Part 6 (1/2)
The lads set up a shout as they started running about
”Better look for him that way,” directed the guide, motioning in the direction that the funnel had taken after wrecking their camp.
The boys spread out, calling and searching excitedly over the sand, peering into the sage brush and cactus shadows. But not a trace of Stacy Brown did they find, until they had gone some distance from camp.
A faint call at last answered their hail.
”Hooray! We've got him!” shouted Walter.
”Where are you, Chunky?” called Tad, hurrying forward.
”Here.”
”Are you all right?”
”No, I'm dead.”
The boys could afford to laugh now, and they did, after calling back to the camp that they had found the missing one.
Half buried in a sand drift they located him. Stacy's head and one foot were protruding above the sand, the only parts of his anatomy that were visible above the heap of white sand beneath which he had been buried.
The Pony Riders could not repress a shout when they came up with young Brown and understood his predicament.
”Get me out of here.”
”No; you're dead. You stay where you are,” retorted Ned.
Tad, however, grasped the foot that was sticking up through the sand, and with a mighty tug hauled Chunky right through the heap, choking, coughing and sputtering angrily, to the accompaniment of roars of laughter from his companions.
Ned grabbed the boy by the collar, shaking him until the sand flew like spray.
”Wake up! Wake up! How did you get here?” demanded Ned.
”I--I don't know. I--I guess I fell in.”
”You fell up this time. That's a new trick you've developed. Well, it's safer. You won't get hurt falling up, but look out when you strike the back trail.”
”Wha--what happened?” asked the fat boy peevishly.
”Everything,” laughed Tad. ”We got caught in a cyclone. We don't know whether you were rolled along with it or carried here. Which was it?”
”I guess I flied,” decided Stacy humorously. ”But I came down so hard that it knocked all the breath out of me. Where's the camp?”
The boys laughed.
”Ask the wind,” replied Ned. ”We don't know. Come! We'd better be getting back.”
”Yee, I reckon there will be plenty for us to do,” agreed Tad. ”Can you walk all right, Chunky?”
”I guess so.”