CHAPTER VI
A DRY STORM
In describing what immediately followed, Peggy has always declared that her sole impression was of continuous "flash and crash."
The first red glare, as a jagged streak of lightning tore across the sky, was followed by an earsplitting thunder roll. Almost instantly the entire heavens became alive with wriggling serpents of light. The criss-cross work of the bolts ranged in hue from a vivid eye-burning blue to an angry red. And all the time the thunder roared and crashed in one unceasing pandemonium. A smell of brimstone and sulphur filled the air. The tethered stock whinnied and plunged about in mad terror.
"Juan, look to the stock!" shouted Mr. Bell above the turmoil. But Juan, at the first crash, had flung himself face downward on the sand and lay there trembling and praying.
As there seemed no possibility of getting him up, the boys and Mr. Bell set to work on the by no means easy task of securing the terrified animals more carefully.
In the meantime, the girls, in Miss Prescott's tent, were having a hard time to convince that lady that the end of the universe was not at hand.
"Oh, dear, why did we ever come out here!" cried the terrified woman; and then the next minute:
"Just hark at that! We shall all be killed! I know it! Oh, this is terrible!"
"It will soon be over, aunt, dear," exclaimed Peggy bravely, though her own head ached and her eyes burned cruelly from the glare and uproar.
"Yes, dear Miss Prescott," chimed in Jess; "it can't last; it—"
There was a sudden blinding glare, followed by a crash that seemed as if the skies must have been rent open. With it mingled a loud scream from Miss Prescott and cries and shouts from outside the tent.
"Something in the camp has been struck!" exclaimed Peggy rushing to the tent door.
"It's Juan's burro!" cried Jess, who had followed her; "look at the poor thing, off over there."
In the radiance of the electric display they could see quite plainly the still form of the little animal lying outstretched on the ground. Juan heard the girl's cry, and for the first time since the storm had begun he moved. Directly he perceived the motionless form of his mount he appeared to lose all his terror of the storm, and sprinted off toward it on his long legs. As he ran he called aloud on all the saints to look down upon his miserable fate.
But as he reached the side of his long-eared companion, the creature, which had only been stunned by the bolt, suddenly sprang to its feet and, no doubt crazed by fear, began striking out with its hind hoofs. As ill luck would have it, poor Juan came within direct range of the first kick, and was sent flying backward by its force.
Behind him lay the water hole, and before he could stop the cowardly guide found himself over the brink and struggling in the muddy water. His cries for help were piercing, but as Mr. Bell and the boys were busy, and as they knew that the Mexican was in no actual peril, they left him there for a time.
In the meantime, the first terrific violence of the storm had subsided, and before long it passed. As it growled and muttered off in the distance, lighting up the desert with an occasional livid glare, Juan came scrambling out of the mud-hole. He did not say a word, but went straight up to his burro. He saddled it in silence, strapped his old guitar on its back and, swinging himself into the saddle, dashed off across the alkali, his long legs working like pendulums on either side of the little creature. It actually seemed as if he were propelling instead of riding it.
The boys wanted to know if they should set off in pursuit of their errant guide, but Mr. Bell said that it would be the best thing to let him go if he wished.
"He was more of a hindrance than a help," he declared, "and he and his burro between them ate far more than their share of food."
"But won't the poor man become lost or starve?" asked Miss Prescott, who, now that her alarm had passed with the storm, had joined the group.
"Not much danger of that," laughed Mr. Bell, "a fellow of Juan's type can subsist on next to nothing if he has to, and his burro is as tough as he is, I suspect."
"At any rate, he must have thought so when he got that kick," laughed Peggy.
"It reminded me of a verse I once heard," put in the former hermit.
And then, without waiting for anyone to ask him to repeat the lines in question, he struck up:
"As a rule, never fool
With a buzz saw or a mule."
"I expect that's excellent advice," laughed the old man's brother, "but now, ladies and gentlemen, as the excitement of the night seems to be over, I think we had better retire. Remember, an early start to-morrow, and if all goes well we ought to be at Steer Wells by nightfall."
"If we steer well," muttered Jimsy, not daring to perpetrate the pun in a louder tone of voice.
Fifteen minutes later, silence entrenched the camp, which seemed like a tiny island of humanity in the vast silence stretched round about. As they slumbered, the girls, with their silver-mounted revolvers—gifts from Mr. Bell—under their pillows, the clouds of the dry storm rolled away altogether, and the effulgent moon of the Nevada solitudes arose.
