CHAPTER II.
THE SAND STORM.
As he spoke, a queer, moaning sort of sound, something like the low, distant bellow of a steer in pain, could be heard. The air seemed filled with it. Coming from no definite direction, it yet impregnated the atmosphere. The air, too, began noticeably to thicken, until the sun, from a pallid disc—a mere ghost of its former blazing self—was blotted out altogether. A hot wind sprang up and swept witheringly about the travelers.
"Ouch!" exclaimed Ralph Stetson suddenly. "Something stung me!"
"That's the sand, son," said Coyote Pete. "The wind's commencin' ter drive it."
"Is it going to get any worse?" inquired the professor anxiously.
"A whole lot, afore it gits any better," was the disconcerting reply.
"What'll we do, Pete?" asked Jack, turning to the cow-puncher.
It had now grown so dark that he could hardly see Pete's face. It was hot, too, with a heavy, suffocating sort of heat. The wind that drove the myriads upon myriads of tiny sand grains now darkening the air, was ardent as the blast from an opened oven-door.