“What’s the use of killing a perfectly useless creature?” demanded Ruth.
“No fear,” laughed Jennie. “Tom won’t kill it. He’s only shooting holes in the circumambient atmosphere.”
There was a haze over the mountain tops at dawn on the fourth day; but Min assured the girls that it could not mean rain. “We ain’t had no rain for so long that it’s forgotten how,” she said. “But mebbe there’ll be a wind storm before night.”
“Oh! as long as we’re dry——”
“Yes, Miss Ruth,” put in the girl guide. “We’ll be dry, all right. But a wind storm here in Arizona ain’t to be sneezed at. Sometimes it comes right cold, too.”
“In summer?”
“Yep. It can git mighty cold in summer if it sets out to. But we’ll try to make Handy Gulch early and git under cover if the sand begins to sift.”
“Oh me! oh my!” groaned Jennie. “A sand storm? And like Helen I feel already as though the dust was gritted into the pores of my skin.”
“It ain’t onhealthy,” Min returned dryly. “Some o’ these old-timers live a year without seein’ enough water to take a bath in. The sand gives ’em a sort of dry wash. It’s clean dirt.”
“Nothing like getting used to a point of view,” whispered Sally Blanchard. “Fancy! A ‘dry wash!’ How do you feel, Rebecca Frayne?”