Part 18 (1/2)

”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 s.h.i.+fting 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 hoa.r.s.ely. 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 a.s.sume.

”Alverado told me that those desert ravens were inhabited by the souls of those who had lost their way and perished on the alkali,”

s.h.i.+vered Peggy.

”Say, sis, don't be creepy. You surely don't believe all the rot those superst.i.tious Mexicans talk, do you?”