"Hooray!" shouted the lads.
"Very interesting," agreed the Professor.
"And lively, too," added the guide. "The boys took quite a fancy to you young gentlemen after the roping trick, and said if you would join in a hunt, you'd get all the fun that was coming to you."
Tad grinned at the recollection of their first meeting with the wild horse hunters.
"Whe—when do we join them?" asked Chunky enthusiastically.
"It will be a week or more yet before we reach that part of the desert where the hunts take place—that is, if we have good luck. But if we have any more such experiences as we have just passed through we shall not get there this summer," laughed the guide.
By sunset, that day, the town of Eureka had disappeared behind the copper colored hills, and the Pony Rider Boys were again merely tiny specks on the great Nevada Desert.
They pitched the new white tents for the first time that night, having made camp earlier than usual because they were not accustomed to working with the new outfit. No one knew where to find anything, which furnished the lads with plenty of amusement.
Ned and Tom Parry cooked the supper over a sage brush fire. They had brought a few cans of milk with them, but after sampling it all hands declared their preference for the condensed brand of which they had purchased a liberal supply. The fresh milk procured in Eureka was strong with the sage brush taste, as was almost everything else in that barren country.
The ponies refused the sage brush for their evening meal, having had a supply of real fodder back in town, so they were staked out near a growth of sage that they might browse on during the night should they decide that they were hungry enough.