“It’s time to start,” he said.
“How is it you’re dressed?” asked Sam suspiciously.
“Oh, I—er—I was up a little earlier,” replied Jack.
“Say, I know where he was,” commented Bony, cracking his knuckles in the semi-darkness. “He was off to bid Mabel good-by again. I heard him say last night he’d come over before the start of the stage she was to take.”
“Masticated mushrooms!” exclaimed Nat. “I wouldn’t have thought it of you, Jack!”
“Come on, get up!” was all Jack replied as he hurried from the room to see if Tanker Ike had everything prepared.
The boys, after a hasty breakfast, found the horses in readiness for them. They had taken out the night before their guns and some clothes from the bundles shipped from the East, and now were equipped to take the trail and begin hunting.
They started off some time before the sun shone above the horizon, and almost immediately found themselves upon a bare and partly sandy waste.
“This is Forty-mile desert,” explained Ike. “If you have any trouble at all, it’ll be here. But I hope we won’t have any.”
It was warm, in spite of the lateness of the season, and as they jogged along on their horses they began to feel the discomfiture of the journey. But no one minded it.