The Border Boys Across the Frontier

by John Henry Goldfrap

"Get your saddles off, quick! Lie down, and put your heads under 'em," ordered the cow-puncher, briskly swinging himself out of his saddle as he spoke.

The others hastened to follow his example. It was not a minute too soon. Already their mouths were full of gritty particles, and their eyes smarted as if they had been seared with hot irons. The ponies could hardly be induced to stand up while the process of unsaddling was gone through. As for the burros, those intelligent beasts had thrown themselves down as soon as the halt was made. With their heads laid as low as possible, and their hind quarters turned to the direction of the hot blast, they were as well prepared to weather the sand storm as they could be.

The instant the saddles were off the ponies, down they flopped, too, in the same positions as their long-eared cousins. The bipeds of the party made haste to follow their animals' example, only, in their case, their heads were sheltered as snugly as if under a tent, by the big, high-peaked, broad-flapped Mexican saddles.

It was well they had made haste, for, as Pete had said, the sand storm was evidently going to get "a whole lot worse before it got better." The air grew almost as black as night, and the wind fairly screamed as it swept over them. Jack could feel little piles of sand drifting up about them, just as driven snow forms in drifts when it strikes an obstruction. How hot it was under the saddles! The boys' mouths felt as if they would crack, so dry and feverish had they become.

"Oh, for a drink of water!" thought Jack, trying in vain to moisten his mouth by moving his tongue about within it.

All at once, above the screaming of the wind, the lad caught another sound—the galloping of hoofs coming toward them at a rapid rate. For an instant the thought flashed across him that it was their own stock that had stampeded. He stuck his head out to see, braving the furious sweep of the stinging sand.

He withdrew it like a tortoise beneath its cover, with a cry that was only half of pain. Through the driving sand he had distinctly seen three enormous forms sweep by, seen like dim shadows in the gloom around. What could they have been? In vain Jack cudgeled his brains for a solution to the mystery.

The forms he had seen drift by had been larger than any horse. So vague had their outlines been in the semi-darkness, however, that beyond an impression of their great size, he had no more definite idea of the apparitions. That they were travelling at a tremendous pace was doubtless, for hardly had he sighted them before they vanished, and he could not have had his head out of its shelter for more than a second or so.

While the lad lay in the semi-suffocation of the saddle, his mind revolved the problem, but no explanation that he could think of would fit the case. "Might they not have been wild horses?" he thought.

But no,—these were three times the size of any horse he had ever seen. Besides, their blotty-looking outlines bore no semblance to the form of a horse.