is his brother, Mr.
+Peter Bell--"
+
+"Glad ter meet yer, I'm sure," said Bud with a low bow as the poet
+hermit stepped forward.
+
+"I am Miss Margaret Prescott; this is my chum, Miss Bancroft, and
+there is my aunt, Miss Sally Prescott--"
+
+Peggy, with a perfectly grave face, indicated Miss Prescott's tent,
+from between the flaps of which that New England lady's spectacled
+countenance was peering.
+
+"Come out, auntie," she added.
+
+"Oh, Peggy, is it perfectly safe?" queried Miss Prescott anxiously.
+
+"Safe, mum!" exclaimed Bud expansively.  "If it was any safer you'd
+hav ter send fer ther perlice.  Jes becos we're rough and ain't got
+on full evenin' dress you musn't think we're dangerous, mum," he
+went on more gravely.  "I'll warrant you'll fin' better fellers
+right here on ther alkali than on Fit' Avenoo back in New York."
+
+"Oh, do you come from New York," cried the romantic Jess, scenting
+what she would have called "a dear of a story."
+
+"A long time ago I did," rejoined Bud slowly.  "But come on, boys,"
+he resumed with a return to his old careless manner, "come up an' be
+interduced."
+
+The others, hats in hand, shuffled forward.  It was plainly a novel
+experience for them.
+
+"And now," said Peggy cheerfully, when the ceremony had been
+concluded, "you all look dreadfully tired and hot.  The water hole's
+right over there.  When you've got off some of that dust we shall
+have something for you to eat and some coffee."
+
+This announcement took the horse hunters by storm.  With yips and
+whoops they dashed off to the water hole, while Miss Sally and old
+Peter Bell began to prepare a hasty meal for the unexpected
+visitors.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE WATER THIEVES
+
+
+It was an hour or more later when, having inspected the aeroplane
+and marveled much thereat, the horse hunters arose to take their
+leave.  They would have to press on, they explained, to reach the
+rendezvous of the wild horses in the San Pablo range.  These hills
+lay far to the northeast.  Bud perspiringly made the farewell
+speech.
+
+"Thankin' you one and all," he began, with perhaps a vague
+recollection of the last circus he had seen, and there he stopped
+short.
+
+"Anyhow we thanks you," he said, getting a fresh start and jerking
+the words out as if they had been shots from a revolver.  "It ain't
+every day we has a pleasure like this here hes bin--"
+
+"Hooray!" yelled the other horse hunters, who, already mounted,
+stood behind their leader at the edge of the willows.
+
+"An'--an'--wall, ther desert hes dangers uv its own an' if at any
+time Bud Reynolds er ther boys kin help yer out send fer them to
+ther San Pablo Range and if we're thar we'll be with yer ter ther
+last bank uv ther last ditch."
+
+With a sigh of relief Bud flung himself upon his pony and drove the
+spurs home.  Amidst a tornado of yells and shouts the rest, waving
+their sombreros wildly, dashed off after him.  In a few moments they
+were only a cloud of dust on the alkali.
+
+"I declare I feel kind of sad now they're gone," said Miss Sally
+after an interval of silence.
+
+"Rough diamonds," opined old Mr. Bell guardedly.
+
+"But they've got warm, big hearts," stoutly declared Peggy.  "I wish—"
+
+She stopped abruptly.
+
+"Wish what, Peggy dear?" asked Jess, noting the troubled look that
+had crept over her chum's face.
+
+"Oh, nothing at all," rejoined Peggy.  But she was not speaking the
+whole truth, for the girl had been thinking what a bulwark of
+strength Bud and his followers would have been against the vague
+menace of Red Bill.
+
+It was late that night--after midnight as well as Peggy could
+judge--that she was awakened by Jess bending over her cot in the
+tent that both girls shared.
+
+"O-h-h! Peggy, Peggy!  I'm frightened!" wailed the girl aviator's
+chum.
+
+"Frightened?  Of what dear?" asked Peggy wide awake in an instant.
+
+"I--I don't just know," quavered Jess, "but, Oh, Peggy, you'll think
+I'm an awful 'fraid cat, but I'm absolutely certain I heard
+footsteps, stealthy footsteps outside just now."
+
+"Nonsense, girlie.  It must have been a nightmare," rejoined Peggy
+with sharp assurance.
+
+"I might have thought so," went on Jess, "but I looked out through
+the flap of the tent to make sure and I'm certain as that I'm
+standing here now that I saw some figures on horseback over by the
+water hole."
+
+"Perhaps another party of horse hunters," suggested Peggy
+soothingly.
+
+"But, Peggy dear, they made hardly any noise.  That is, the horses I
+mean.  I heard men's footsteps, but after a minute they mounted and
+rode off, and--oh, it was too ghostly for anything--they made no
+noise at all."
+
+"You mean you couldn't hear any sound of the ponies' hoofs?" asked
+Peggy incredulously.
+
+"No, they moved in absolute silence.  Peggy, you don't think it was
+anything supernatural, do you?"
+
+For answer Peggy drew her revolver from under her pillow and tiptoed
+to the tent flap.  It faced the water hole and in the bright white
+moonlight a clear view of it could be obtained.  But after a
+prolonged scrutiny Jess's plucky chum was unable to make out any
+objects other than the usual ones appertaining to the camp.
+
+"Imagination, my dear," she said, with positiveness.  But Jess still
+shuddered and seemed under the influence of some strange fear.
+
+"It was not imagination, Peggy.  It wasn't it really wasn't."
+
+"Well, we'll look in the morning and if we find tracks we shall know
+that you are right, and we'll get the boys back for a while anyhow,"
+reassured Peggy.
+
+But in the morning it was Alverado who came to the tent and in an
+excited voice asked to see "missee" at once.
+
+Peggy hastily completed dressing and emerged, leaving Jess still
+asleep.  Something warned her that it would be best not to arouse
+her chum just then.
+
+"What is it, Alverado?" she asked, as the Mexican, betraying every
+mark of agitation, hastened to her side.
+
+"Santa Maria, missee," breathed the Mexican, "water almost all
+gone!"
+
+"The water is almost all gone?" quavered Peggy, beginning to sense
+what was coming.
+
+"Yes, missee.  Me go there this morning and--Madre de Dios--the
+water hole almost empty."
+
+"Were there any tracks?" inquired Peggy anxiously.
+
+"Plenty tracks, but the man's had the cavallos' feet bundled in
+sacks so make no noise--leave no tracks."
+
+"Let me have a look."
+
+With Alverado at her side Peggy hastened toward the water hole.  She
+could hardly repress an exclamation of alarm as she gazed at the
+hole.  Bare six inches of muddy water was on the bottom, where the
+day before there had been a foot or more.  All about were vague
+blotty-looking tracks which showed plainly enough the manner in
+which the marauders had concealed all noise of their movements.  The
+muffled hoofs would naturally give forth no sound.
+
+"So Jess was right after all," breathed Peggy softly; "but who could
+have done such a thing?  And why?"
+
+But the latter question had not framed itself in her mind before it
+was answered.  Without water they would not be able to exist at
+Steer Wells for twenty-four hours.  A retreat would be equally
+impracticable.  It was all horribly clear.  The theft of the water
+was the first step in a deliberate plan to drive them out.  The
+motive, too, was plain enough in the light of the overheard
+conversation at the National Hotel.  The men who wanted Mr. Bell's
+mine had waited till he had located it before striking their first
+blow.  What would their next be?  Peggy's pulses throbbed and the
+grove seemed to blur for an instant.  But the next moment she was
+mistress of herself again.  Clearly there was only one thing to do.
+Lay the whole matter before Mr. Bell.
+
+"Alverado," said Peggy quietly, "after breakfast I am going to the
+range over yonder.  You must guard the camp."
+
+"Yes, missee," replied the Mexican; "I take care of him with--with
+my life."'
+
+"I am sure you will," said Peggy in her most matter-of-fact tones,
+"and in the mean time say nothing to anyone else about what you have
+found.  Bring up the water for breakfast yourself and don't let Mr.
+Bell come near the water hole if you can help it."
+
+"It shall be as the senorita wishes," rejoined Alverado in low
+tones; but there was a ring in his voice that told Peggy that she
+could trust the brown-skinned "Mestizo" to the utmost.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+DANGER THREATENS
+
+
+Somewhat more than two hours later Peggy brought her aeroplane to
+the ground in the arroyo which had been the scene of the battle with
+the coyotes.  The girl could not help giving an involuntary shudder
+as she thought of the narrow escape they had had on that occasion.
+But in the light of the other and more serious menace which now hung
+over them like a storm cloud, the adventure with the wild beasts
+faded into insignificance.  Human enemies, more deadly perhaps than
+any of the animal kingdom, threatened, and if signs counted for
+anything it would be no long time before they would strike.
+
+Peggy had not been able to leave the camp without some resort to
+strategy.  Naturally Jess had been anxious to come.  But a quick
+flight had been imperative, and the presence of even one other
+person in the monoplane detracted somewhat from its speed.  Then,
+too, Peggy had ached with her whole being to be alone--to think.
+She wanted to reconstruct everything in her mind so that when she
+told all to Mr. Bell there would be no confusion, no hesitancy in
+her story.
+
+Three sharp toots on the electric signaling horn the aeroplane
+carried--connected to a set of dry cells--resulted in an outpouring
+from the mine-hole of the three prospectors.  Very business-like
+they looked, too, in khaki trousers, dust covered shirts and rolled
+up sleeves.
+
+"Well, well!  Early visitors," exclaimed Mr. Bell jocularly, and
+then struck by Peggy's sober expression as she stepped from the car
+of the aeroplane he stopped short.
+
+"My dear child, what is it?" he demanded.  "Where are the twin
+fairies of light that used to dance in your eyes?"
+
+"My goodness, Mr. Bell, you ought to have been a poet like your
+brother," laughed Roy coming forward with Jimsy to meet his sister.
+
+And then, like his senior, he, too, was struck by Peggy's anxious
+look.
+
+"What's the trouble, sis; bad news?" he asked.
+
+"Anything happened?" demanded Jimsy.
+
+"Oh, no, no; set your minds at rest on that," responded Peggy.
+"Everything is all right, at least--at least--"
+
+Her voice wavered a bit and Mr. Bell gently led her to a stool in
+front of the rough camp they had set up in the arroyo.
+
+"Now then, my dear," he said, "what is it?"
+
+Peggy faced her eager listeners, and, recovering from her momentary
+tremor, told her story from beginning to end in a clear, convincing
+way.
+
+"Do you think I did right in coming?" she concluded.  Her gaze fell
+appealingly upon Mr. Bell.  She did not wish this sinewy, wiry,
+self-reliant man to think that she was a victim of a school girl's
+hysterical fears.  But the mining man's words speedily set her at
+ease on this point.
+
+"Think you did right!" he echoed, while a rather serious expression
+came over his face; "my dear girl, if you had not come to me I
+should have thought you did very wrong.  You have made only one
+mistake and that was in not telling me before this time about what
+you overheard at the National House.  This Red Bill, as they call
+him, is one of the most unscrupulous ruffians that cumber the face
+of the Nevada desert.  In any other community he would have been
+brought up with a round turn long ago.  But here," he shrugged his
+shoulders.  "I suppose after all," he went on, "it's the old story
+of who'll bell the cat."
+
+"Do you think that we are in serious danger?" inquired Jimsy.  His
+eyes were round as saucers and his usually good natured face look
+troubled.
+
+"Well, not in serious danger, my boy," rejoined Mr. Bell; "but, just
+between us four, mind, it behooves us to use all speed in getting
+the title of this mine recorded.  This Red Bill is as resourceful as
+a fox, and what Miss Peggy has told us shows that he is closer on
+our trail than I should have imagined possible.  The draining of the
+water hole is unfortunate in two ways.  If, as I now suspect, he is
+camped in the hills to the east of the camp, it is plain that he has
+secured a supply of water sufficient to last him for some time.  And
+this cuts both ways, for his gain in that respect means our loss.
+The more water he has the less we have.  That much is clear."
+
+"Clear as mud," said Jimsy ruefully; but his tone robbed the words
+of any humorous significance.
+
+"You have reached a decision, Mr. Bell?" asked Roy.  The boy had not
+spoken yet.
+
+Mr. Bell's mouth closed in a firm line and his chin came out in what
+Peggy described to herself as "a fighting bulge."
+
+"Yes," he said with characteristic vim, "I have.  Steer Wells will
+not be safe after daylight to-day for the women of the party.  Red
+Bill is dastard enough, through an attack on them, to try to
+intimidate me.  We must shift to try to camp at once."
+
+"But where?"
+
+The question came blankly from Jimsy.
+
+"Here.  We have a moderate supply of water and there is feed of a
+kind.  Enough at least to keep the stock alive till our work is
+completed.  You see," he continued, turning to Peggy, "the boys and
+I have struck a very interesting lead.  How far it goes I have no
+idea, but my mining experience teaches me that it is an offshoot of
+the mother lode.  Until we have tapped that I don't want to file a
+claim."
+
+Peggy nodded her head sagely.
+
+"I see," she said, "you don't want to file your claim and then have
+somebody else squat down beside you and win the biggest prize of
+all."
+
+"That's it exactly," said Mr. Bell, "but the question in my mind is
+whether I am right in exposing you, Miss Bancroft and Miss Prescott
+to what may be peril.  And yet--"
+
+He broke off and a troubled expression crept over his weather-beaten
+face.
+
+"And yet," Peggy finished for him, "there's no way for us to go back
+now without abandoning the mine."
+
+"That's it.  But if you--"
+
+"I vote to stick by the mine."
+
+There was no hesitation in Peggy's voice now.
+
+Mr. Bell's keen gray eyes kindled.
+
+"You're a girl of real grit," he said, "but the others?"
+
+"I'll answer for them.  Miss Prescott need not know anything of the
+danger.  After all, it may amount to nothing.  As for Jess, she has
+as much, and more, nerve than I have."
+
+"When it comes to eating ice cream," put in Jimsy irrelevantly.
+
+Peggy, glancing about her, could not but reflect at the moment what
+a strange contrast the scene about them offered to the peaceful
+landscape and commonplace adventures of hum-drum Long Island.  Not
+but what the Girl Aviators had had their meed of excitement there,
+too, as readers of the "Girl Aviators and the Phantom Airship" well
+know.  But in the scoriated hills with their scanty outcropping of
+pallid wild oats, the fire-seered acclivities and the burning blue
+of the desert heavens above all, she beheld a setting entirely
+foreign to anything in her experience.
+
+"It's like Remington's pictures," she thought to herself as she
+gazed at the roughly clad group about her, the shabby tent, the
+mining implements cast about carelessly here and there and the
+smoldering fire with the blackened cooking pots beside it.
+
+Only one sharply modern note intruded-the two big, yellow-winged
+monoplanes. Even they appeared, in this wild, outre setting, to have
+taken on the likenesses of giant scarabs, monsters indigenous to the
+baked earth and starving vegetation.  She was roused from her
+reverie by Mr. Bell's voice cutting incisively the half unconscious
+silence into which they had lapsed.
+
+"Roy, you and your sister will take the monoplane in which Miss
+Peggy rode over and bring Miss Prescott, Miss Bancroft and my
+brother over at once."
+
+"But the stock and Alverado?"
+
+The question came from Peggy.
+
+"Alverado, as you call him, can drive the stock across the desert.
+It should not take him more than twenty-four hours if he presses
+right ahead.  We can send out an aeroplane scouting party for him if
+he appears to be unduly delayed."
+
+After some more discussion along the same lines Roy, nothing loth
+for an aerial dash after his hard work in the mine hole, made ready
+for the trip.  From a locker he drew out his solar helmet and
+goggles and advised Peggy to don her sun spectacles also.  But
+Peggy, as on several previous occasions, declined positively to put
+on the smoked glasses designed to protect the eyes from the
+merciless glare of the desert at noon day.
+
+"They'd make me look like a feminine Sherlock Holmes," she declared
+stoutly.
+
+"I hope that you won't take it amiss if I say that you have already
+proved yourself one, and a good one, too," laughed Mr. Bell as the
+brother and sister clambered into the chassis.
+
+But as Roy adjusted his levers for the rise from the depths of the
+sun-baked arroyo Mr. Bell held up his hand.
+
+"One moment," he said, "bring back some of the dynamite with you.
