CHAPTER XIV
LOST!
Good news awaited them on their return to the camp in the arroyo. Mr. Bell and Jimsy, while working in a desultory fashion on the vein while awaiting their return, had struck what is known in desert parlance as a water-pocket. They had at once set to work excavating a fair-sized hole in the floor of the mine tunnel, and by the way in which the water gushed in it appeared as if there was a plentiful supply to draw upon.
It is hard to convey how much this bit of news raised their spirits.
"Isn't it queer to think how just finding a little water will make you feel good out here, while at home all we had to do was to turn a faucet and we got all we wanted and never dreamed of being thankful for it," observed Jess philosophically.
"Wish we could strike an ice-cream soda pocket," observed Jimsy, who was vigorously scouring the dust off his classic lineaments. "Say, girls, how would you like right now to hear the cool, refreshing 'fiz-z-z-z' of a fountain, and then hear the ice clink-clinking against the sides of a tall glass of say—lemonade or—"
"Jimsy Bancroft, if you say any more we'll duck you head first in that water hole," said Peggy with decision.
"Go ahead," answered Jimsy quite unperturbed, "a cold plunge would go fine right now."'
"Well, we shall have to think up some other punishment for you," decided Jess; "a quarter mile dash across the desert, for instance."
"Well, isn't that the utmost," snorted Jimsy; "here I try to cool you girls off by describing the delightful surroundings of a soda fountain and then you threaten me with bodily violence. 'Twas ever thus,'" and Jimsy, with an assumption of wounded dignity, strode off to where old Mr. Bell was already busy over the cooking fire.
The midday meal passed off more brightly than might have been expected considering the circumstances in which the adventurers found themselves.
"At all events, we can't starve an the desert," Jimsy, "even if we do run short of water."
"How is that?" inquired old Mr. Bell innocently, although the twinkle in Jimsy's eye had put the others on their guard.
"Because of the sand-wiches there," rejoined the lad with a laugh, in which the others could not help joining.
"I don't care about sandwiches, particularly ham ones," struck in
Miss Prescott ingenuously, which set them all off again.
"Looks to me as if there might be a jack-rabbit or two in these hills," observed Mr. Bell after the meal had been dispatched. "I know it's not good form in the West to eat jack-rabbits, but they're not so bad if you kill them when they are young. Anyhow, it would be a change from this everlasting canned stuff."
"I'll go," Roy declared; "I'll take that twenty two rifle and Peggy can carry that light twenty-gauge shotgun. It's just the thing for girls and children."
"Oh, indeed," sniffed the embattled Peggy scornfully; "I suppose you think I can't handle a man's size gun?"
"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 shifting 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 hoarsely. 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 assume.
"Alverado told me that those desert ravens were inhabited by the souls of those who had lost their way and perished on the alkali," shivered Peggy.
"Say, sis, don't be creepy. You surely don't believe all the rot those superstitious Mexicans talk, do you?"
"No, not exactly—but—oh, Roy," even plucky Peggy's voice broke and quavered, "it's so lonely, and whatever are we to do?"
The last words came wildly. Peggy was not, as we know, a nervous girl, but the situation was enough to unstring the nerves of the most stolid of beings.