CHAPTER VII
CHUNKY COMES TO GRIEF
Breakfast was cooked in the cool of the early dawn, long before the sun had pushed its burning course up above the desert sands. Though the boys had but little sleep, they tumbled out at the guide's first hail, full of joyous enthusiasm for what lay before them that day.
Stacy Brown emerged from his tent rubbing his eyes. The lads uttered a shout when they saw him.
"Look at him!" yelled Ned. "Look at Chunky's eye!"
The right eye was surrounded by a black ring, the eyelid being of the same dark shade, where the end of the telescope on his rifle had kicked him.
"Young man, you are a sight to behold," smiled the Professor.
"I don't care. I got the coyote," retorted Stacy, with a grin.
"And the gun got him," added Walter.
"Judging from your appearance, I should say that the butt of your rifle was almost as dangerous as the other end," laughed Tad.
"Come and get it!" called the guide.
The lads never had to be called twice for meals, and they were in their places at the breakfast table with a bound.
"Do you know, I'm beginning to like the sage brush taste in the food," said Walter.
Stacy made up a face.
"I should think you would be ashamed to sit down to a meal with that countenance of yours, Chunky," declared Ned.
"I might with some company."
"See here, Chunky Brown. Do you mean——"
"I mean that my face will get over what ails it, but yours won't," was the fat boy's keen-edged retort.
"All of which goes to prove," announced Tad wisely, "that you never can tell, by the looks of a toad, how far it will jump. I guess you'd better let Chunky alone after this. He's perfectly able to take care of himself, Ned."
Ned subsided and devoted his further attention to his breakfast. The meal finished, all hands set briskly to work to strike camp. In half an hour the burros were loaded ready for the day's journey. The boys set off singing.
"I don't see how you can tell where you are going," said the Professor. "There is no sun and you have no compass."
"We are traveling almost due southwest. I never use a compass. It is not necessary."
"There, I knew I had forgotten to get something," announced Tad.
"Forgotten what?" questioned Walter.
"To get a compass."
"You have a watch, have you not?" asked Tom Parry.
"Why, yes; but that's not a compass."
"Oh, yes, it is," smiled the guide. "You can get your direction just as well with that as you could with a tested compass."
"Never heard that before," muttered Tad.
"Nor I," added Ned, at once keenly interested.
"I'm easy. I'll ask how? What's the answer?" questioned Stacy, gazing innocently at Tom Parry.
"I am not joking, boys. Every watch is a compass. You can get your direction from it unerringly whenever you can see the sun."
"Indeed?" marveled the Professor.
"The method is very simple," continued Parry. "All you have to do is to point the hour hand directly at the sun. Half way between the hour hand and the figure twelve on the watch dial you will find is due south."
"I'll try it," answered Tad.
"There comes the sun now," said Ned.
The boys drew out their watches, having halted the ponies and turned facing the rising sun.
"Well, did you ever!" exclaimed the lads in one voice.
"It is, indeed, the fact," marveled the Professor.
"You can depend upon that whenever you have lost your way," said Tom Parry. "It has helped me out on many occasions."
"But what if there isn't any sun—what if the sky is clouded?" questioned Stacy.
"Then you'll have to sit down and wait for it," laughed the guide.
After this brief rest the party continued on its way. They had come out on the level plain, and before them for several miles stretched the white alkali of the Nevada Desert. As the sun rose higher, they found the glare of the glistening plain extremely trying to the eyes. The guide suggested that they put on their goggles. But the boys would have none of them. Stacy's right eye was badly swollen, yet he refused to cover it, though the fine dust of the plain got into it, causing it to smart until the tears ran down his cheek.
"Where do the wild horses congregate?" asked Tad, riding up beside the guide.
"Likely to see them anywhere, though they do not, as a rule, go far out on the desert on account of the scarcity of water. We may see some in the Little Smoky Valley and the Hot Creek Range when we reach there."
"Is it difficult to catch them?"
"Very. There is one magnificent white stallion that the horse-hunters have been trying to capture for the past five years."
"Why can't they get him?"
"Too smart for them. He knows what they are up to almost as well as if the hunters had confided their plans to him. Twice, in the beginning, the hunters succeeded in getting him in a trap, but he managed to get away from his would-be captors."
"I'd like to get a chance to take him," mused Tad Butler.
"I'm afraid you wouldn't have much luck, but we'll have a hunt when we get down in the horse country, and I promise you that you will see some exciting sport. Better than hunting coyotes by moonlight," laughed the guide.
