The high whistling sound rose once more. It seemed to be coming nearer, and was from the north, the direction of the hills.
"Isn't it funny?" gasped Nan. "Shall I ask Rhoda?"
"Come on out and we'll ask one of the men if he knows what it is. That horse wrangler is up. I just saw him going toward the pony corral."
"Hesitation Kane? Well, we'll never learn if we ask him," giggled
Nan. "Wait, Walter. I'll come right out."
She went softly back to her cot and sat down on it to draw on her stockings. She dressed as quickly and as quietly as possible. Even Rhoda did not awake, and, knowing that all her girl friends were probably just as tired and stiff as she was, Nan got out of the tent without disturbing them in the slightest.
"Oh, Walter!" she murmured, seizing his hand in the dusk, "how strange everything seems. Such a wilderness! And I haven't washed my face."
"Come on down to the brook," said her boy friend. "They call it a river here. They ought to see the Drainage Canal!" and he laughed. "What do you suppose they would say to the Mississippi River?"
"Just what Rhoda said she thought of it when she first saw that noble stream: That it was an awful waste of land to put so much water on it! You know there are sections of this country down here where it rains only once in about eight years."
They reached the river's edge. It was light enough here to see what they were about. Both knelt down and laved their faces and hands and, as Nan said, "wiggled the winkers out of their eyes."
Walter produced a clean towel, for Nan had forgotten hers, and one on one end and one on the other, they dried their faces and hands. Nan's hair was in two firm plaits, and she would not dress it anew until later.