+We're almost out of it and it's needed badly.  We've got to blast
+through that streak of hard pan."
+
+"We'll bring it," nodded Roy, "although I'm not going to tell Aunt
+Sally about it.  I guess she wouldn't be best pleased at the idea of
+traveling in company with such a dangerous cargo."
+
+As he spoke the propeller began to whir, and after a brief run, the
+monoplane took the air, rising in a graceful angle toward the
+burning blue.  As they rose above the hills a reddish haze that
+overspread the horizon became distinctly visible.  Peggy viewed it
+with a little apprehension.
+
+"I hope that doesn't portend another electrical storm," she said
+rather anxiously, leaning forward and addressing her brother.
+
+Roy shook his head.
+
+"Guess it's just heat haze," he decided.  "Mr. Bell says that those
+dry storms don't often come twice in one season."
+
+"Well, let's be thankful for small mercies anyhow," said Peggy with
+a return to her former cheerfulness.
+
+The news that camp was to be broken at once and the base of
+operations removed to the hills, came as a shock to those left
+behind in the camp.  Somehow the pleasant shelter of the ragged
+willows had become a sort of makeshift home to them, and the idea of
+winging to the barren hills was not pleasing.  Miss Prescott,
+however, was the only one who made an open wail about it.  Old Mr.
+Bell took it as stoically as he did most things.  Only, as he
+hastened about the camp making preparations for the departure, he
+could have been heard humming:
+
+"We've got to go far, far away,
+To the mountains, so they say;
+I hate to leave the willows' shade,
+But Brother James must be obeyed."
+
+Alverado received his instructions with a silent shrug.  He informed
+Roy and Peggy that there was just enough water left to fill the bags
+for the dash across the desert.  He said no more, but there was a
+curious kind of reticence in his manner, as if he was holding back
+something he did not wish to express outwardly.  It was not till
+everything was packed ready for the start, and old Mr. Bell and Miss
+Sally had been hoisted and dragged into the chassis, that he drew
+Roy apart and spoke.  Peggy was included in the confidence.
+
+"While you gone I follow up tracks from the water hole," he said;
+"bime-by I come to place where sacks slip off one pony's feet.  Then
+I see a track that I make stick in my memory long, long ago.  That
+day they leave me for dead on the desert."
+
+He stooped and drew the outline of a peculiarly shaped hoof on the
+Alkali-impregnated dust.  The boy and girl watched him curiously.
+
+"Well?" asked Peggy, and she and her brother hung on the answer.
+
+Alverado's face became overcast by a black look.  His eyes glowed
+like two live coals.
+
+"I think then I never forget that track.  I think the same to-day.
+The pony that made that track was ridden by Red Bill."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+LOST!
+
+
+Good news awaited them on their return to the camp in the arroyo.
+Mr. Bell and Jimsy, while working in a desultory fashion on the vein
+while awaiting their return, had struck what is known in desert
+parlance as a water-pocket.  They had at once set to work excavating
+a fair-sized hole in the floor of the mine tunnel, and by the way in
+which the water gushed in it appeared as if there was a plentiful
+supply to draw upon.
+
+It is hard to convey how much this bit of news raised their spirits.
+
+"Isn't it queer to think how just finding a little water will make
+you feel good out here, while at home all we had to do was to turn a
+faucet and we got all we wanted and never dreamed of being thankful
+for it," observed Jess philosophically.
+
+"Wish we could strike an ice-cream soda pocket," observed Jimsy, who
+was vigorously scouring the dust off his classic lineaments.  "Say,
+girls, how would you like right now to hear the cool, refreshing
+'fiz-z-z-z' of a fountain, and then hear the ice clink-clinking
+against the sides of a tall glass of say--lemonade or--"
+
+"Jimsy Bancroft, if you say any more we'll duck you head first in
+that water hole," said Peggy with decision.
+
+"Go ahead," answered Jimsy quite unperturbed, "a cold plunge would
+go fine right now."'
+
+"Well, we shall have to think up some other punishment for you,"
+decided Jess; "a quarter mile dash across the desert, for instance."
+
+"Well, isn't that the utmost," snorted Jimsy; "here I try to cool
+you girls off by describing the delightful surroundings of a soda
+fountain and then you threaten me with bodily violence.  'Twas ever
+thus,'" and Jimsy, with an assumption of wounded dignity, strode off
+to where old Mr. Bell was already busy over the cooking fire.
+
+The midday meal passed off more brightly than might have been
+expected considering the circumstances in which the adventurers
+found themselves.
+
+"At all events, we can't starve an the desert,"  Jimsy, "even if we
+do run short of water."
+
+"How is that?" inquired old Mr. Bell innocently, although the
+twinkle in Jimsy's eye had put the others on their guard.
+
+"Because of the sand-wiches there," rejoined the lad with a laugh,
+in which the others could not help joining.
+
+"I don't care about sandwiches, particularly ham ones," struck in
+Miss Prescott ingenuously, which set them all off again.
+
+"Looks to me as if there might be a jack-rabbit or two in these
+hills," observed Mr. Bell after the meal had been dispatched.  "I
+know it's not good form in the West to eat jack-rabbits, but they're
+not so bad if you kill them when they are young.  Anyhow, it would
+be a change from this everlasting canned stuff."
+
+"I'll go," Roy declared; "I'll take that twenty two rifle and Peggy
+can carry that light twenty-gauge shotgun.  It's just the thing for
+girls and children."
+
+"Oh, indeed," sniffed the embattled Peggy scornfully; "I suppose you
+think I can't handle a man's size gun?"
+
+"I didn't say so, my dear sister, and I humbly beg your pardon for
+anything I may have said which may have hurt your feelings," said
+Roy with a low and conciliatory bow; "what I meant was that the
+light twenty-gauge doesn't kick so hard and, moreover, won't blow a
+rabbit to pieces if you happen to hit him."
+
+"Happen to hit him!" shouted Jess, going into a convulsion of
+laughter.
+
+"Oh, you know what I mean well enough," protested Roy, coloring
+somewhat under his tan.
+
+"Want to come, Jimsy?" he asked, after a moment's pause.
+
+"Tramp over those old hills that look as baked as a loaf of overdone
+bread?" snorted Jimsy.  "No, thank you. I'm going to stay home and
+read a nice book about Greenland's icy mountains."
+
+"And I," declared Jess, vivaciously, "am going to persuade Aunt
+Sally to make us some vanilla and strawberry ice cream."
+
+So Roy and Peggy set off alone on their tramp in quest of game.  It
+did not look a promising country for hunting; but, as Mr. Bell had
+pointed out, an occasional jack rabbit might be met with.  It was
+rough going over the rocks and heavy sand, but Peggy stuck to it
+manfully, and as a reward for her perseverance, had the honor of
+bringing down the first game--a small jack rabbit, young and tender,
+that bounded almost under her feet from the shade of the sage brush
+in which he had been lying.
+
+This put Roy on his mettle, and brother and sister wandered further
+than they had intended, urged on by the hope of further success.
+But no more game of any kind was put up, if we except one distant
+view they had of a sage hen.  This bird was "sage" enough to take
+wing long before they came within shot of her.
+
+"Good gracious, that sun is lower than I thought," exclaimed Roy,
+suddenly awakening to the fact that they had wandered a considerable
+distance from the camp.  Several of the monotonous ground-swells of
+the desert hills, in fact, separated them from it.
+
+"We'd better hurry back," declared Peggy, "they'll be worrying about
+us at the camp."
+
+But to talk about hurrying back and doing it were two different
+things.  Roy discovered, to his dismay, that not only had he lost
+the location of the camp, but that their footsteps, by which they
+might have retrailed their path, had been obliterated in the
+shifting sands.  He said nothing to his sister, however, for several
+minutes, but plodded steadily on in the direction in which his
+judgment told him the arroyo of the gold mine lay.
+
+It was Peggy herself who broke the ice.
+
+"Roy, do you know where you are going?"
+
+Roy stammered a reply in what was meant to be a confident tone.  But
+he felt it did not deceive the gray-eyed girl at his side.  Evasion
+was useless.
+
+"Frankly, I don't, sis.  Everything seems to have twisted around
+since we came this way earlier in the afternoon.  I thought we could
+use the tops of the rises for land marks, but they all look as much
+alike as so many sea-waves."
+
+A sharp shock, which was actually physically painful, shot through
+Peggy at the words.  The sun, a red-hot copper ball, hung in livid
+haze almost above the western horizon.  On every side of them were
+scoriated hills, desolate, forbidding, sinister in the dying day,
+and all fatally similar in form.
+
+"We must try shooting.  Perhaps they will hear us," suggested Peggy,
+a sickening sense of fear--fear unlike any she had ever
+known--clutching at her heart.
+
+Roy blazed away, but the feeble reports of the light weapons they
+had did not carry to any distance.  Indeed, it was only the
+necessity of doing something that had impelled Peggy to make the
+suggestion.
+
+All at once an uncanny thing happened.  A big, black desert raven
+flew up with a scream, almost under their feet, and soared above
+their heads, screeching hoarsely.  To such a tension were their
+nerves strung that both boy and girl started and hastily stepped
+back.
+
+"Ugh, what a fright that thing gave me," exclaimed Peggy with a
+shudder that she could not control.
+
+"Nasty looking beast, and that cry of his isn't beautiful,"
+commented Roy in as easy a tone as he could assume.
+
+"Alverado told me that those desert ravens were inhabited by the
+souls of those who had lost their way and perished on the alkali,"
+shivered Peggy.
+
+"Say, sis, don't be creepy.  You surely don't believe all the rot
+those superstitious Mexicans talk, do you?"
+
+"No, not exactly--but--oh, Roy," even plucky Peggy's voice broke and
+quavered, "it's so lonely, and whatever are we to do?"
+
+The last words came wildly.  Peggy was not, as we know, a nervous
+girl, but the situation was enough to unstring the nerves of the
+most stolid of beings.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE PERILS OF THE HILLS
+
+
+Suddenly Roy gave a sharp exclamation.  Something about a
+cone-shaped peak to the west of them appeared familiar.
+
+"The camp is in that direction, I'm sure of it," he declared, "come
+on, Peg, we'll strike out for it, and in half an hour's time we'll
+be telling our adventures over a good supper."
+
+By this time Peggy was willing to start anywhere if she was
+moderately sure the camp lay in that direction, and Roy's enthusiasm
+was contagious.  Filled with renewed hope the brother and sister
+struck out for the cone-shaped peak.  Its naked base showed violet
+in the evening shadows, while its sharply rounded top was bathed in
+a rosy glow of light.  Even in her agitation Peggy could not help
+admiring the wonderful palette of colors into which the dying day
+transformed the dreary desert sea.
+
+Beyond the range the vast expanse of solitude spread glitteringly.
+All crimson and violet, with deep purple marking the depressions in
+its monotonous surface, and here and there the dry bed of one of its
+spasmodic lakes, showing almost black in its obscurity.  These lakes
+were water-filled only in the early spring, and their moisture had
+long since died out of them.  Under a noon-day sun they showed like
+shallow bowls filled with scintillating crystals.
+
+But, had they known it, Roy and Peggy were striking out on a course
+precisely opposite to that which they should have taken.  Every step
+of the advance to the sugar-loaf shaped peak was a step in the wrong
+direction.  Like many other travelers, whose bones whiten on the
+alkali, they had become confused by the monotonous similarity of one
+feature of the dreary hills to the other.
+
+The true extent of their blunder did not dawn upon them till they
+had reached the foot of the queer peak, and even the most minute
+survey of their surroundings failed to show them any trace of the
+camp.  No cheerful glow of a fire illumined the fast darkening sky.
+For all the signs of human life they could discover, they might have
+been alone in a dead world.  In fact, the scenery about them did
+resemble very closely those maps of the moon--the dead planet--which
+we see in books of astronomy.  There were the same jagged, weird
+peaks, the same dark centers, dead and extinct, and the same
+brooding hush of mystery which we associate with such scenes.
+
+Somewhere off in the distance a coyote howled dismally as the sun
+rushed under the horizon and the world was bathed in sudden
+darkness.
+
+Peggy turned to her brother with a low little moan.  She caught her
+arms about his neck and hung there sobbing.  In his solicitude for
+her, Roy forgot his own dismay and misery, which was perhaps a good
+thing, for by the time Peggy recovered herself, the boy was already
+casting  about for some means of passing the night as comfortably as
+possible.
+
+"We'll stick it out till daylight some how, Peg," he promised, "and
+I'm confident that by that time they'll send up one of the
+monoplanes, and from up in the air they'll have no difficulty in
+locating us."
+
+The thought was a comforting one, and Peggy's first flush of
+passionate grief and fear gave way to calmer feelings.  No doubt it
+would be as Roy had forecast.  After all, she argued, it was only
+one night in the open, and they had their weapons and plenty of
+ammunition.
+
+By a stroke of good luck, Roy had stuffed his pockets full of the
+hard round biscuits known as "pilot bread" before they left the
+camp.  He also had matches and a canteen full of water.  Poor Peggy
+still carried the lone jack-rabbit, the trophy of her gun, and Roy
+at once set about grubbing up sage brush and making a fire with the
+oleaginous roots as he had seen Mr. Bell do.
+
+Before long a roaring blaze was ready, and then the boy began the
+task of skinning and preparing the rabbit for cooking.  Peggy turned
+away during this operation, but summoned up fortitude enough to gaze
+on while her brother spitted the carcass on the cleaning rod of his
+rifle and broiled it in primitive fashion.
+
+"First call for dinner in the dining car forward!" he announced in
+as gay a voice as he could command when the cooking seemed to be
+finished.
+
+"The first course is broiled jack rabbit with pilot bread and
+delicious, sparkling alkali water.  The second course is broiled
+jack rabbit with--"
+
+"Oh, Roy, don't," cried Peggy half hysterically; "it reminds me of
+the train and the good times we had on the way out from the East.
+We didn't think then that--"
+
+"Let me give you some broiled jack-rabbit," proffered Roy, gallantly
+extending a bit of smoking meat on the end of his knife.
+
+Peggy bit it daintily, expecting to make a wry face over it, but to
+her surprise she found it not half bad.  Between them, the two
+hungry young people speedily reduced that rabbit to first
+principles.
+
+"And now for dessert," exclaimed Roy, in a triumphant voice.  "No,
+I'm not joking--look here!"
+
+He drew from his pocket a flat, pink box which, on being opened,
+proved to contain several cakes of chocolate of Peggy's favorite
+brand.
+
+"Oh, dear," sighed Peggy as she nibbled away at the confection, "if
+only I knew positively that we were going to come out all right I'd
+really be inclined to enjoy this as a picnic."
+
+"Hooray! here comes the moon," cried Roy, after an interval, during
+which the chocolate steadily diminished in quantity.
+
+Over the eastern horizon, beyond the desolate peaks and barren
+"ocean" of the desert, a silver rim crept.  Rapidly it rose till the
+full moon was climbing on her nightly course and flooding the alkali
+with a soft radiance almost as bright as subdued electric light.
+Against the glow the weird, ragged peaks stood out as blackly as if
+cut out of cardboard.  One could see the tracery of every bit of
+brush and rock outlined as plainly as if they had been silhouetted
+by an artist at the craft.
+
+All at once Peggy gave a frightened little cry and shrank close to
+Roy.  The firelight showed her face drawn and startled.
+
+"Oh, Roy, over there! No, not that peak--that one to the right!"
+
+"Well, sis, what about it?" asked Roy indulgently.
+
+"Something moved!  No, don't laugh, I'm sure of it."
+
+"A coyote maybe or another jack rabbit.  In that case we'll have a
+chance at a shot."
+
+"No, Roy, it wasn't an animal."  Peggy's tones were vibrant with
+alarm--tense as a taut violin string.  "What I saw was a man."
+
+"A man.  Nonsense!  Unless it was someone from the camp looking for
+us."
+
+ "No, this man was watching us.  He may have been crouching there
+for a long time.  I saw the outline of his sombrero black against
+the moonlight behind that rise.  Oh, Roy, I'm frightened."
+
+"Rubbish," declared Roy stoutly, although his heart began to beat
+uncomfortably fast.  "What man could there be here unless it was
+Alverado, and he couldn't possibly have arrived by this time."
+
+"But, Roy, it wasn't my fancy.  Truly it wasn't.  I saw a man
+crouching there and watching us.  When I looked up he vanished."
