The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings Part 17

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 Airs.h.i.+p" 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 gla.s.ses 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 cha.s.sis.

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 makes.h.i.+ft 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 cha.s.sis, 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 cla.s.sic lineaments. "Say, girls, how would you like right now to hear the cool, refres.h.i.+ng 'fiz-z-z-z' of a fountain, and then hear the ice clink-clinking against the sides of a tall gla.s.s 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 a.s.sumption of wounded dignity, strode off to where old Mr. Bell was already busy over the cooking fire.

The midday meal pa.s.sed off more brightly than might have been expected considering the circ.u.mstances 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?"