"Weather—weather?" stammered Professor Zepplin. "What's the matter with the weather?"
"One hundred in the shade. Isn't that matter enough?" grunted Stacy.
"How do you know, Chunky? You haven't seen any shade to-day," demanded Ned Rector. "There isn't a patch of shade as large as a man's hand in this whole country, so far as I have been able to observe."
"And still less in the country we are about to enter," added the guide.
Tad Butler, however, had been observing the guide keenly. Though the lad had asked no questions, he had caught a note of anxiety in the tone, as well as in the apprehensive glances that Parry kept continually casting to the westward. The guide, catching Tad's inquiring look, smiled and nodded.
"You should always keep your eyes on the weather in this country, especially when on the alkali," he told the boy after the party had started on again.
"Why more there than elsewhere, Mr. Parry?"
"Because storms here are frequently attended with no little peril. You'll see some of them, no doubt, before we reach the end of our journey, and you will wish you hadn't."
"But there's no sign of storm now," protested Tad.
"Perhaps not to you, young man. Do you see that haze settling down like a fog on the western horizon?"