“I’ll go,” Florence replied.
After eying the thick thorny vegetation on all sides, Peggy shook her head. “Not I. I’d feel as if I were being electrocuted, walking through all those thorns and stickers.”
As Jo Ann and Florence were picking their way gingerly along the rocky gully, Jo Ann exclaimed, “Why, look! Here’re some automobile tracks, and here’s one that looks as if it’d been made just recently. I can’t imagine anyone’s being able to get much farther down here.”
“Nor I.”
When they had gone several yards farther, Jo Ann noticed that the car tracks led up the sloping left side of the gully. All at once she spied a car hidden behind some bushes up on the edge of the gully.
“Look, there’s the car!” she exclaimed, low-voiced, pointing to it. “Up there behind that mesquite. Looks as if someone’s tried to hide it there. Something queer about that—suspicious. I’d like to go up and peek inside it.”
“Well, I for one am not going up to investigate.” Florence caught Jo Ann by the hand and pulled her along as fast as she could through the maze of thorny plants. “You have entirely too much curiosity.”
“It’s enough to make anyone wonder, to find a car hidden in such a desolate spot. Maybe”—she whispered her next word—“smugglers’ve hidden it there. I’m going up and——”
“Oh, please don’t—please——” Florence tugged at Jo Ann’s arm, but in vain.
Jo Ann turned back and started up the slope.