Part 17 (1/2)
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.