“Nonsense!” Carol said crisply. “Gale’s horse is the tamest one of the bunch. I’ll bet she is having an adventure and a high old time.”
“But where can she be?” insisted Valerie.
Minutes passed into hours and hours passed and still that question was not answered. The camp was thoroughly alarmed now. They were certain Gale was in trouble or had lost her way in the strange country. Any number of things might have happened, and their thoughts ran rampant. The girls could see that Tom and Jim were as disturbed as they. For the last half hour Jim had, almost lovingly, been cleaning his revolver. There was something ominous in just the sight of him toying with his weapon. What was he thinking?
“What are we going to do?” Valerie asked finally.
It was time for the girls to retire for it had been planned to ride early on the morrow. But now, with Gale missing, their plans were interrupted. None felt that she could sleep if they did go to bed.
“You girls might as well go to bed,” Tom said practically. “Jim and I will wait until dawn and then go out and pick up Gale’s trail. It would be no use going now, for we could find nothing in the darkness.”
They realized that he spoke the truth but still it was hard to sit idle when they were longing to know what was happening to their comrade. Reluctantly Madge, Carol, Janet and Virginia went to their tent. Valerie and Phyllis followed slowly to theirs. Tom and Jim rolled in their blankets by the fire, close together so they could talk in low whispers. The light wind stirred the flames and sent them reaching high into the air. A moment more and they died down to smouldering embers. Silence gradually settled down over the tents and those two Indian-like figures on the ground.
The camp was asleep or so it seemed. Not one occupant of the tents or Tom or Jim saw the two figures that stood on the outer edge of the circle of light and smiled over the serenity which gripped the camp. Big, burly men they were, used to hard riding and hard living. The leather chaps they wore and their heavy khaki shirts were covered with dust. About their waists hung heavy holster and cartridge belts. Figures of menace they were, menace to the peace of the Adventure Girls’ camp. In their eyes, cold and relentless, was reflected the low, burning embers of the campfire as the two took in every detail. They seemed to have no desire to disturb the sleeping campers, just to note the lay of the land, as it were. When their silent inspection was finished they turned and melted into the darkness from whence they had come.
In the tent she shared now with only Phyllis, Valerie lay wakeful and restless. Her thoughts were contemplating a hundred and one things that might have happened to Gale. The two had been friends for a long, long time and now the thought that her chum might be in trouble or danger, perhaps, made Valerie long to be off to her assistance. She lay staring at the black tent roof. Beside her Phyllis lay calm, breathing regularly, already in the land of dreams. Valerie wished she could smother her own troublesome thoughts and go to sleep. Tom and Jim knew what they were about and if they said it was no use hunting for Gale before morning, there simply was no use that was all. She realized that they could scarcely find a sign of Gale in the pitch blackness of the Arizona night. They thought that Gale might have lost her way and could not return to the camp. Valerie seriously doubted that. Gale could find her way about better than any of them. She seemed to possess a sixth sense that enabled her to remember any route or trail of open country that she had once taken. Valerie was sure Gale had not lost her way. Instead, there was some other reason why she hadn’t returned to the camp.
Valerie’s memory was particularly fresh with scenes of the night she and Gale had been prisoners of the bank bandit. Had something similar happened to Gale tonight? There was scarcely any other reason she should stay away from camp. Valerie wondered if Gale still had her little revolver with her. At least she had some little protection with that.