Tad lost no time in getting ready for the trip to trail the wild horses to their lair, and in a few moments the horse-hunters rode from the camp, followed by the envious glances of the Pony Rider Boys.
"Wish I were going along," muttered Chunky ruefully, as he turned his back on them and gazed off across the desert.
CHAPTER XV
BUD PROMISES SOME EXCITEMENT
The horse-hunter and his young companion laid their course at right angles to the reach of the range.
The trail rose slowly to pass between low buttes, leading on under the great spreading Joshua trees that capped the range itself. Off to the east and south of them, plainly exposed to view, lay the yellow stretch of the Ralston Valley that went on and on until it eventually terminated in Death Valley. The dry lake beds in the desert, looked, with the sun shining on them, like great pearls set in the Desert Maze. Tad thought they were water, but Bud Stevens informed him that they were filled with water only after a heavy thunderstorm, or in the early spring.
"You ought to have come down here earlier in the season," he told the lad. "It's a pretty bad time to cross the desert now."
"Yes, we know that. But we are not looking for easy trips," laughed the lad.
As they moved slowly along, the cowboy horse-hunter explained many of the secrets of the trail to his young companion, as well as describing horse-hunts in which he had taken part in the past.