"I'd like to capture and break a real live wild horse," said young Butler, his eyes sparkling at the thought. "It would be a fine prize to take away with me, now wouldn't it?"
"If you chanced to capture a good one, yes. The poor stock, however, has been pretty well taken up, so that the horses on the ranges now are splendid specimens."
"Anybody want to run a race?" interrupted Stacy, riding up near the head of the procession.
"Too hot," answered Tad.
"Just the kind of a day for a horse race. I'll run any of you to see who cooks the supper," persisted Stacy.
"Oh, go back with the burros. I wouldn't eat any supper that you cooked, anyway."
"I'll remember that, Ned. Well, if none of you has spunk enough to race with me, I'll run a race with myself."
"That a dare?" questioned Walter.
Stacy nodded, blinking his blackened eye nervously.
Walter shook out the reins.
"Come on, then. I suppose you won't be satisfied until you've gotten into more trouble. Where do you want to race to?"
"See that patch of ground whiter than the rest off there?"
"Yes."
"Well, we'll race there and back. How far is it from here, Mr. Parry?"
"'Bout half a mile, I should say," answered the guide, measuring the distance with his eyes.
"Whew! I didn't think it was so far," marveled Stacy. "But we'll run it, anyway."
"I'll be the starter," announced Ned. "If you break your neck, Chunky, remember that I am not to blame for it."
"If I break my neck I won't be likely to remember anything, so you're safe," retorted Stacy.
The others were too busy discussing wild-horse hunting to give heed to the boys' plan.
"All ready!"
"Yes."
"Go!"
Both lads uttered a sharp yell, at the same time giving their spurs a gentle pressure, and away they went across the blazing alkali, their tough little ponies steaming in the intense heat as they straightened out, entering into the spirit of the contest with evident enthusiasm.
"See those boys ride," laughed the guide, pausing in his argument on the wild-horse question: "I didn't suppose the fat boy could sit in a saddle like that."
"Oh, yes; he does well. You saw him master the bucker the other day in the mountains?"
"Yes, I remember. Whoa! Look out, there! There goes one of them! He took too short a turn."
"Walter's down!" cried Ned.
"Hope he isn't hurt."
"No; he's cleared all right. That was a mighty quick move the way he slipped out of that saddle. It would have broken his leg sure, if the pony had fallen on it," declared the guide.
Stacy had pulled up his own mount after making the turn safely. Then he rode slowly back.
"Hurt you any, Walt?" he asked.
"Jarred me a little, that's all. Why don't you go on and win the race?"
"Waiting for you," announced the fat boy laconically.
Walter swung into his saddle.
"Come on, then. Gid-ap!" he cried, shaking out the reins.
The two little animals sprang away like projectiles. But Stacy seemed not to be in his best form. He came in bobbing up and down, several lengths behind Walter.
"You won the race. I fell off," announced Walter, with his usual spirit of fairness.
"I guess not," drawled Stacy. "Now I'm going to do some stunts."
With that, the fat boy galloped out over the alkali again, riding off fully half a mile ahead of the party, where he jogged back and forth for a time, then began riding in a circle.
After a little they saw him toss his hat into the air ahead of him, and putting spurs to his pony dart under it, giving it a swift blow with his quirt, sending it spinning some distance away, at the same time uttering a shrill whoop.
"Thinks he's having the time of his life," grunted Ned.
"For a boy with a black eye, he is particularly cheerful, I should say," laughed Parry. "What's he going to do now!"
"Pick up his sombrero while at a gallop, I guess," replied Tad, shading his eyes and gazing off across the plain. "Yes, there he goes at it."
Stacy, with a graceful dip from his saddle, swooped down on the sombrero, scooping it up with a yell of triumph, then dashing madly across the desert to the westward.
All at once they saw his pony stumble.
"There he goes!" warned the guide. "He will break his neck!"
Down plunged the broncho, his nose scraping the ground, his hind feet beating the air wildly.
Stacy kept right on.
"The pony struck a thin crust on the alkali," explained the guide.
Almost before the words were out of his mouth Stacy Brown hit the desert broadside on. Then, to the amazed watchers, he seemed to disappear before their very eyes.
"He's gone! What does it mean?" cried the boys.
Where but a few seconds before had been a pony and a boy, there now remained only a kicking, floundering broncho.
Tom Parry put spurs to his mount and set off at top speed for the scene of the accident, followed by the others of the party strung out in single file.