+
+"Must have been a rock or something, sis.  Moonlight plays queer
+tricks you know.  Don't let's make the situation any worse by
+imagining things."
+
+"It was not imagination," repeated Peggy stoutly.
+
+But Roy, perhaps because he did not wish to, would not admit the
+possibility of Peggy's vision being correct.
+
+A long, loud cry like the laughing of an imprisoned soul cut the
+stillness startlingly.
+
+"Ki-yi-yi-yi-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!"
+
+"Coyotes!" laughed Roy, "that's what you saw."
+
+Peggy said nothing.  The sudden sharp sound had rasped her
+overwrought nerves cruelly.
+
+"Ki-yi-yi-yi-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!"
+
+The demoniacal laughing, half howl, half bark, cut the night again.
+
+This time it came from a different direction.  From other grim peaks
+the cry was caught up.  It seemed that the creatures were all about
+them.
+
+"Surrounded!" muttered Roy a bit nervously.  He had not forgotten
+the fight in the canyon, although, as he knew, coyotes, only on the
+very rarest occasions, when driven desperate by hunger, attack
+mankind.
+
+The cries appeared to come from all quarters now.  And they were
+drawing nearer, course lay to the eastward there was no mistaking
+that.
+
+"They are closing in on us, sis.  Better load up that gun."
+
+As he spoke Roy refilled the magazine of his little twenty-two
+rifle.
+
+"Ki-yi-yi-yi-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!"
+
+This time the cry was quite close and behind them.  Roy switched
+sharply round.  The surroundings, the uncanny cries, the solitude
+were beginning to tell on his nerves, too.  His self-control was
+being wrought to a raw edge.
+
+Was it fancy, or as he switched abruptly about did he actually see a
+dark object duck behind a rock?  An object that bore a strange
+resemblance to a sombrero.
+
+"Good gracious, I musn't become as shaky as this," the boy thought,
+making a desperate effort to marshal his faculties, and then he
+sniffed sharply.
+
+"What is it, Roy?" asked Peggy strangely calm now in the face of
+what she deemed must prove an emergency.
+
+Roy's answer was peculiar.
+
+"I smelled tobacco just now, I'm sure of it," he whispered in a low
+tone.  "I guess you were right, sis."
+
+"But the coyotes?"
+
+"Are men signaling to each other and closing in on us."
+
+As he spoke the boy scattered the fire, and seizing Peggy by the arm
+dragged her into the black shadow of the cone-shaped peak.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+RED BILL SUMMERS
+
+
+A keen chill, sharp as if an icy wind had swept her, embraced Peggy.
+It was succeeded by a mad beating of her heart.  Roy said nothing
+but clutched his rifle.  He jerked it to his shoulder as, out of the
+shadows, a figure emerged sharp and black against the moonlight.  As
+if she were in a trance Peggy saw Roy's hand slide under the barrel
+of the little repeater and then came the sharp click of the
+repeating mechanism, followed by the snap of the hammer as it fell
+forward.
+
+But no report followed.
+
+"Jammed!" exclaimed the boy desperately.
+
+At the same moment the figure approaching them, which for an instant
+had vanished behind a shoulder of rock, emerged boldly, the
+moonlight playing on a revolver barrel pointed menacingly at the
+brother and sister.
+
+"No foolin' thar, youngsters," came a harsh voice; "we've got you
+where we want you."
+
+Coincidently from all about them the rocks seemed to spawn figures,
+till half a dozen men in rough plainsman's garb stood in the
+moonlight.  Resistance was useless; worse, it might have resulted in
+a calamity more dire than the one that had overtaken them.
+
+But curiously enough the very hopelessness of their situation
+inspired in Peggy a far different feeling to the terror that had
+clutched at her heart a moment before.  She was conscious of a swift
+tide of anger.  In one of the figures she had recognized the
+renegade guide.
+
+"Juan--you!" she exclaimed in tones in which scorn struggled with
+indignation.
+
+The guide turned away.  Even his effrontery wilted before the young
+girl's frank contempt.  It was all clear enough to Peggy now.
+Evidently, Juan had been bribed by these men to stay with the party
+till he had learned their plans, which he was then to betray to the
+band.  For, in the moonlight Peggy had had no difficulty in
+recognizing the men whose conversation she had overheard at the
+National House.
+
+There was the red-headed man, with his coarse, bristling crop of
+hair, and the mustache like the stumpy bristles of an old tooth
+brush, the tall, dark young fellow with the red sash and the silver
+spurs, poor Peggy's "romantic brigand," and the hawk-nosed man with
+the drooping mustache, who had formed the red-headed one's companion
+on the train.
+
+"Hearn of Red Bill Summers, I op-ine," shot out the man with the red
+hair in a voice that rasped like a file on rusty iron.
+
+"I think so," rejoined Roy quietly, and Peggy rejoiced to hear her
+brother's calm, steady tones.
+
+"Wall, I'm him.  You treat me right and don't make no fuss an' we'll
+git along all right.  If not--"
+
+He paused significantly.
+
+"Whar's Buck Bellew?"
+
+The red-headed one gazed about him.  From the shadows stepped
+Peggy's "romantic brigand."
+
+"Buck, you put a couple of half hitches about them kids."
+
+"The gal, too?" hesitated the silver-spurred one addressed as
+"Buck."
+
+"Sure.  Didn't I tell yer to."
+
+"Wa-al, I won't.  That's flat.  I ain't never persecuted women folks
+an' I ain't goin' ter start now."
+
+Red Bill Summers paused and then grumbled out:
+
+"All right, then.  She kin ride the greaser's horse.  Juan, you
+yellow-skinned bronco, go git ther ponies."
+
+Juan flitted off and presently reappeared, leading half a dozen wiry
+little ponies.  In the meantime the remainder of the band had
+gathered about Roy and Peggy, regarding them with frank curiosity.
+Except that their weapons were taken away from them no harm was
+offered them however, and Roy had not, so far, even been tied up.
+
+"This isn't a bit like the story-book hold-ups", thought Peggy.  "If
+it wasn't for their rough clothes and fierce looks these men
+wouldn't be so very different from anyone else."
+
+"Now, miss, I'll help you to mount.  Sorry we ain't got a side
+saddle, but we don't hev much use fer such contraptions with our
+outfit."
+
+It was the red-sashed man speaking.  He held out a stirrup for
+Peggy, and the girl, perforce, mounted the pony.  She caught herself
+wondering as she did so what her friends at home in the East would
+have thought if they could have seen her at the moment.  It was
+Roy's turn next.  Brother and sister were permitted to ride side by
+side.  Juan, to Peggy's secret satisfaction, was compelled to give
+up his burro to one of the outlaws while he tramped along.
+
+"Serves him right," thought the girl.
+
+The man whose pony Roy bestrode leaped nimbly into the saddle behind
+Buck Bellew.
+
+Hardly a word was spoken, but their captors closed in silently about
+the boy and the girl prisoners.
+
+"Death Valley," ordered Red Bill briefly, swinging himself into the
+saddle.  Peggy guessed that the sinisterly named place must be their
+destination.
+
+Amid the maze of pinnacles, minarets and spires of the desert range
+the horsemen forged slowly forward.  From the fact that they
+traveled toward the newly risen moon Peggy surmised that their
+course lay to the eastward . But presently it shifted and they began
+moving north.
+
+"Where can we be going?" Peggy found an opportunity to exchange a
+word or two with Roy.  Owing to the rough nature of the ground their
+rear guard had, of necessity, fallen back a bit.
+
+"No idea, sis.  One thing seems certain, however, they don't mean to
+harm us, at least not yet."
+
+The rear guard closed up again, necessitating silence once more.
+All night they traveled, ambling at the plainsman's "trotecito" when
+opportunity offered, and then again slacking to a crawling walk
+where the baked ground grew uneven and criss-crossed with gullies
+and arroyos.
+
+At last, when Peggy's head was beginning to sway with exhaustion,
+the eastern sky began to grow gray.  The coming day lit up the
+desert wanly, as if it had been a leaden sea.  But with the uprising
+of the sun the familiar glaring white of the alkali blazed out once
+more.  They had left the pinnacled hills and were now traveling over
+undulating country overgrown with rough brush.  It was a sad, drab
+color, and smelled pungently where the ponies' hooves trampled it.
+
+But presently they broke into a different country.  It was flatter
+than that which they had already traversed and, if possible, more
+desolate, sun-bleached and parched.  The ponies stumbled over loose
+shale, raising clouds of suffocating dust that tingled in the
+nostrils.  Down they rode into its basin-like formation.  All about
+the depression arose the craggy, stripped hills.  Their jagged peaks
+seemed to shut out the rest of the world and compress the universe
+into this baked, burning basin in the desert.
+
+Across the bottom of it the alkali swept in little vagrant puffs,
+proceeding from the gaps of the hills.  It piled in little gray
+heaps like ashes.  The air hung steady and still as a plumb line
+dropped from the sky.
+
+"We've got ter git across hyar muy pronto, (very quickly)," grunted
+the red-headed man, whose perspiring, fat face was coated gray with
+dust and alkali.  "What a hole fer white men ter be in."
+
+"It's like a busted heat-blister on a big piecrust," commented Buck
+Bellew, whose jauntiness had wilted.  His red sash was of a piece
+now with the rest of his garments-a dirty, dull gray.
+
+After a while a hot wind sprang up.  It felt like the heated blast
+from an opened oven door.  It tore in mad witch-dances about the
+dismal basin, sending whirling dust-devils dancing over that dreary
+place.
+
+They spread, gyrated, swelled to giant mushroom shape, and died down
+in a monstrous ballet.  Peggy felt her senses slipping under the
+strain.  But she kept a tight rein on herself.
+
+"I must brace up for Roy's sake," she thought.
+
+She stole a glance at her brother.  Roy, despite his plight and the
+dust which enveloped him, was tight-lipped and defiant.  No sign of
+a breakdown appeared on his features, for which Peggy breathed a
+prayer of thanks.
+
+"After all, God is near us even in this dreadful place," she
+thought, and the reflection comforted her strangely.
+
+Across the bottom of the bowl men and animals crawled like flies
+round the base of a pudding basin.  From time to time the water kegs
+on the back of Juan's burro were sparingly tapped.  At such times
+Buck Bellew never failed to be at Peggy's side with a tin cup of the
+warm, unpalatable stuff.  But at least it was liquid, and Peggy
+thanked the man with as cheerful an air as she could assume.
+
+But, unending as the progress across the red hot depression seemed
+to be, it came to an end at last, and the ponies began to climb the
+steep walls on the further side.  At the summit, a surprise was in
+store for them--for Peggy and Roy that is.  To the others the place
+was evidently familiar.  Some rough huts, half of canvas and half of
+brush, showed that it had long been used as a rendezvous by the
+band.
+
+The spot was a perfect little amphitheatre in the barren hills.
+Green grass, actual green grass, covered its floor and wild oats
+grew on the hillsides in fair plentitude.  From the further end of
+the enclosed oasis arose clouds of steam which they afterwards
+learned came from boiling hot springs.  But the waters of the hot
+springs soon lost their heat, and in the course of years had watered
+this little spot till it literally--in comparison with its
+surroundings--blossomed like the rose.
+
+Red Bill Summers threw himself from his pony and, lying full length
+beside the creek that trickled through the valley from the springs
+above, he reveled in the water.  When he had drunk his fill he
+stood erect.
+
+"Wa-al," he drawled, running his hand through his stubbly red crop,
+"I reckon we're home again."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+A FRIEND IN NEED
+
+
+From one of the huts at the upper end of the miniature valley an odd
+figure emerged.  It was garbed in a blue blouse and loose trousers
+of the same color.  Embroidered slippers without heels caused a
+curious shuffling gait in the newcomer.  As he drew closer Peggy and
+Roy perceived that he was a Chinaman.  His queue was coiled upon the
+top of his skull, giving a queer expression to his stolid features,
+over which the yellow skin was stretched as tightly as parchment on
+a drum.
+
+"Here you, Ah Sing, hurry muchee quick and cook us a meal," roared
+Red Bill as he perceived the newcomer.
+
+"Alee litee," was the easy-going response, "me catchum plentee
+quick."
+
+The Oriental, who was by this time quite close, allowed his slant
+eyes to rest curiously on the two young prisoners.  His mask-like
+face, however, betrayed no emotion of any kind, and with a guttural
+grunt he was off; apparently to set about his preparations for
+obeying the orders of the outlaw leader.
+
+Red Bill turned to Peggy and Roy, who had dismounted.
+
+"I'll speak to you two after we've eaten," he said; "in the meantime
+the young lady kin take that hut thar."  He indicated a tumble-down
+structure near at hand.
+
+"It ain't a Fift' Avenoo mansion," he grinned, "but I reckon it'll
+hev ter do."
+
+Then he switched on Roy.
+
+"You boy," he growled, "you kin hev thet other shack.  If you want
+ter wash up thar's a bucket.  We've hot and cold water in these
+diggin's, too, so take yer choice.  Hot's above, cold's below.  An'
+one thing.  You ain't goin' ter be closely watched.  It ain't
+needful.  You rec'lect that red-hot basin we come through?"
+
+As the questioner seemed to pause for an answer Roy nodded.
+
+"Wall the country all around hyar's jes' like that, so thet if yer
+moseyed you wouldn't stand a Chinaman's chance of gittin' away
+alive."
+
+Red Bill, with a vindictive grin, turned on his heel abruptly and
+stalked off, followed by the others.  Peggy and Roy were left alone.
+Seemingly no restraint was to be put upon them.  In fact, it
+appeared, as Red Bill had pointed out, that an attempted escape
+could only result fatally for them.
+
+"Whatever will Aunt Sally and the rest be thinking?" exclaimed Peggy
+as the rough looking group, talking and gesticulating among
+themselves, made toward the upper end of the valley.
+
+"Poor aunt!  She must be in a terrible state of mind," rejoined Roy
+dejectedly.  "If only we could have got word to her or Mr. Bell--"
+
+"In that case we could have taken it ourselves," wisely remarked
+Peggy; "well, brother mine, there is no use in borrowing trouble.
+Let's make the best of it.  I've an idea that that redheaded man
+means to offer us some sort of a proposition after dinner."
+
+"Wish he'd offer us some dinner first; I'm ravenous."
+
+"Well, I couldn't eat a thing till I've got some of this dust off
+me, so please get me a bucket of water."
+
+"Say, look at that Chinaman eyeing us," broke off Roy suddenly;
+"wonder what's the matter with him?"
+
+"Guess he isn't used to visitors," suggested Peggy.  "So this is
+where this gang, we heard talked about in Blue Creek, have been
+hiding themselves.  No wonder the sheriff couldn't find them."
+
+"It's an ideal hiding place," agreed Roy, "far too ideal to suit us.
+I don't see how we'd ever get out of here without help."
+
+"Oh, as for that, I kept careful track of the way we came.  I noted
+all the landmarks, and I really believe I could pick up the
+trail--is that the way you say it?--again."
+
+"Good for you.  I hope we have a chance to try out your sense of
+observation.  But I'm off to get that water.  Say, that Chinaman's
+staring harder than ever.  What do you suppose he wants?"
+
+"I haven't an idea.  Opium perhaps.  Don't they eat it or do
+something with it and then have beautiful dreams?  I've heard--oh,
+Roy," the girl broke off breathlessly, "I've got it!  You know that
+little jade god that Clara Cummings brought back from China with her
+when her father resigned as consul there?"
+
+"Yes. But what--"
+
+"Well, look here, you silly boy, I've got it on now.  Look on my
+watch chain.  I wonder if that could be what--what that Mongolian
+was regarding so closely?"
+
+"Maybe," responded Roy carelessly, "but now I'm really off to get
+that water.  Hot or cold?"
+
+"Both!" cried Peggy.
+
+The spirits of youth are elastic, and even in their predicament
+Peggy found her heart almost singing within her at the beauty of the
+green little valley after their long, dusty journey over the alkali
+barrens.
+
+"After all," she assured herself, "I don't believe they mean us any
+real harm and--oh, what an adventure to tell about when we get home
+again."
+
+A refreshing wash and a hasty adjustment of her hair before a mirror
+in a tiny "vanity box," which shared the watch charm snap with the
+little jade god, served to still further raise Peggy's spirits.
