Billie considered it the best joke he had ever run across. Often since then the others had heard him chuckling, at times, and knew that he was drawing a mental picture of that grim old necromancer, clad in all his savage attire, squatted before that talking machine, and drinking in airs from the opera, rollicking songs by Harry Lauder, and
then the ponderous speeches of ex-presidents and other statesmen.
“You’re right, Donald,” said Adrian quickly, “I heard it as plain as anything right then; and seemed to come from down this queer little stream that we’re just going to cross, after the horses have drank their fill—you don’t often run across such a jolly flow of water in this region of rocks and deserts. There it comes again, a cry for help; and there goes a gun of some sort!”
“It couldn’t be a trap, now, could it?” asked Billie, a bit nervously; for he could not get the remembrance of those Apaches off their reservation out of his mind.
“That’s a white man calling, so let’s head that way, and see what ails him,” Donald decided, after they had heard the call several more times.
After following the little wandering stream for half a mile they suddenly made a strange discovery. In the midst of the water there was a human head, with a pair of shoulders—only that to be seen, and nothing more.
“Whatever is he adoing wading in there, and where it’s nearly over his head?” asked Billie, wonderingly.
But the others knew.
“He’s being sucked down in a quicksand!” cried Donald.
“And we’ve got to get busy, if we want to save