"Lie down on the floor and watch," murmured Ned softly, "I'm going to turn her on."
Alan and Bob did so. As their two heads filled the open trap in the cabin floor there was a click and then, as if some necromancy had focused the sun on a part of the darkened world, a circle of light seemed to spring out of the desert beneath. Yellow, with here and there a ragged rock and a sage brush or two, the shadows of the rocks and brush black like spilled ink, and the sand glaring back at them with almost quivering brightness, the circle shot back and forth as the light followed the swinging rope. But no living thing was in sight. A click and all was black again.
"Nothing doing," exclaimed Bob.
"Wait," suggested Ned, "persons we couldn't see may have seen them."
Almost as he spoke there was another quick report.
"Did you see the flash, Alan?" asked Ned eagerly, for he had been busy with the dynamo.
But Alan was already at the wheel, and again the car swung from its course.
"Wait," he exclaimed, "turn it on again when I give the word."
After perhaps two minutes he gave the signal and again Ned flashed the gleaming bulb. Again the circle sprang apparently out of the black ground. As the car drifted forward the black blotched golden sand ran the opposite way like a whirling panorama. A coyote sprang, dazed, from a clump of bushes and back again, but that was all.
"Give him another chance," whispered Alan, and the light flashed out.