Her rays silvered the desolate range of barren hills and threw into sharp relief the black shadows which marked the deep gulches, cutting the otherwise smoothly rounded surfaces of the strange formation.
Suddenly, from one of the gulches, the figure of a man on horseback emerged and stood, motionless as a statue, bathed in moonlight on an elevation directly overlooking the camp. For perhaps five minutes the horseman remained thus, silent as his surroundings. But suddenly a shrill whinny rang out from one of the horses belonging to our party, who had seen the strange animal.
Instantly the figure turned and wheeled, and when Mr. Bell, ever on the alert, emerged from his tent to ascertain what the noise might portend, nothing was to be seen.
"That's odd," muttered the mining man, "horses don't usually whinny in the night except to others of their kind who may suddenly appear. I wonder—but, pshaw!" he broke off; "the thing's impossible. Even if our mission were known nobody would dare to molest us.
"But just the same," he continued, as, after a careful scrutiny, he returned to the tent he shared with his brother, "but just the same I'd like to know just why that animal whinnied."
Whoever the watcher of the camp had been, he did not reappear that night, but while old Mr. Bell prepared breakfast, and the girls were what the boys called "fixing up," the mining man summoned the boys to him and observed that he wished them to take a little stroll to see if better grass for the stock could not be found in the hills. This was so obviously an excuse to get them off for a quiet talk that the lads exchanged glances of inquiry. They said nothing, however, but followed Mr. Bell as he struck off toward the barren range.
As soon as they were out of earshot of the camp the mining man informed them of his suspicions and of what he had heard the night before.
"On thinking it over I am more than ever convinced that somebody must have been hovering about the camp last night," he declared, "but it is no use alarming the others unnecessarily, and, after all, I may be mistaken. In any event, from now on, we will post ourselves on sentry duty at night so as not to be taken by surprise in the event of any malefactors attacking us."
"Then you really think, sir, that somebody may have wind of the object of our journey and molest us?" inquired Roy soberly.
"I don't know; but it is always best to be on the safe side," was the rejoinder; "the towns on the edge of the desert are full of bad characters and it is possible that in some way the reason of our expedition has leaked out."
By this time they had walked as far as the mouth of one of the bare canyons that split the range of low, barren hills. Roy, whose eyes had been thoughtfully fixed on the ground, suddenly gave a sharp exclamation.
"Look here, Mr. Bell," he exclaimed, pointing downward, "what do you make of that?"
He indicated the imprints of a horse's hoofs on the dry ground.
"You have sharp eyes, my boy," was the reply; "those hoof-prints are not more than a few hot old, and certainly clinch my idea that someone on horseback was in the vicinity of the camp last night."
Jimsy looked rather grave at this. Roy, too, had a troubled note in his voice as he inquired:
"What do you make of it all, Mr. Bell?"
"Too early to say yet, my boy," said the mining man, who had been studying the hoof-prints, "but I can tell you this, that only one man was here last night."
"We have nothing to fear from one man," exclaimed Jimsy.
"I know that," was Mr. Bell's response, "but this lone visitor of last night may have been only the scout or forerunner of the others, whoever they may be."
"That's so," agreed Roy, "at any rate he must have had some strong object in spying on us."
Nobody would come out into this desolate place without an aim of
some sort."
"No question but that you are right there," agreed Mr. Bell, whose face was grave, "I have half a mind to turn back and not bring the ladies further into what may prove to be a serious situation."
"So far as Peggy is concerned you'd have a hard time trying to get her to turn back now," declared Roy; "her mind is bent upon helping to get the air line from the mine into working order, and I guess Jess feels the same way about it."
"It would be a sad blow to them to have to go back now," agreed Jimsy; "suppose, Mr. Bell, we wait and make our suspicions more of a certainty before we decide upon anything."
"Perhaps that would be the best course," agreed the lad's elder, "but I must confess I feel sorely troubled. It is agreed, is it not, that not a word of our suspicions are to be breathed to the ladies?"
"Oh, of course," agreed Roy; "after all," he added cheerfully, "the man who left those tracks may have been a prospector or a desert traveler of some kind, and have had no sinister motives."
"I am inclined to think that, too," said Mr. Bell, after a pause; "after all, nobody could have any object in attacking us at such a time."