+
+Red Bill Summers and his followers ate at the upper end of the
+valley, but the Chinaman brought food on an improvised board tray to
+the captives.  Having set down two dishes of a steaming stew of some
+kind, flanked with coffee, sweetened and flavored with condensed
+milk, and real bread, the Oriental glanced swiftly about him.  Red
+Bill and his companions were noisily convivial, and paying no
+attention to what was transpiring at the lower end of the valley.
+Like a flash the Chinaman slid to his knees and extending his hands
+above his head touched his forehead to the ground three times in
+front of Peggy.
+
+Then rising he exclaimed:
+
+"Melican girl, gleat joss, mighty joss.  Ah Sing he come bymby.
+Goo'bye."
+
+He turned swiftly and silently in his silken slippers and glided off
+without a backward look.
+
+"Well, what do you make of that?" wondered Roy.
+
+"Oh, Roy, don't you see.  He was worshiping this joss, as he calls
+Clara's little jade god.  Just think, this may be a way out of it.
+If we can make him believe that--that--"
+
+"That we stand in with his josh--joss--what do you call it?--you
+mean that we can scare him into letting us have horses to-night and
+escaping.
+
+"How you do run ahead, Roy.  I hadn't thought of that yet.  But it
+might be done.  He said he was coming back by and by.  I wonder what
+he wants?"
+
+"Maybe your blessing," grinned Roy.  "But come on.  Let's tackle
+this stew while it's hot.  It looks great to me after that
+jack-rabbit supper."
+
+"And this is bread--real bread, too!" cried Peggy, following Roy's
+example of "tackling the stew."
+
+It was ten minutes after the last mouthful had disappeared that the
+tall, red-sashed young outlaw came toward the shack in front of
+which brother and sister were seated.
+
+"The boss wants to see you," he said briefly, and signed to them to
+follow him.
+
+Red Bill Summers sat alone before the remains of the Chinese cook's
+dinner.  The other outlaws were busied staking out their ponies and
+removing the dust and perspiration from the little animals' coats.
+Far off, like a lost spirit, the treacherous Juan with his burro,
+could be seen.
+
+From time to time he cast a covert glance toward Peggy and Roy.  In
+his own country treachery such as he had shown would have been
+visited with death even if the avenger had to die for it himself the
+next minute.
+
+The outlaw chief looked up as his dapper follower came up with the
+young Easterners.
+
+"Grub all right?" he asked.
+
+"Not bad at all," responded Roy non-committally.  He didn't want to
+show this red-headed law-breaker that he was afraid of him.
+
+"Wa-al, thet's jes' a sample of ther way I'm willin' ter treat yer
+as long ez you're here.  I've got a hard name around ther alkali,
+but I ain't ez black ez I'm painted."
+
+To this the two young prisoners made no reply, and Red Bill looked
+at them searchingly, but if he expected to read anything from their
+faces he was speedily undeceived.
+
+"Now, then," he went on, "as you'll have guessed, I didn't kidnap
+you two fer fun.  I  did it fer infermation.  I reckin' you know
+pretty well the location of Jim Bell's mine.'
+
+"No better than you do," responded Roy boldly; "I guess that
+scoundrel Juan told you all you wanted to know."
+
+"Oh, as fur as thet goes," rejoined Red Bill easily, "I could ride
+right frum hyar to yer camp.  But what I'm gittin' at is this:
+You've seen the papers Jim Bell is goin' ter file.  You know ther
+exact location.  Thet's what I want.  Give it to me an' I'll hev my
+men take yer as close ter yer camp as it's safe ter go without
+kickin' up a rumpus."
+
+"In other words, you wish me to betray Mr. Bell's plans to you
+before he--"
+
+Roy stopped. He had been on the verge of saying, "Before he's filed
+the claim himself." just in time, however, he recollected that this
+might be news to the outlaw, and he stopped short.  But Red Bill was
+as astute as a desert fox.
+
+"Before he files the claim himself, you wuz goin' ter say, I
+be-lieve," he drawled, purposely accentuating his words so that they
+fell like drops of ice water from his cold lips.
+
+Roy could have bitten his tongue out.  Quite unmeaningly he had
+betrayed a secret which might prove of tremendous import in the
+desperate game Red Bill seemed bent on playing.
+
+"I said nothing about the filing or not filing of a claim," parried
+Roy, after a pause.
+
+"Yer don't hev ter say everything ter make yerself understood,
+younker," snarled Red Bill, facing the boy and blinking his little
+red-rimmed orbs into Roy's honest open countenance.
+
+"Thet's somethin' you've foun' out anyhow, Bill," drawled the
+red-sashed young outlaw, drawing his thin lips back in a sarcastic
+smile.
+
+Roy felt himself turning red with chagrin.  He had intended to play
+a cunning game with Red Bill, but the outlaw seemed to be capable of
+reading his mind.  Steeling himself to be more careful in the future
+he awaited the further questions of his inquisitor.  Upon the manner
+in which he answered them he felt that not alone his safety and
+Peggy's depended, but also the security and possibly the lives of
+the party in the distant arroyo.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+AH SING'S JOSS
+
+
+"That'll be all on that line," said Red Bill presently.  He turned
+to his companion.
+
+"Got a pencil and a bit of paper, Buck?" he asked.
+
+The red-sashed one produced the required pencil--a much bitten stub—and
+then set off toward the cook house for a bit of paper.  He returned with
+the fly leaf out of an old account book.
+
+"Good enough," said Red Bill.  "Now then younker," turning to Roy,
+"you take this pencil, lay that paper on that flat rock and write as
+I tell you."
+
+Wondering what was coming, Roy obeyed, while Peggy with wondering
+eyes looked on anxiously at the strange scene.  It had grown quite
+still in the little valley.  The only sounds that occasionally
+interrupted the hush were the shouts of the men tethering the ponies
+and the harsh scream of a buzzard swinging high against the burning
+blue of the desert sky.
+
+"Mister Bell, dear sir," began Red Bill, dictating in his rasping
+voice.
+
+"All right," said Roy, transcribing the words to the paper.  The boy
+had an inkling of what was to come, but he didn't wish to make
+trouble before he actually had to.
+
+"Got that, did you?"
+
+'Yes.
+
+"Very well.  Now write this: 'Me an' my sister is in the hands of
+those who are our friends at present.  It depends on you if they
+remain so.  The messenger who brings you this will arrange for the
+transfer of the location papers of the mine to these parties.  If
+you don't do this they will--'"
+
+Red Bill paused and shoving back his sombrero scratched his rubicund
+poll.
+
+"Make it 'they will-take other measures.' Jim Bell's no fool an'
+he'll know what's meant by that," concluded the outlaw of the
+alkali.
+
+"Why you ain't bin writing what I tole yer," he whipped out
+suddenly, just becoming aware that Roy's pencil had been idle.
+Peggy breathed hard.  There was menace in the man's very attitude.
+
+Roy looked up boldly.
+
+"You don't suppose that I'm going to be party to any scheme like
+that," he demanded with flaming checks.
+
+Peggy, watching the little drama closely, saw that the ruffian was
+plainly taken off his feet by this.  He had not expected--or so it
+seemed clear--that he would encounter any opposition in carrying out
+his rascally plan of playing off the safety of a boy and a girl who
+had never wronged him for the sake of gaining the title to a mine.
+
+"What, you won't write it!" he bellowed at length.  The great veins
+on his neck swelled.  His little pig-like eyes gleamed malevolently.
+
+Roy stood his ground firmly, although his heart was beating far
+faster than was pleasant, and a mist swam in front of his eyes.  But
+he had seen Peggy watching, and knew that her trust in his integrity
+and honor had never faltered.  Right then Roy took an inward oath
+that he would not destroy her faith.
+
+"No, I will not," he flashed back; "I don't see how you could expect
+me to take part in a plan to trap and trick my own friends."
+
+Red Bill's lip curled up, exposing a row of ragged yellow teeth.
+
+"Not even at the cost of your own life?" he snarled.
+
+Roy had half an idea that the ruffian was "bluffing" him.  But even
+had he thought Red Bill in deadly earnest his reply would have been
+the same.
+
+"No!"
+
+The word was ejaculated like a pistol shot.
+
+"Then listen.  Your sister--"
+
+To emphasize his words the outlaw launched his clumsy, thick-set
+frame forward.  But the next instant he recoiled as if he had
+stepped on the edge of a fearful abyss.  Simultaneously Roy and
+Peggy became aware of a curious buzzing, whirring sound like the
+rattling of dried peas on a griddle.  A long dark body glided off
+through the yellow blades of sun-bitten grass.
+
+"It's--it's a rattler!" gasped Red Bill.
+
+He stooped as if to catch his ankle, and reeling fell in a clumsy
+huddled heap on the floor of the valley.  As he fell a shot
+reverberated through the silent place. With one bullet from his
+revolver the tall young outlaw had dispatched the reptile, which had
+lain hidden in the grass.
+
+"Get you, Bill?" he asked laconically stooping over his chief.
+
+"Yes.  I'm a gone coon I guess, Buck."
+
+His red face, contorted and purple from pain, the stricken man slid
+backward.  His lips parted and became ashen.  The poison was
+coursing through his veins with terrific rapidity.
+
+"Let me see.  Maybe I can be of some use.  Stand aside, please."
+
+It was Peggy.  The group of outlaws that had gathered about the
+recumbent man gave place respectfully.  From a bag at her waist
+Peggy drew out a little oblong leather case.  It had been a present
+to her from Mr. Bell before they set out to cross the reptile-haunted
+desert.
+
+Opening the case she drew out a fairy-like little squirt, trimmed in
+silver.  It was a hypodermic syringe.  From a case she produced some
+crystals of a purplish color.
+
+"A cup of water, please," she begged.
+
+It was in her hand almost as quickly as she made the request.  In
+the meantime, with a handkerchief she had deftly bandaged the
+outlaw's leg above the bite.  This was twisted tightly with a stick
+and prevented the poison circulating above the wound.
+
+On Red Bill's ankle the reptile's bite was plainly to be seen.  Two
+tiny blue punctures, fine enough to have been done with a needle.
+Yet through the fangs that gave the bite had been delivered enough
+poison to kill a strong man.
+
+With flying fingers Peggy immersed the crystals in the water,
+turning it a deep crimson.  Then filling the syringe she pushed its
+needle-like point under the outlaw's skin and just above the wound.
+Then she injected the antidote which she had mixed--permanganate of
+potassium--and old plainsmen will tell you there is no better
+opponent of a rattler's poison than the one Peggy used, the method
+of utilizing which had been opportunely taught her by Mr. Bell.
+
+Red Bill's lips parted.  His voice came through them painfully,
+hissingly.
+
+"Thank 'ee," he muttered, and then closed his eyes.
+
+They carried him into a shack a little way up the valley and laid
+him on a cot.
+
+"Anything else to be done, miss?" asked one of the outlaws in an
+awed tone.
+
+"No," answered Peggy with quite the manner of a professional nurse;
+"he'll do nicely now.  In an hour or so he ought to be better.  You
+can call me then."
+
+"Wa-al, I'll be all fired, double gosh-jiggered," Roy heard one of
+the men say as they left the shack and emerged into the late
+afternoon sunlight.  The outlaws were all in the shack of their
+leader.  All, that is, but the Chinaman, who had been an interested
+observer from the outskirts of the crowd.  As the boy and girl came
+out of the shack he glided up to them as softly and silently as
+ever.
+
+"Me see.  You welly good.  Allee samee doctor.  Joss he helpee you,"
+he said in a low voice.  Then glancing about he sank his voice to a
+whisper:
+
+"But you no tlustee Led (Red) Bill.  Him plentee bad mans.  He
+feelee sick now.  Him plentee thank yous.  When he well he do you
+muchee harm."
+
+"He could not be so ungrateful," exclaimed Roy; "my sister saved his
+life."
+
+"Umph.  That plentee big pity.  Why not let him die.  Good
+liddance," opined the cold-blooded Ah Sing.  "Listen, Melican boy
+an' girl, helpee you escape to-night you do one littlee ting for
+me."
+
+"You'll help us escape?" echoed Peggy, the blood beating in her
+ears.  "How?  We'd need horses, water, food and--"
+
+"Me catchee eblyting.  Leve him all to Ah Sing, he git um."
+
+A cunning smile overspread his features.
+
+"But Ah Sing wantee some leward he do dis."
+
+"Of course.  Any money you want you shall have in Blue Creek," burst
+out Roy.
+
+"Me no wantee monee.  Me want lillee misses joss.  Him plentee big
+joss my countlee.  I have that joss I have plentee eblyting I want."
+
+"He means the little god that Clara gave me," whispered Peggy.  "All
+right, Sing, you shall have it.  You shall have it when you are
+ready to send us out of the valley."
+
+The Chinaman's face changed just the fraction of a muscle.  That was
+as near as he came to permitting himself to show his gratification
+over the promise of the joss.
+
+"Allee litee," he said, "bymby he get dark.  You wait in missees
+shack.  When I ready I give one, two, tree knocks-so!"
+
+As silently as he had glided up he glided off again just as the
+crowd began pouring from the shack where the injured outlaw lay.
+Roy and Peggy could only exchange wild glances of astonishment at
+the surprising turn affairs had taken.
+
+But presently Peggy spoke.
+
+"I knew when I prayed in that terrible valley, Roy, that a way would
+be found," she said, and her voice was vibrant with reverence and
+faith as the brother and sister turned away.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE ESCAPE AND WHAT FOLLOWED
+
+
+"Roy!  Roy!  Wake up!"
+
+Peggy shook the shoulder of her brother, who had dozed off in a
+rough chair formed out of an old flour barrel.  She glanced at her
+watch.  It was almost midnight, and half an hour since the steady
+footfall of the sentry, who was keeping desultory watch on the
+captives, had passed the hut.
+
+Roy was wide awake in an instant. He sat up staring wildly about,
+and then, casting sleep from him, he listened intently.
+
+Tap!  Tap!  Tap!
+
+The three raps came against the back wall of the shack, and then:
+
+"Missee all ledee.  Man who watchee you him go sleep.  Me got
+ponies, water, eblyting.  Make um number one quick."
+
+With quick, beating pulses the brother and sister slipped from the
+door and out into the valley.  It was moonlight-that is to say, the
+moon had risen, but a peculiar haze overcast the sky and the light
+of the luminary of the night only served to make the darkness more
+visible.  Back of the shack stood a vague figure holding two ponies
+by the bridles.  It was Ah Sing.
+
+"You give me lilly joss now, missee?" he asked eagerly.
+
+Swiftly Peggy stooped and unfastened the little jade god from
+far-off China.
+
+"Here, Sing," she said simply, "and thank you."
+
+The Chinaman bowed low three times before he took the precious
+symbol into his keeping.  He slipped it inside his loose blouse.
+
+"All ledee now," he said, holding a stirrup for Peggy to mount.
+
+"But how will you explain it?  Won't they kill you when they find
+the ponies are gone?" asked Roy.
+
+The Oriental laughed the throaty, mirthless chuckle of his race.
+
+"I tellee them you steal them," he said; "they no thinkee Ali Sing
+hab good sense enough to help you.  All litee now.  Good bye."
+
+Before they were thoroughly aware of it, so swiftly had the actual
+escape happened, Peggy and Roy found themselves moving out of the
+valley on their desperate dash for freedom.  The ponies went
+silently as wraiths.  The astute Ah Sing had bundled their feet in
+sacks so that they made no more noise than cats.
+
+In the faint light they could perceive the gateway of the little
+valley, and in a short time they had passed it and were beginning to
+traverse the gloomy stretches beyond.  Suddenly there came a sound
+that sent every drop of blood in their bodies flying to their
+hearts, and then set it to coursing wildly through their veins
+again.
+
+Bang!
+
+The report, coming from behind them, cut the stillness of the night
+like a scimitar of sound.
+
+"A pistol!" exclaimed Roy.  "They've discovered our escape."
+
+Peggy shuddered.  Bending forward at the risk of the noise of their
+flight being heard, they began to urge their ponies faster.  Behind
+them was pandemonium.  Shouts, cries and shots mingled in a babel of
+sound.
+
+"The kids hev got away!"  That cry sounded above all the others, and
+then, with sinister meaning, came another shout:
+
+"Saddle up and git arter 'em.  Get 'em, dead or alive!"
+
+Sounds of galloping followed this order, and then came the shrill
+voice of Ah Sing:
+
+"Me see um.  Me see um.  They go that way!  Over there!  Over the
+hills!"
+
+"Good for Ah Sing," breathed Roy; "he has thrown them off the track.
+He's told them we went the other way.  Come on, sis; now's our time
+to make speed before they discover their mistake."
+
+The two fugitives urged their ponies unmercifully over the  shale.
+Fortunately, in the rarefied air of the desert, the nights are
+comparatively cool, and the tough little broncos sped along at a
+good gait without showing signs of distress.  But it was a cruel
+race across the floor of the desolate valley, and when they e merged
+on to the comparatively easy going of the foothills of the barren
+range, the ponies were fain to slack up and draw long heaving
+breaths.
+
+"Poor little creatures," cried Peggy; "you've got a long way to go
+yet."
+
+By the moon, which showed through the haze in a sort of luminous
+patch, Roy gauged the way.  Peggy's observations, too, made on the
+journey into the valley, helped.  They kept the pinnacled steeps of
+the barren hills to their right and pressed forward among the
+undulating foothills.  They had been traveling thus for perhaps an
+hour-pausing now and then to listen for sounds of pursuit when Roy
+suddenly became sensible of a change in the atmosphere.  It grew
+warm and close and almost sticky.  A puff of hot wind breathed up in
+their faces and went screaming off among the mysterious clefts and
+canyons above.
+
+"Are we going to have a storm?" wondered Peggy.
+
+"Don't know, sis, but the weather looks ominous.  I don't like that
+wind.  We must make more speed."
+
+"I hate to drive these poor ponies any faster," protested Peggy
+
+"But we must, sis.  They'll have a good long rest when this is over.
+Come on."
+
+So saying Roy brought down his quirt--the long raw-hide whip used in
+the West--over the heaving flanks of his pony.  The little animal
+gamely responded and plunged forward at a quick lope.  Peggy,
+perforce, followed suit, although it made her heart ache to press
+the animals at such a gait.
+
+On and on they rode, while the weather every moment grew more
+peculiar.  From the floor of the desert great dust-devils of white
+alkali arose and swirled solemnly across the wastes.  In the
+semi-darkness they looked like gaunt ghosts.  Peggy shuddered.  It
+was like a nightmare.  Once or twice she even pinched herself to see
+if she were awake.
+
+The night, from being cool, had now become blisteringly hot.  The
+wind was like the fiery exhalations of a blast furnace.  Grains of
+sand caught up by it drove stingingly against their faces.  Each
+grain cut into the flesh, smarting sharply.
+
+"We must keep on."
+
+It was Roy's voice, coming after a long silence.
+
+Peggy answered with a monosyllable.  A short distance further on
+they dismounted and allayed their thirst from the kegs Ah Sing had
+fastened to each saddle, and. then, although their supply was
+precious, they had to yield to the whinnied entreaties of the
+ponies.  Into a small tin bucket each young rider emptied a modicum
+of the water and let the little animals drink.  It seemed to refresh
+them--mere mouthful that it was--for they pressed on with more
+spirit after that.
+
+But there was no denying the fact that something serious was at
+hand.  From desultory puff s the wind had now increased to a steady
+blow, which drove a stinging hail of sand all about them blindingly.
+Eddies of hot wind caught up larger grains and dried cactus stems
+and drove them in terrestrial water spouts across the face of the
+desert.  The moon was quite obscured now, and it was as black as a
+country church at midnight.
+
+All at once Peggy's pony sank down, and with a long sigh stretched
+itself out upon the alkali.  Roy's almost immediately did the same.
+As they did so the wind came more furiously.  Half blinded and with
+nostrils, eyes and mouths full of sand particles, the two young
+travelers reeled about in the darkness.  Suddenly what it all meant
+burst upon Roy with the suddenness of a thunder clap.
+
+"It's a sand storm, Peggy," he cried.
+
+A puff of wind caught up his words and scattered them over the
+desert.
+
+The words sent a chill to Peggy's heart.  She had heard Mr. Bell
+tell of the sand storms of the Big Alkali--how sometimes they last
+for days, blotting out trails and burying those unfortunate enough
+to be caught in them.
+
+"Get your saddle off and keep your head under it," shouted Roy,
+recalling what he had heard Mr. Bell say of the only way to weather
+such disturbances.
+
+Peggy, half dead with horror, did as she was told.  By the time the
+work of unsaddling had been accomplished the wind was driving
+furiously.  It was impossible to hear unless the words were shouted.
+The ponies, who had obeyed their first instinct at the initial
+warning of what was to come, turned their backs to the storm and
+laid out straight, with their noses to the ground.  Roy and Peggy
+drew the big flapped Mexican saddles over their heads.  Under this
+protection they were sheltered from the cruel fury of the
+wind-driven sand and brush.
+
+It was suffocating under the saddle, but when Peggy protruded her
+face for even a breath of the superheated air, she quickly withdrew
+it.  The wind was now a tornado in violence, and the sand stung like
+countless needles.  Conversation was, of course, impossible, and
+they lay in silence while the suffocating gale screamed about them.
+
+Once or twice Peggy had to scrape away the sand from the front of
+the saddle.  She could feel it rising all about her.  With the
+sensation came a terrifying thought. She had heard Mr. Bell tell of
+men whose bones had been buried in the sand only to be exposed long
+afterward, white and bleached, when the wind-formed sand dunes had
+shifted and exposed them.
+
+All at once, above the wind and the steady roar of the furiously
+driven sand and alkali, Peggy thought she heard a wild screech or
+cry.  It sounded like nothing human in its uncanny shrillness.
+Brave girl as she was, Peggy shuddered hysterically.  Could she be
+losing her mind in the whirling confusion and elemental fury that
+waged all about her?
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE PROFESSOR AGAIN
+
+
+The evening before the sand storm, a red wagon had been crawling
+over the alkali toward the barren hills.  It was the eccentric
+vehicle affected by Professor Wandering William, and was headed for
+the barren range of hills in which lay the valley of the outlaws.
+
+Professor Wandering William, silently smoking, kept his keen eyes
+steadily fixed upon the distant hills as he drove, although from
+time to time he scanned the sky anxiously.
+
+"Going to be a sandstorm sure," he grunted.  "Well, if I can make
+the lee of those hills by sundown I reckon I'll be all right.  Too
+bad though.  It'll give that precious outfit a chance to put a still
+further gap between themselves and me--phew! but it's hot!"
+
+The professor took off his big sombrero and placed it behind him in
+the wagon.  He seemed to think a minute and then muttered:
+
+"Oh, well, I guess it's no harm.  Nobody to see but a few old
+buzzards anyhow, and they won't tell."
+
+The professor, having concluded these self-addressed remarks, did a
+strange thing.  He raised his hands to his head and the next instant
+his luxuriant long hair had vanished, revealing a close-cropped head
+of dark hair.  This done, he removed his goatee with the same ease,
+and was revealed as a good-looking, forceful-faced young man of
+perhaps thirty-two or so.
+
+"Ah-h-h-h!" he breathed with intense satisfaction, "that's a whole
+heap better.  However, I guess the time's coming pretty quick when I
+can do without this make-up altogether.  I shan't be sorry either.
+Git up!"
+
+This last remark was addressed to the motive power of his jaunty red
+wagon.  In obedience the wheels began to revolve faster.  But press
+onward as he would, supper-time found the professor--so strangely
+shorn--still some distance from the hills.
+
+"That storm's coming right up, too," he said to himself over his
+after-supper pipe; "well, no help for it.  I guess we'll have to
+push on."
+
+Watering his animals from a bucket previously filled at the spigot
+of a big water keg built into his wagon the professor hitched up and
+pressed on to his destination.  Darkness came on, but still he drove
+steadily forward, seeking the shelter he knew he could find in the
+lee of the barren hills.
+
+"Going to be a hummer and no mistake," he commented half aloud;
+"good thing-it-didn't catch me out in the middle of the alkali or
+Red Bill and his cronies might have had a new lease of life."
+
+It was close upon midnight when the professor found a spot to his
+liking, and by that time the first desultory puffs of the coming
+storm were sighing in the nooks and crannies of the barren hills.
+He tethered his team, gave them their hay in the shelter of the
+wagon, watered them and then, after a good-night pipe, prepared to
+turn in.  He woke from a troubled doze to find the wind rocking the
+wagon within which he slept.
+
+"Wonder what kind of weather the ponies are making of it?" he
+muttered, and rising he opened the canvas flaps at the front of the
+wagon and peered out.
+
+At that instant he saw, or thought he saw, two dark objects move by
+in the flying smother of sand.  But the next moment he told himself
+it must have been imagination.
+
+"Guess being alone so much is getting on my nerve," he commented.
+
+Having seen that his stock were lying down and turning their backs
+on the flying drift, Wandering William, as he called himself,
+retired once more.  But he couldn't sleep for thinking of the
+strange illusion he had had.
+
+"No, it wasn't an illusion either," he said stoutly to himself the
+next instant.  "I'm prepared to swear that I really did see two
+figures on horseback, though what, in great ginger cookies, they
+were doing out in this I don't know.  Appears to me though that they
+must have had to call a halt right around here some place.  In that
+case I'm going to give 'em a hail, an' if they answer it invite 'em
+into the wagon.  This is no weather to be out without an umbrella."
+
+Chuckling a little at his joke, Wandering William arose and went
+once more to the front of his wagon.
+
+Placing his hands to his mouth, funnel-wise, he sent a long, shrill
+cry vibrating out through the storm.  Another and another he gave
+till he was hoarse, but there was no reply.
+
+"Guess I was dreaming after all," remarked Wandering William
+retiring once more to his blanket.
+
+A sickly yellow light struggling through the sand-laden air heralded
+the day.  But the wind had died down and the particles still held in
+suspension were rapidly thinning out of the air.
+
+Roy thrust his head from under his saddle like a turtle from its
+shell.
+
+His lips were dry and cracked, his eyes smarted, his skin was
+irritated with the sand.  The whole world seemed to have turned to
+sand.  It was everywhere.
+
+"Peggy!"
+
+A similar turtle-like head projected from the other saddle.  Poor
+Peggy, she would positively have screamed if she had known the
+appearance she presented.  Her hair was tousled, her eyes red with
+irritation of the sand, and her lips dry and cracked like Roy's.
+
+"Is--is it all over, Roy?" she asked a bit quaveringly.
+
+"I think so.  The wind has died down, and look, the ponies have
+gotten to their feet.  I guess they know."
+
+"Wasn't it awful.  I never thought we should live through it."
+
+"Nor did I.  But there's one good thing, it has obscured our tracks.
+If any of Red Bill's gang tried to follow us now they'd have a lot
+of trouble."
+
+"That's so," agreed Peggy, and then went on to tell Roy of the
+terrifying screeches and yells she had heard in the night.
+
+"Nothing but the wind," opined Roy, with boy-like superiority.  But
+the next instant it was his turn to start amazedly.  Through the
+fog-like gloom that still overhung the desert a figure was making its
+way toward them.  Roy's hand flew to the revolver with which the
+thoughtful Ah Sing had provided his saddle holster.
+
+At the same instant the figure, seemingly that of a young man,
+turned, and wheeling quickly, ran backward and was swallowed up in
+the obscurity.
+
+"Was that one of Red Bill's men?" gasped Peggy.
+
+"Impossible.  They could not have traveled through that storm.  But
+who can it be?"
+
+"What did he run like that for?"
+
+"I'm going after him to find out," declared Roy pluckily; "maybe
+it's somebody who has become crazed from the sandstorm."
+
+"Oh, Roy, a lunatic!"
+
+Peggy clasped her hands.  But the next instant a fresh surprise
+greeted them.  A tall figure with flowing gray locks and gray
+goatee, topped off with a big sombrero, was seen approaching from
+the same direction as that in which the youthful figure had
+vanished.
+
+"Wandering William!" exclaimed the two young adventurers in one
+breath.
+
+"Yes, Wandering William.  The precise individual," was the
+rejoinder; "and just in time to invite you to breakfast.  There,
+there, no explanations now.  You both resemble the output of a
+threshing machine.  But I have mirrors, soap, towels and water in my
+wagon.  Come along, and if you feel ailing, for the insignificant
+sum of one dollar I will sell you a bottle of Wandering William's
+Wonderful Wonder Worker."
+
+Exhausted as both boy and girl felt, they could hardly maintain
+their gravity in the face of this eccentric individual.  The very
+suddenness and utter unexpectedness of his appearance seemed of a
+piece with his other odd actions.  But suddenly Roy recollected the
+figure that had appeared and then vanished.
+
+"I'd like to accept," said Roy, with vast cunning as he thought,
+"but what would your partner say?"
+
+"My partner?"  Wandering William looked frankly puzzled.
+
+"Yes.  That young chap who came toward us and then disappeared again
+when I came at him with a gun.  Not that I blame him," Roy broke off
+with a laugh, "but I thought for a moment it was one of Red Bill's
+gang."
+
+Wandering William's keen gray eyes narrowed into two little slits.
+
+"What's that you're saying, boy," he exclaimed; "what do you know
+about Red Bill Summers?"
+
+"A good deal too much for our comfort," exclaimed Roy, and then he
+rapidly sketched events of the last twenty-four hours as the trio
+walked toward Wandering William's wagon.
+
+
+The strange vendor of medicine seemed to be deeply interested,
+although he confined his comments to "ums" and "ahs."
+
+"But about that other man," said Roy, returning to the charge when
+he had finished his narrative, "didn't you see him?"
+
+"My dear boy," said Wandering William seriously, "I think you had
+better invest in a bottle of Wandering William's Wonder Working
+Witch Oil for tired and shattered nerves.  There is no one in the
+vicinity but our three selves."
+
+Boy and girl stared at him blankly.
+
+"But I saw him, too," said Peggy.
+
+"I dare say, I dare say," and Wandering William patted his luxuriant
+curls; "you had a night of strain.  What you need is breakfast--hot
+coffee and all that. Now go in and get fixed up while I attend to
+your ponies, or rather, Red Bill's."
+
+The wind had by this time died down, and the sun struggled out
+through the clearing air.  Nobody was in sight but themselves, and
+fain to believe that their sand-sore eyes must have played them a
+trick, the boy and girl proceeded to "fix up" in Wandering William's
+really comfortably appointed wagon.
+
+In the meantime one weight had been lifted from Peggy's mind.
+Wandering William had explained that it was he who had uttered the
+shouts and yells which had so alarmed her in the night.
+
+"If only it wasn't for that man whom I'm certain I saw," thought
+Peggy as she combed the sand out of her hair, "I should feel quite
+relieved, but as it is--Roy, are you still certain you saw that man--the
+one you pointed the revolver at I mean?"
+
+Roy looked dubious.
+
+"I--don't know," he confessed.
+
+"Oh, Roy Prescott," snapped Peggy, "I--I'd like to shake you."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+OUT OF THE DESERT MAZE
+
+
+Twilight was descending on the camp in the arroyo when Jimsy, who
+had been stationed with a rifle on a butte overlooking the desert
+maze, gave a sudden shout.  The next instant his rifle was at his
+shoulder and he began shooting into the air as fast as he could.  As
+the rapid staccato volley of sound rattled forth all became
+excitement in the arroyo.
+
+The volley had been the signal agreed upon in case the young sentry
+caught sight of the missing ones.  It came after a wearing night and
+a still more harrowing day.  Following the non-arrival of Peggy and
+Roy in camp from their hunting excursion a search had at once been
+commenced, of course without result.
+
+An ascent had even been made in one of the monoplanes, but even a
+bird's-eye view of the surrounding country failed to discover their
+whereabouts.  Then came the sandstorm, and hope that the missing
+ones could have weathered it was almost given up.  Nevertheless,
+James Bell, in whom hope died hard, had set Jimsy as sentinel on the
+lofty butte in the wild hope that after all the castaways might turn
+up.
+
+And now, as the agreed signal rang out, there was a great outpouring
+from the camp.  Aunt Sally, pale and red-eyed from weeping, Mr.
+Bell, with deep lines of anxiety scoring his face, Jess, troubled
+and anxious looking, and old Peter Bell, the former hermit, bearing
+an expression of mild bewilderment.  Last of all came Alverado, the
+Mexican flotsam of the desert.  His inscrutable countenance bore no
+sign of the suffering he had gone through at the thought that harm
+had come to his worshipped senorita, but in his heart the Mexican
+had suffered as much as the rest.  He had arrived in camp with the
+stock the evening before, and had, with difficulty, been restrained
+from setting forth at once on a search.
+
+"Look!" cried Jimsy pointing as the others rushed up.
+
+They followed the direction of his finger and saw slowly crawling
+toward the arroyo a red wagon, dust-covered and travel-stained.
+
+In front of it were two young figures on horseback, waving
+frantically.  As the volley rattled out they urged their little
+horses forward on a dash for the arroyo.
+
+"Thank God!" breathed Mr. Bell huskily.
+
+Aunt Sally fell into Jess's young arms and wept lustily while old
+Bell broke into a rhapsody:
+
+"Out from the desert safe and sound;
+Hooray! our boy and girl are found!"
+
+But nobody paid any attention to his verses, either to laugh or
+admire just then.  After the cruel anxiety of the past hours the
+relief was too great for any of them to trust themselves to speak.
+
+But as Peggy and Roy--for of course our readers have guessed it was
+they--drew closer and their dust-covered features could be plainly
+seen, a great shout went up from the butte.  And in it mingled the
+voice of Alverado, the unemotional.
+
+The girl and boy were fairly lifted from their ponies and carried in
+triumph into the camp.
+
+"Dig down into the stores," ordered Mr. Bell, "Get out all the
+delicacies we have been savin' for a big occasion."
+
+"We'll never have a bigger one than this," declared Jimsy; "tell us
+all about it, Roy."
+
+"Oh, Peggy, you darling, is it really you?" cried Jess for the
+'steenth time, with brimming eyes.
+
+As for old Mr. Bell, as Jimsy observed afterwards, "he just wrapped
+poetical circles round himself.  You couldn't see him for rhythm."
+
+"Hullo, folks!"
+
+The voice came suddenly from the shadows.  It was Wandering William.
+In the general excitement everybody had forgotten him, and he, had
+driven up in his red wagon unheralded.  But the warmth of his reception
+made up for any temporary slight.  In fact, after supper, when Roy
+related their strange adventures, and told how, if it had not been for
+Wandering William, they might never have reached the camp, Wandering
+William's greeting reached an ovation.
+
+But while all this was going on one figure had remained crouched in
+the circle of firelight--or, rather, just beyond it--whose dark eyes
+had not for an instant left the face of Wandering William.  The
+interested observer was Alverado.
+
+The Mexican puckered his brow as be gazed as if trying to recall
+something.  But the effort seemed to be in vain, for at length he
+arose and, unnoticed, strode moodily off toward the ponies, which
+had been tethered high on the hillside and out of sight of the camp.
+
+He was gone but a few minutes before he came bounding back into the
+camp.
+
+"The ponies!  The ponies are gone!" he shouted at the top of his
+lungs.
+
+In an instant everybody but Aunt Sally and old Mr. Bell was upon his
+or her feet.
+
+"Gone!"  The exclamation came like a dismayed groan.
+
+"Yes, gone!  Every one of them!  The lariats have been cut.  Ah, the
+ladrone, the cursed thieves!  The--"
+
+"Some of Red Bill's work, for a million!"
+
+The exclamation fell sharp and clear from Professor Wandering
+William's lips.  The tones were so unlike his usual ones that
+everybody looked up at him.  But only for an instant; the next
+moment the professor had--dropped back into his pompous, drawling
+way of speaking:
+
+"It's a good thing we have a large supply of my wonder working
+remedies with us," he said; "they induce philosophy, smooth the
+thorny ways of life and make the old young and the young younger."
+
+Mr. Bell looked at him sternly for an instant, and then apparently
+decided that the man was a harmless fool, for with a quick
+exclamation he strode off toward his tent, which lay at some
+distance from the camp.  The others excitedly discussed the alarming
+turn events had taken, while Aunt Sally showed strong symptoms of
+hysterics.  But Alverado, whose face had taken on a startled
+expression at Wandering William's quick exclamation, darted to the
+long-haired herb doctor's side.
+
+"I know you now, senor, you are--"
+
+Wandering William caught the man's gesticulating hand with a grasp
+of iron.
+
+"Not so loud, Alverado," he whispered tensely, "the time isn't ripe
+for that yet."
+
+"But, senor, you will capture them, and--"
+
+The Mexican's manner had grown deferential, but Wandering William
+checked him with a glance from those keen eyes of his.
+
+"Don't mention a word of this, Alverado.  I rely on you."
+
+"You can, senor.  But hark! what is the matter with the Senor Bell?"
+
+Evidently something serious was the matter with the mining man.  He
+came bounding out of the dark shadows of the upper end of the canyon
+as the Mexican spoke.  His face was black as thunder.
+
+"More villainy!" he exclaimed as questions came pouring in upon him.
+
+"Something else missing?"
+
+It was Wandering William. His voice was as emotionless as if he had
+been a phonograph.
+
+"Yes, I should say there was.  The plans of the mine and its
+location as prepared for filing have been taken from my tent!"
+
+"Stolen--oh!"
+
+Peggy's voice quivered.
+
+"Stolen," repeated Mr. Bell, "and undoubtedly by the same band of
+scoundrels that cut the ponies loose, knowing that we could not
+pursue them."
+
+"But we can overtake them in an aeroplane."
+
+It was Peggy who spoke.  Her bosom heaved and her cheeks burned red
+with excitement.
+
+"True, my brave girl," rejoined Mr. Bell, "but of what use would
+that be?  They have the papers and will file them.  Without the
+papers you could do nothing, and I have no memoranda to draw up
+fresh ones."
+
+"But in my pocket--I'm cutting no capers--I have a set of duplicate
+papers!"
+
+Old Peter Bell, triumphant and poetical, stepped forward, at the
+same time drawing from his inner-coat pocket a bundle.  It was the
+duplicate set which Mr. Bell had given Peggy to deliver to the
+former hermit, and which, up to that moment, had been forgotten in
+the excitement.
+
+"Thank heaven!" exclaimed Mr. Bell, snatching at them; "Peter,
+you're a brick.  Hooray, now we have a chance to beat the scoundrels
+at their own game."
+
+"You mean if we can file those papers first they stand good in law?"
+asked Roy.
+
+"That's just what I do mean, and I think that with the aeroplane we
+can do it."
+
+"You can depend on it, Mr. Bell, that if there is a chance those
+papers get into Blue Creek first," cried Peggy ablaze with
+excitement.
+
+"But we can't start to-night."
+
+Roy's voice held a note of despair.
+
+"That's all right, my boy.  You need a good rest anyway.  Red Bill--if
+it is his gang that has taken them--cannot get to Blue Creek for two
+days anyway.  If you start at dawn to-morrow you can outwit them."
+
+And so it was arranged.  Roy and Peggy turned in early, while Jimsy
+worked all night getting the big monoplane in readiness.  By
+earliest dawn all was ready and a hasty breakfast eaten.  Then the
+monoplane was stocked with food and water and everything was ready
+for the dash across the desert.
+
+Peggy and Roy had slipped into their linen coats and donned their
+hideous masks with the blue sun goggles, when a figure slipped up on
+the other side of the chassis and clambered unobserved into the
+box-like structure.  It was not till half an hour later, when they
+were dashing through midair, that the figure revealed itself.  Then
+the form of Wandering William crawled from under a bit of canvas
+used as an engine cover, and in answer to the amazed exclamations of
+the young aviators said:
+
+"You'll have to forgive me.  It'll be a good ad for my business to
+be able to say that Professor Wandering William has wandered along
+the aerial Pike."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+MAROONED ON THE DESERT
+
+
+There was nothing to be done but to accept the situation, little as
+either Roy or Peggy relished the eccentric "professor" for an aerial
+traveling companion.  Only Peggy remarked with withering scorn:
+
+"I think you might have waited till you were asked, don't you?"
+
+The professor's reply was characteristic.
+
+"My dear young lady, if I never sold anybody a bottle of my medicine
+except those that really wanted it I'd have a hard time getting
+along."
+
+Roy was on the point of exclaiming "Bother your old medicine," when
+he suddenly recollected that had it not been for this queer
+personage they might not have been in the aeroplane at all.
+Instead--but Roy didn't care to think further along those lines.
+
+Far below them suddenly appeared a giant halo of light.  It hung
+above the desert, wheeling and gyrating about five feet above the
+glaring white of the alkali.
+
+"A halo," remarked Professor Wandering William gazing over the edge
+of the chassis.
+
+"A halo?  Whose--Roy's?" inquired Peggy.
+
+"No, it is one of those halos peculiar to the desert," was the
+professor's rejoinder; "it is caused by heat refraction or something
+of the sort.  I recall I did read a lengthy explanation of it
+somewhere once, but I've forgotten it now."
+
+"Does it portend anything?" asked Roy, turning round for a moment
+from his levers.
+
+"No. not that I know of, at least--except that it's hot."
+
+"Good gracious, we don't need a halo to tell us that," cried Peggy,
+and then regarding Professor Wandering William with that frank,
+straight "between the eyes" look, as Jimsy called it, Peggy
+remarked, "Do you know, Professor Wandering William, that you are a
+very odd person?"
+
+"Odd, my dear young lady.  How so?"
+
+"Why at times you are quite different to--to what you are at
+others," stumbled Peggy lamely.  It wasn't just what she wanted to
+say, but as she told herself it expressed it tolerably.
+
+"Almost human sometimes, eh?" chuckled Professor Wandering William
+with a very odd winkle of his gray eyes; "well, you are not the
+first person who has said that."
+
+To herself Peggy thought, "I'm sure that if he'd cut his hair and
+take off that dreadful goatee he'd be quite good looking.  And his
+eyes, too, they twinkle and flash sometimes in a way very much out
+of keeping with his general appearance."  But Professor Wandering
+William, seemingly quite oblivious to Peggy's frank gaze, was
+humming "Annie Laurie" to himself and gazing down at the flying
+desert as it flashed by below.
+
+"At this rate we'll be in Blue Creek long before those other
+varmints," he observed at length; "that is, if all goes right.
+Wonderful things these aeroplanes.  Great scheme for selling patent
+medicine.  Why I could scatter my advertisements over a whole county
+in a day's time if I had one of these.  That is unless I scattered
+myself first."
+
+There was a sudden loud hissing sound from the motor.  At the same
+instant the propeller ceased to revolve and the monoplane dashed
+downward with fearful force.
+
+Roy worked at his levers desperately, while Peggy, white faced but
+silent, clung tightly to the sides of the chassis.  Professor
+Wandering William did not utter a word, but his lips moved, as, from
+a pleasing rapid forward motion their course suddenly changed to
+that fearful downward plunge through space.
+
+It seemed that in the molecule of time that intervened between the
+sudden stopping of the propeller and the moment that they reached
+the proximity of the ground that a whole lifetime flashed in front
+of Peggy.  "Is this the end?" she caught herself thinking.
+
+But it was not.  Roy's skill averted that.  He handled the disabled
+aeroplane so that as it struck the alkali its landing wheels
+sustained the shock.  But even with all his skill he could not
+entirely ward off the shock.  The monoplane struck the alkali in a
+shower of white dust that hurtled high above it like a breaking sea
+wave.
+
+Peggy and the professor managed to hold on and resist the grinding
+shock, but Roy did not fare so well.  Like a projectile from a
+catapult the shock flung him far.  He came grinding down into the
+sand on one shoulder, ploughing a little furrow.  Then he lay very
+still, while Peggy wondered vaguely if she was going to faint.
+
+To scramble from the stranded machine was the work of an instant for
+the erratic professor, and he extended his hand to Peggy.  With a
+supreme effort she pulled herself together and accepted his
+proffered help.  But agitated as she: was, she did not fail to
+notice a surprising fact, and that was that the professor's hair was
+on one side!  The next instant he caught the girl's startled eyes
+fixed upon it, but in that space of time he readjusted it, so that
+he appeared exactly as usual.  But to Peggy the recollection of that
+deranged hair was unforgettable.
+
+"It's--it's a wig!" she gasped to herself, and then, casting all
+other thoughts aside, sped to Roy's side.
+
+"Roy!  Roy! are you badly hurt, dear?" she breathed, going down on
+her knees in the rough surface of the desert.
+
+The boy stirred uneasily and his eyes opened.
+
+"Oh, is it you, Peggy?  I guess I was knocked out for a minute.
+It's my shoulder.  Ouch!   Don't touch it."
+
+The boy winced as Peggy's soft hand touched the injured member.
+
+"Allow me.  I've got a little skill at surgery."'
+
+It was Professor Wandering William's voice, and Peggy caught herself
+wondering that he didn't make some reference to his infallible bone
+set or wonder-working liniment.  But he didn't.  Instead, he knelt
+by Roy's side, and with a few deft strokes of his knife had cut away
+the boy's shirt and bared a shoulder that was rapidly turning a deep
+blue.
+
+Tenderly as a woman might have, Wandering William felt the wound.
+
+"Hurt?" he asked, as Roy winced, biting his lips to keep from crying
+out under the agony.
+
+"Hurt?" echoed Peggy indignantly; "of course it does."
+
+Professor Wandering William looked up with an odd air of authority
+in his keen eyes.
+
+"Please fetch me some water from the aeroplane," he said, and Peggy
+had no choice but to obey.
+
+Professor Wandering William, picking Roy up in his arms as if he
+were a baby, instead of a 165-pound boy, carried him after her and
+laid the injured lad out in the scant strip of shade afforded by the
+aeroplane.  Then, with bits of canvas ripped from the cover which
+had served to conceal him when he entered the aerial vehicle, the
+strange wanderer skillfully bathed and then bandaged the wound.
+
+"Nothing more than a bad sprain," he announced.
+
+Roy groaned.
+
+"And just as I was going ahead at such tiptop speed, too," he
+complained.  "I won't be able to use this arm for a month the way it
+feels."
+
+"Never mind, Roy, I can drive the aeroplane," comforted Peggy.  But
+Roy was fretful from pain.
+
+"What can a girl do?" he demanded; "this is a man's work.  Oh, it's
+too bad!  It's--"
+
+Suddenly the pain-crazed lad realized what he was saying and broke
+off abruptly:
+
+"Don't mind me, sis.  I'm all worked up, I guess.  But if it hadn't
+been for this delay we'd have beaten them out.  And now--"
+
+"And now the first thing to do is to see what ails this old
+machine," said Professor Wandering William briskly.  "Let me lift
+you into the what-you-may-call-um, my boy, and make you as
+comfortable as possible on this canvas."
+
+The professor skillfully arranged the canvas from which he had cut
+the bandages, and making a pillow for Roy out of his own coat, he
+lifted the lad into the chassis.
+
+"There now, you'll do," he said, as his ministrations were
+completed.  "And now, young lady, as you know more about this thing
+than I do let's have a look at it and see what particular brand of
+illness it is suffering from."
+
+A brief examination showed Peggy that the radiator--the intricate
+mesh-work of pipes in which the circulating water for cooling the
+cylinders is kept at a low temperature--was leaking, and that almost
+all their supply of water had leaked out.  This had caused the
+cylinders of the motor to overheat and had stopped the aeroplane in
+midair.
+
+"Bad--is it?"'
+
+Professor Wandering William noted the despairing look on Peggy's
+face as she discovered the cause of the stoppage.
+
+"As bad as bad can be," the girl rejoined seriously; "it means if we
+can't get water and something to stop that leak with that we can't
+go on or go back.  We're stuck right here."
+
+"Phew!"  Wandering William's lips puckered in a whistle.  "I should
+just say that is bad."
+
+He looked about him.  On every side stretched the dazzling white
+alkali, with here and there a little dust devil dancing as if in
+mockery at their plight.
+
+On all that vast expanse they seemed the only living things, and
+Wandering William knew the desert well enough to realize that it is
+not good to linger on its treacherous sands.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+BUD TO THE RESCUE
+
+
+"I'm going to look for water!"
+
+Wandering William spoke decisively after an hour or more of futile
+endeavors to start the motor with the little fluid they could spare
+from the water kegs.  But even without the leaky radiator it would
+have been an impossibility to cool the cylinders with the small
+quantity they were thus able to command.
+
+"Look for water!" Peggy echoed the words blankly.
+
+In all that sun-blistered expanse it seemed to be an impossibility
+to even dream of discovering a drop of moisture.  And they needed
+buckets full.
+
+Wandering William, perhaps deeming it wise not to strain the
+over-wrought girl's nerves further by keeping up the conversation,
+strode off.  Apparently he wandered aimlessly, but in reality his
+keen, trained eyes were on the alert every instant.  To the desert
+traveler the most insignificant signs may betray the presence of the
+life saving fluid.
+
+Peggy watched the strange figure till it vanished from view over a
+low rise, for although the desert seems flat on a superficial view,
+it is, in reality, no more level than the tossing sea.  Rises and
+hollows make its surface undulating.
+
+In the meantime Peggy ministered to Roy as best she could. With a
+spare bit of canvas she made a shelter to keep off the blazing rays
+of the sun.  Roy thanked her with a smile.  The first sharp keen
+pain of his injury had gone, but he felt weak and dizzy.  Presently
+he begged for a drink of water, and Peggy, not daring to tell him
+how low the supply was gave it to him.  The boy was feverish from
+his injury, and almost drained the canteen of luke-warm stuff she
+held to his lips.  Then he lay back with a satisfied smile.
+
+"Get the radiator fixed yet?" he asked presently.
+
+Peggy had told him that it would not be long before they were under
+way again.
+
+"Not yet, Roy dear.  But don't worry about that.  It will be fixed
+presently.  Suppose you try to go to sleep."
+
+The boy closed his eyes and tried to compose himself to slumber.
+Before long he actually did doze off and lay in that state while the
+long hours dragged slowly by.  Wandering William had not reappeared,
+and Peggy wondered in a dull, vague sort of sort of way if he ever
+would come back.  Perhaps he had deserted them, she thought.  But,
+even this reflection brought no poignant sensation of despair.  The
+girl had sunk into a sort of apathy in which nothing' seemed to
+matter much.  Only she fairly ached with thirst.  But Roy would
+awake presently and want water.  The little they had must be saved for
+him.
+
+And so the hours wore on and the sun marched blazingly across the
+sky.  It was mid-afternoon, and Roy had not awakened, when Peggy was
+startled from her gloomy thoughts by a loud hail.
+
+"Hul-lo!"
+
+Springing to her feet she looked across the desert.  On the summit
+of a distant earth wave she saw the figure of Wandering William.  He
+was gesticulating frantically and shouting something.  He had his
+hands to his mouth, funnelwise, to make the sound carry better.
+
+What was it he was crying out?  It sounded like--yes, it was:
+
+"Water!  I've found it!  Water!"
+
+Peggy hastily snatched up the two buckets with which the aeroplane
+was equipped, and hurried toward the distant figure.  She reached
+Wandering William's side in quicker time than she would have thought
+possible, such was the stimulating effect of the glad news.  The
+strange "professor" said not a word, but took her by the hand and
+began striding in great steps across the sandy dunes.
+
+They had walked about a quarter of a mile when they reached a spot
+where yuccas and prickly desert plants of different varieties grew
+thickly.  At the bottom of this desolate little valley was a pool on
+which the sunlight shone glitteringly.  It was shallow and warm, and
+the color of rusty iron, but it was water.
+
+Taking the folding tin cup that Wandering William produced from one
+of his pockets, the girl drank eagerly.  Never had sparkling spring,
+water in the fruitful Eastern country tasted half so good as that
+tepid, dirty alkaline stuff that Wandering William had so
+providentially stumbled upon.
+
+"How did you find it?" gasped Peggy.
+
+Wandering William indicated a tumble down sign post a few paces off.
+To it was nailed board with sun faded lettering on it.
+
+"Read it," commanded Wandering William.
+
+"'To the lost in the desert inferno,'" read Peggy, "'water is twenty
+paces to the west.'"
+
+"If it hadn't been for the white soul of the man who put that up
+there," commented the "professor," "we might have perished
+miserably.  Heaven bless him, wherever he is."
+
+"Amen," murmured Peggy.
+
+They filled the buckets, and staggering under their weight,
+Wandering William led the way back to the aeroplane.  Roy was awake
+and thirsty.  He drank greedily of the turbid stuff they offered
+him.
+
+"And now," said the professor, "let's get to work on that radiator."
+
+But try as they would, they could not stop the leak.  Indeed, so
+much water was wasted in their experiments that several more trips
+to the pool were necessary.
+
+"Looks like we have run into the worst streak of hard luck I ever
+heard of," sighed Wandering William despairingly, after the failure
+of the twentieth trial to get the cooling system to hold water.
+"We've just got to plug that leak somehow, or--"
+
+He didn't finish the sentence.  There was no need for him to do
+that.
+
+Suddenly Peggy, who had looked up from the baffling task for an
+instant, gave a cry:
+
+"Look!  Look there!  What's all that dust?"
+
+"It's horsemen of some kind, and they're coming this way!" cried
+Wandering William.
+
+As he spoke his hand slid to his hip, and he drew out his well-oiled
+and worn old forty-four.
+
+"Do you think that they are--that they are Red Bill's men?"
+
+"Don't know yet.  The dust's thick and the light's bad."
+
+"If they are?"
+
+"Then we are in for a mighty bad quarter of an hour.  Consarn the
+luck, everything seems to be going wrong at once."
+
+On and on swept the dust cloud, growing close with great rapidity.
+With what anxious feelings the strange herb doctor and the girl
+watched its advance may be imagined.  As for Roy, he lay on the
+floor of the chassis unaware of what was transpiring without.
+
+There seemed to be several of the riders--a dozen at least.
+
+"What beats me is, if those are Red Bill's men what are they doing
+in this direction?" said Wandering William, a puzzled look creeping
+over his weather-beaten countenance.
+
+"Perhaps they have seen that the aeroplane is stranded and are
+coming to destroy it," hazarded Peggy.
+
+"Maybe," rejoined Wandering William in a far-away voice.  His eyes
+and mind were bent on the approaching cavalcade.  If the riders were
+not Red Bill's men it meant succor and aid.  If they were the
+outlaw's band, it meant-well, Wandering William did not care to
+dwell upon the thought.
+
+"A few seconds will tell now," he observed as through the dust cloud
+the outlines of the horsemen became visible.
+
+All at once a shrill series of cries rang out:
+
+"Yip-yip-yip-yee-ee-e-e-e-e-e-e!"
+
+There was something familiar in the sound to Peggy.  She leaned
+forward, straining her ears.  Suddenly an active little bronco
+seemed to separate from the ruck of the riders and dashed forward
+alone. On his back sat a familiar figure and not a beautiful one,
+but to Peggy no angel from heavenly regions could have appeared
+more, beatific just then, for in the rider she had recognized the
+redoubtable Bud, the leader of the horse hunters.
+
+Bud swept off his sombrero as he dashed up, and was apparently about
+to make some jocular remark, but he stopped short at the sight of
+Peggy's pale, anxious face.
+
+"Wa-al, what's all ther trouble hyar?" he demanded; "your sky
+bronco foundered? Why hello, thar's Wandering William. Didn't know
+as you was a sky pilot feller?"
+
+"I'm not, I guess," rejoined Wandering William quietly.  "I wish I
+were, and then may be I could help out on this difficulty."
+
+"Wa-al, what's up?" drawled Bud, as his followers came loping up;
+"anything I kin do?  We're on our way back to ther hills frum town,"
+he explained.  "We caught more than twenty wild horses and took'em
+inter Blue Creek.  One of ther boys sighted you away off or we'd
+have missed yer I reckin.
+
+"Now, miss, I ain't one ter fergit a blow-out like thet yer gave us
+at Steer Wells.  Jes say ther word an' if you like we'll tow this
+here cloud clipper back inter town."
+
+"Let's see if we can't hit on a way of fixing it first," said
+Wandering William; "you see," he explained to Bud, "the radiator--"
+
+"Hyar, hold on thar.  Talk United States language.  What's wrong
+with this arrangement meter.
+
+"It's sprung a leak," volunteered Peggy; "look here, you can see for
+yourself.  The hole is tiny, but it's big enough to let out all the
+water that we need to cool the cylinders."
+
+"Humph," said Bud crossing his hands on the horn of his saddle and
+gazing abstractedly at the leak, "what you need is solder," he
+announced presently.
+
+"If we'd had any we'd been out of here long ago," rejoined Peggy, as
+Roy, hearing the unusual noise, peered over the edge of the chassis.
+
+"Hullo, kid; what's biting you?" demanded the breezy Bud.
+
+"Guess I'm out of commission for a while," rejoined Roy bravely.
+
+Peggy hastily explained the accident, and then, as she saw no harm
+in doing so, she gave Bud a hasty sketch of the events leading up to
+their being marooned on the alkali.
+
+"So you're after that ornery varmint, Red Bill, are yer?" remarked
+Bud as she concluded; "wa-al I'll do all in my power to help you.
+I've bin a studyin' that thar leak while you was a talkite.  What
+you need is suthin' to stop it up."
+
+"Obviously," said Peggy with a trace of annoyance in her tone.
+
+"Now don't git riled, fer I've hit on a scheme ter git yer out of
+yer troubles."
+
+Bud shoved back his sombrero and gazed triumphantly at the
+astonished girl aviator.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+WHAT CHEWING GUM DID
+
+
+"But, Bud, how?"
+
+"Easy enough.  Hyar," he exclaimed, looking back at the horsemen
+behind him, "whar's that dude Chick Berry?"
+
+"Here I be, Bud," replied a small, freckle-faced cowboy with blue
+silk ribbons on his shirt sleeves and other marks of the cowboy dude
+about him.
+
+"Got any of that thar gum you's always achewin' so as ter be
+agreeable to ther ladies?" demanded Bud.
+
+"Shore, Bud," rejoined Chick, pulling off an embroidered gauntlet
+and extracting a pink package from his breast pocket.
+
+"Wall, chaw some quick, and chaw it good.  I need it."
+
+Chick's jaws worked overtime.  Presently he handed a small wad of
+glutinous gum to his leader.
+
+"Na-ow then," announced Bud, dismounting, "I'm goin' ter show you a
+hurry up repair job."
+
+He squatted, cow-boy fashion, in front of the radiator, and with
+deft fingers pressed the gum into the leak.
+
+"Let it dry a minute an' I'll bet ye that what-you-may-call-um will
+be as tight as a drum.  No, don't give me no credit fer ther idee.
+I seen a feller fix his gasoline gig that way one day when I was
+down in San Antone,"
+
+At the expiration of a few anxious minutes, water was poured into
+the radiator, and, to their immense relief, Bud's hastily contrived
+bit of plumbing worked.  The radiator held water perfectly and a few
+moments later Peggy started the engine.
+
+But at the first revolutions of the propellers a strange thing
+happened.  On the spot where, a second before, had stood a group of
+interested horse hunters, not one remained after the propeller had
+whizzed round a couple of times.  They were scattered all over the
+desert, their ponies maddened beyond all control by terror at the
+noise and smoke of the aeroplane's motor.
+
+Bud alone managed to spur his pony close to the throbbing machine.
+
+"Good bye and good luck!" he shouted, and waved his hat.  The next
+instant his pony swung round on its hind legs and dashed off to join
+its terrified companions.
+
+With an answering wave of the hand Peggy threw in the clutch that
+started the aeroplane forward, and after their long enforced delay
+they once more took the air.  But a day had practically gone--a day
+in which the fight for the mine might have been lost.
+
+Never had Peggy urged an aeroplane to greater speed than she did the
+fast monoplane, at the wheel of which she was now stationed.  The
+desert floor flew by beneath them in a dull blur.  The roar and
+vibration of the powerful motor shook the car like a leaf.
+Wandering William said nothing, but he gazed rather apprehensively
+over the side from time to time.  Also he might have been observed
+to clutch at his hair occasionally.
+
+"Can you see anything of the town yet?"
+
+The professor leaned forward and shouted the question in Peggy's
+ear.  He had to do so in order to make himself heard above the roar
+of the engine.
+
+Peggy shook her head, but motioned to a pocket in which were a pair
+of field-glasses.
+
+Wandering William understood, and raising them, held them to his
+eyes.
+
+The sun was low and a reddish haze overhung the desert.  But
+presently into the field of the binoculars there swung a-tall water
+tower.  It marked the site of Blue Creek.
+
+"I've got it," cried the observer; "swing off to the right a bit."
+
+Obediently the big flying thing turned and rushed through the air
+toward the distant landmark.
+
+"I can see the place now," cried Peggy.  "Pray heaven we'll be in
+time."
+
+She tried to put on more speed, but already the big monoplane was
+doing all it could, and a more.  Under their hood the cylinders were
+smoking.  There was a smell of blistered paint about the aerial
+craft.  But Peggy never slackened speed for an instant.  With the
+time that had been lost with the leaky radiator, she knew it was
+possible that Red Bill's men were already in the town.
+
+If she had known that a speedy automobile had met the stealers of
+the location papers in mid-desert that afternoon and rushed them
+into Blue Creek she might have given up in despair.  But, she knew
+nothing of Red Bill's ruse, and imagined that the trip with the
+stolen papers had been made on horseback all the way.
+
+Fifteen minutes after the little settlement been first sighted the
+aeroplane soared roofs in a long, graceful swing, and then swooped
+to earth in front of the National House.  Cash and the usual group
+of loungers came rushing out in huge excitement.
+
+"It's an airship!  Come and see the airship!"
+
+The cry spread through the town like wildfire.  In five minutes
+quite a large crowd was swirling and surging about the machine and
+its anxious occupants.
+
+"Whar's the United States Assayer's office?" demanded Wandering
+William, above the hubbub and excitement.
+
+"Why it's two blocks to the right an' down that alley," volunteered
+Cash; "you're the second party as has bin askin' fer it ter day."
+
+Peggy's heart sank and Wandering William bit his lips.  From the
+bottom of the chassis Roy demanded:
+
+"Are we too late?"
+
+"We don't know yet, Roy dear," Peggy found time to whisper, and
+then:
+
+"Who else was looking for the assayer?"
+
+"Feller in a big automobile.  All dust-covered, too.  Said he had a
+claim ter file."
+
+ Wandering William actually groaned.  But Cash went on speaking.
+
+"Funny, all this rush of business should come ter day."
+
+"How's that?" inquired Wandering William for want of something
+better to say.
+
+"Why 'cause ther assay office is closed up.  Jim Dallam, as ran it,
+his mother is dead, an' he got leave ter go back East.  Ther nearest
+assay office now is at Monument Rocks sixty miles east of hyar."
+
+Straw of hope as it was they clutched at it eagerly.  There might be
+a train leaving within a reasonable time:
+
+"Can we get a train there?" asked Wandering William eagerly bending
+forward.
+
+"Reckon ye're jes' too late; one pulled out half an hour ago."
+
+"Did--did the man with the red auto catch it?" asked Peggy
+breathlessly.
+
+"Yes, mum--miss, I mean.  He allowed he was going ter git them
+papers filed or bust."
+
+The blow had fallen.  Peggy sat numb and limp in the chassis.  But
+presently the necessity of attending to Roy aroused her from her
+lethargy.  Under her directions the boy was removed to a bed in the
+hotel and a doctor sent for.  The physician lived in the hotel, so
+no time was lost before he was at Roy's bedside.  He had finished
+his examination and had pronounced the injury painful, but not
+dangerous, when, without ceremony, Wandering William burst into the
+room.
+
+"We can make it yet!  We can make it yet!" he was shouting.
+
+The doctor looked up as if he thought he had another patient and a
+maniac to deal with.
+
+"I--I beg your pardon," stammered Wandering William, "but this is a
+vital matter to this young lady and gentleman."
+
+"Yes--yes, what is it?" asked Peggy eagerly.  Her eyes burned with
+eagerness and suppressed excitement.  Something in Wandering
+William's manner seemed to say that he had found a way out of their
+difficulties.
+
+"I've made inquiries," he repeated, "and I've found out that the
+train to Monument Rocks makes several stops.  There's just a chance
+that we can beat it in the aeroplane."
+
+"You can!"
+
+Roy raised himself up in bed despite the pain.
+
+"I think so.  But we must hurry."
+
+"Sis, do you mean you are going to try it?"
+
+"Of course.  We must."
+
+"Then go in and win," cried the boy; "you can follow the tracks by
+the lights and once you overtake the train the rest will be easy."
+
+The amazed doctor fairly dropped his case of instruments at this
+whirlwind dialogue.
+
+"But--what--why--bless my soul," he gasped, but only the first part
+of his remarks was heard by Peggy.  Followed by Wandering William
+she dashed from the room and into the street.  In front of the hotel
+Cash was having a hard time keeping souvenir hunters from the
+aeroplane.  But a pair of blue revolvers, like miniature Gatling
+guns, acted as powerful dissuaders of curiosity.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+A RACE THROUGH THE NIGHT
+
+
+ "All right. Stand clear, please!"
+
+The aeroplane had been tuned up, and now, panting like an impatient
+horse, it was ready to be off on its dash for Monument Rocks.  But
+the crowd stupidly clustered about it like bees round a rose bush.
+The delay was maddening, but Peggy dared not start for fear of
+injuring someone.
+
+"Won't you please stand aside?" she begged for the twentieth time,
+but the crowd just as obstinately lingered.
+
+Suddenly an idea came to her.  She cut out the mufflers and
+instantly a deafening series of reports, like a battery of Gatling
+guns going into action, filled the air.  Tense as the situation was,
+neither Peggy nor Wandering William on the rear seat could keep from
+laughing as they saw the effect the bombardment of noise had.
+
+The inhabitants of Blue Creek literally tumbled all over each other
+in their haste to get out of the way.  Five seconds after the
+deafening uproar commenced a clear path was presented, and, before
+the crowd could get used to the sound and come surging around again,
+Peggy started the aeroplane up.  Amid a mighty shout it took the air
+and vanished like a flash in the gathering dusk.  The race against
+time was on.
+
+Fortunately the telegraph poles along the right of way acted as
+guides, for, in the gathering darkness, the tracks were hardly
+visible.  Peggy did not dare to fly too low, however, for it was
+only in the upper air currents that the monoplane could develop its
+best speed.
+
+But even with all her care she pressed the machine too hard, for
+half an hour after their departure from Blue Creek they had to
+alight to allow the cylinders to cool.  Bud's makeshift stop for the
+leak, however, was acting splendidly, and Peggy mentally stored it
+away as a good idea for future use.
+
+The delay was annoying to the point of being maddening, but there
+was no help for it.  To have taken the air with heated cylinders
+would have been to court disaster.  While they waited out in the
+lonely Nevada hills beside the single-track railroad, Peggy's mind
+held a lively vision of the train speeding toward Monument Rocks and
+the Assay Office, bearing with it the stolen papers carried by Red
+Bill's agent.
+
+At last, after what seemed an eternity, they were ready to start
+once more.  Peggy lost no time in taking to the air.  With her every
+cylinder developing its full horse power, the aeroplane sky-rocketed
+upward at a rate that made Wandering William hold on for dear life.
+
+"W-w-w-what speed are we making?"
+
+The question was jolted out of the passenger.
+
+"About sixty," Peggy flung back at him.
+
+"Then we ought to overtake the train.  I understand it only makes
+forty-five even on the most favorable bits of road, and the tracks
+are pretty rough out in this part of the country."
+
+On through the night they roared.  It was quite dark now, and Peggy
+had switched on the search light with which the aeroplane was
+provided.  It cast a white pencil of light downward, showing the
+parallel bands of steel.  Somewhere ahead of them, on those tracks,
+was the train.  But how far ahead?  As yet no gleam of its tail
+lights had come through the darkness.
+
+All at once Peggy gave a triumphant cry.
+
+"Look!" she cried.  "It's the train!"
+
+Far ahead gleamed two tiny red lights.  They glowed through the
+darkness like the eyes of some wild animal.  But the occupants of
+the aeroplane knew they were the tail lights of the train that was
+carrying the stolen papers to Monument Rocks.
+
+Peggy tried to put on still more speed, but the aeroplane was doing
+its best.  But fast as it was going, it seemed to crawl up on the
+train at a snail pace.  The tail lights still kept far ahead.
+
+But although the gain was slow, it was, steady.  Before another
+dozen miles had been passed Peggy was flying above the train.
+
+In the glare of the furnaces as the fireman jerked the doors open,
+Peggy could see the engineer and his mate gazing up at them with
+something of awe in their expressions.  Aeroplanes were not as
+common in the far West as in the East.
+
+Suddenly the girl noticed a figure emerge from the forward door of
+the front coach and clamber over the tender and drop lightly into
+the cab.  A sudden gleam from the fire door served to light his
+features. Peggy recognized him instantly as the tall "romantic
+bandit," the one with the red sash.
+
+The girl saw him lean toward the engineer and thrust something into
+his hand.  It looked like a roll of bills.  The next instant the
+train's speed perceptibly increased.  It was all the aeroplane could
+do to keep up with it.
+
+"He's given the engineer money, to go faster," exclaimed Wandering
+William.
+
+The tall figure now crawled back on the tender and gazed upward.
+His hand glided back to his hip.  The next moment there was a flash,
+and a bullet zipped wickedly through the air past Peggy's ear.
+
+"The coyote, he's firing at us!" cried Wandering William.
+
+Z-i-n-g!
+
+Another bullet sang by the speeding aeroplane.  Apparently the
+fireman and the engineer could not hear the shooting above the noise
+of the flying engine, for they did not turn their heads.  Presently
+the fireman began shoveling on coal at a terrific rate.  Sparks and
+flame shot from the smokestack of the locomotive.  They streaked the
+night with fire.
+
+"Is he trying to kill us?" exclaimed Peggy as another shot winged
+past.
+
+"I hardly think he'd risk that," rejoined Wandering William, "but
+what he's up to is almost as bad.  He's trying to disable the
+aeroplane."
+
+But before another could be fired the train began to slacken speed.
+Ahead and below the aeroplane could be seen a cluster of lights.
+
+"Monument Rocks!" exclaimed Wandering William; "here's where we play
+the hand out."
+
+Peggy, keeping a bright lookout for a good landing place, presently
+espied a sort of plaza in the center of the town.  It was
+brilliantly illuminated by a number of arc lights and offered a fine
+spot for landing.  She decided to risk a quick drop and swung the
+aeroplane downward at a rapid gait.
+
+As the whirring of the propeller--like the drone of a giant
+locust--resounded over the town, people came pouring out from houses
+and shops to witness the descent.  The crowd gathered so quickly that
+Peggy had difficulty to avoid hitting some of them.  However, she
+managed to bring the aeroplane to a standstill without an accident.
+
+A local policeman came up as they stopped, and to him Peggy
+entrusted the machine.  Followed by Wandering William she darted off
+across the plaza and made for a cab stand immediately across it and
+just outside the depot.  As she rushed up to the solitary rickety
+hack that was standing there and was about to step in a tall figure
+came rushing out of the station.  The train had just pulled in, and
+long before its wheels had stopped revolving he had leaped from it.
+
+"Get to one side," he shouted, grabbing Peggy's arm roughly and
+swinging her aside.  "I guess I'm first on this deal."
+
+"What do you mean," demanded Peggy angrily; "I had this cab first."
+
+"But now I dispossess you of it this way!"
+
+The ruffian had his hand raised to strike when something happened.
+A lithe, muscular form glided under the upraised fist, and the next
+moment there was a sharp crack as the newcomer's fist collided with
+the other's chin.
+
+He went staggering backward and fell in a heap on the sidewalk.
+
+A tall man with a broad brimmed hat came bustling up, followed by a
+small crowd attracted from the aeroplane by the disorder.
+
+"Here, here, what's all this?" demanded the tall man in an
+authoritative tone.  "What does this mean?"
+
+"That this man I've just knocked down is under arrest for
+participation in the Laredo stage robbery and for numerous other
+crimes, including the larceny of some location papers he was about
+to file."
+
+The words came from an athletic young man who had felled Peggy's
+assailant.  The girl looked up at him.  In the electric light there
+was something familiar and yet strangely unfamiliar about his
+features, and his keen, kindly eyes.
+
+"Why," exclaimed Peggy wonderingly, "it's--it's--"
+
+"Wandering William, minus his wig and goatee, otherwise Sam Kelly,
+of the United States Secret Service," rejoined the other with a
+merry laugh.  "I guess I'll go out of the doctor business now, since
+I've nabbed one of the men I was after.  Now then, you rascal,"
+addressing the "romantic bandit," who had scrambled to his feet,
+"where are the rest of Red Bill's precious gang?"
+
+"I don't know," sullenly rejoined the prisoner.
+
+"Oh, yes you do; but first of all give me those papers."
+
+"What papers?"
+
+"The ones you brought here to file in the Assay Office."
+
+"I don't know what you're talking about."
+
+"Yes you do.  Come now, or I'll ask the sheriff to search you."
+
+With a very bad grace the outlaw dove into his pocket and handed
+over a bundle of papers.  Wandering Will--we mean Detective Sam
+Kelly--took them and handed them to Peggy.
+
+"Those are more yours than mine," he said; "we'll file them in the
+morning or at any time there's no hurry now."
+
+"Now then," he resumed, turning to the tall outlaw whose arms were
+held by two of the sheriff's deputies, "are you going to answer my
+question, where is Red Bill and the rest of them now?"
+
+"Where you can't reach 'em in time to queer their game," came in a
+voice of sullen triumph; "they're at Jim Bell's mine picking up gold
+and silver."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+BESIEGED--CONCLUSION
+
+
+The sun rose redly and shone down into the arroyo on a group of
+sleepless, anxious persons.  As the tall bandit had triumphantly
+announced, Jim Bell's mine was besieged.  Since the evening before
+armed horsemen had surrounded it, but so far the little garrison had
+held out.
+
+If Red Bill had had any idea that he was going to find Mr. Bell an
+easy prey he must have revised his opinion.  But he knew that it was
+only a question of time till he could starve him out and take
+possession of the mine.  He was unaware of the departure of the
+aeroplane for Blue Creek, otherwise he might have kept a better look
+out.
+
+"I wonder if they got through?"
+
+It was Mr. Bell who spoke, making a brave attempt at indifference to
+the danger that hedged them in.
+
+Before anyone could reply a figure on horse-back appeared at the
+head of the arroyo.  It was Red Bill himself.  On his ankle was a
+bandage, but his amazing vitality had left no other traces of the
+bite of the rattlesnake.
+
+"Wa-al, Jim Bell," he demanded, "for the third an' last time, air
+you goin' ter give in peaceable?  Ain't no sense in holding out.
+We've got your stock.  We'll tap your water hole if we can strike
+the vein and it won't take us long.  We've got you whar we want you,
+an' if you've got ther brains uv a yearling calf you'll throw up the
+sponge and give us the mine."
+
+"Not while I can raise a hand to fight you," rejoined Jim Bell
+boldly.  "Ah!  I might have expected some such trick!"
+
+A bullet had whizzed past his ear and flattened itself on the rock
+behind the mining man.  If he had not caught the quick movement of
+Red Bill's arm just in time the moment might have been his last.
+
+"That's just a taste of what you'll git if you try to stick it out,"
+bellowed Red Bill, and wheeling his horse he rode off.
+
+Two or three times that morning Jimsy tried the experiment of
+raising a hat on a rifle barrel above the top of the little canyon.
+Each time a bullet pierced it, showing that the place was well
+watched.
+
+Miss Sally lay on her cot in her tent.  The venerable New England
+lady was literally half-dead from fright.  Alverado, sullen eyed and
+apathetic, strode up and down the canyon all day muttering threats
+he was powerless to carry out.  Jess, wide-eyed and white-faced, but
+brave, did her share of the work and kept Jimsy and Mr. Bell cheered
+up as well as she could.
+
+But the suspense of awaiting the return of Peggy and Roy was the
+hardest to bear.  If they had gotten through safely and the papers
+were filed, then, even if Red Bill captured the mine he could not
+work it.  A few nuggets would be his reward.  But if the aeroplane
+had been disabled or had reached Blue Creek too late, why then Red
+Bill held all the cards.  Mr. Bell had reasoned this out with
+himself over and over again, while his brother sat, staring and
+disconsolate, playing endless games of solitaire.
+
+It was past noon when Jimsy, who had taken an observation between
+two rocks, which acted as a bullet-proof sentry box, announced that
+the forces of the outlaws seemed to be massing.
+
+"Looks as if they were going to make an attack," he said.
+
+Mr. Bell clambered up and speedily confirmed the correctness of
+Jimsy's opinion.
+
+"Get everything ready," he ordered; "there's just a chance we can
+stand them off.  If not, we'll have to trust to their mercy."
+
+A clatter of hoofs sounded above the arroyo and the next instant
+several horsemen appeared.  Without knowing just what he was doing
+Jimsy, who had a rifle in his hands, pulled the trigger.  He was
+amazed to see the giant form of Red Bill totter and reel in the
+saddle, and fall with a crash to the ground.  The next instant
+horror at the idea that he had killed the man seized on him.  His
+hands shook so that he almost dropped the rifle.
+
+But there was little time for reflection.  The sight of their
+leader's downfall seemed to drive the other outlaws to frenzy.  They
+poured a leaden hail into the arroyo that must have exterminated
+every living thing in it if they had not sought shelter behind a
+mighty mass of boulders.
+
+Hardly had they crouched there in temporary safety, before, far
+above them, came a familiar sound.  The giant droning of an enormous
+beetle was what it seemed to resemble most.  But Jess and Jimsy
+recognized it instantly.
+
+"An aeroplane!" shouted Jess.
+
+"It's Peggy and Roy!" cried Jimsy the next instant.  Looking upward
+against the blue was outlined the scarab-like form of the monoplane.
+
+At the same moment a terrific trampling of horses' hoofs sounded
+above.  Shots and shouts rang out in wild confusion.
+
+"What can be happening?" gasped Jess.  Even Aunt Sally, cowering in
+her tent, summoned courage to peek forth.  The sight they saw was an
+inspiring one.  Bud and his horse hunters were riding down the
+outlaws in every direction.
+
+While this was going on, the aeroplane swung lower.  From it there
+stepped as it alighted, not Roy and Peggy, but Peggy and a strange
+young man whom nobody recollected having seen before.  Without a
+word he bounced from the chassis as the aeroplane struck the ground,
+and, revolver in hand, set off in hot pursuit of Bud and his men,
+who, from horse hunters, had become man hunters.
+
+The outlaws, outnumbered and outridden, were fain to cry for
+quarter.  With the exception of three who escaped, the whole band
+was rounded up and made prisoners.  Red Bill, who proved to be only
+slightly wounded, was captured by Sam Kelly himself.
+
+The presence of the horse hunters on the scene at the opportune
+moment was soon explained by Peggy, who spent a busy hour relating
+all that had occurred since they left the camp.  Roy, she explained,
+was still at the hotel in Blue Creek, but mending rapidly.  She and
+the detective had encountered the horse hunters as the aeroplane was
+on its return journey, and, guessing from the tall bandit's story
+that the camp in the arroyo must be besieged, they enlisted the
+services of Bud and his followers.
+
+There seems to be little more to tell of this portion of the Girl
+Aviators' adventures.  The mine, in the developing of which they had
+played such striking parts, proved to be rich beyond even Mr. Bell's
+dreams, and when additional claims were taken up each of the young
+airship enthusiasts found that he or she had substantial shares in
+them.
+
+The aeroplane line from the mine to the railroad, which had been Mr.
+Bell's original idea, proved to be a great success.  Under Roy's
+tuition three young aviators, who were brought from the East, were
+instructed in managing their lines.  Alverado, it will be recalled,
+recognized Sam Kelly as an old acquaintance during lawless times in
+Mexico--he has been appointed to a position in the government
+service, where he has done good work in aiding to rid the Big Alkali
+of the rascals that formerly infested it.
+
+As for our young friends, when the aeroplane line was well
+established, they returned to the East, as Aunt Sally firmly refused
+to remain any longer in the far West, which she always scripturally
+refers to as a land of "the wicked and stiff-necked."
+
+But their adventures were by no means over, as perhaps might be
+expected in the case of those who dare the air in fast flying
+machines.  Their experience on the great Nevada desert was not
+destined to be the only time that the Girl Aviators and their chums
+proved their worth in seasons of danger and necessity.
+
+Stirring aerial adventures lay ahead of them, still more exciting
+than the ones they had encountered while "On Golden Wings."  What
+these were, and how our girls and boys acquitted themselves in
+facing and surmounting fresh difficulties and dangers--as well as
+their lighter moments--will be related in full in the next volume of
+this series:
+
+"THE GIRL AVIATORS' SKY CRUISE."
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE GIRL AVIATORS ON GOLDEN WINGS ***
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