Andy managed to keep his eyes on the distant ponies pretty much all the time the aeroplane was dropping in those immense circles, each one lower in the grand spiral than the preceding one.
“They’re gaining some on us, Frank!” he finally announced, regretfully, as if he just could not bear the thought.
“Oh! that’s a mere nothing,” declared his cousin, cheerfully; “and I wouldn’t bother my head over it, if I were you, Andy. Why, when we get to where I want to go, all I’ve got to do is to put on speed, and we’ll make that up in three shakes of a lamb’s tail. What are two or three miles to a wonder of the air that can, if hard pushed, clip along at the rate of a hundred an hour, and perhaps that is far from the capacity of a reliable biplane with a favorable wind.”
As usual Frank managed to cheer his chum up immediately.
“Sure, you’re about right, Frank, and I was silly to let it bother me. But seems as if we ought to be down nearly far enough. If there were any trees here we’d be only a couple of hundred feet or so above their tops. And whew! Frank, I can feel the heat of that desert easy enough now, even while we’re moving along like we are.”
“It’s all over now, and I don’t mean to go down any further. Tell me if you can still see Jose and the little girl, Andy?”
“Yes, I can see the ponies moving like crabs away off there; and I’m taking it for granted that the ones we’re chasing after are mounted on the same, Frank. Oh! wouldn’t it be a terrible disappointment now, if after we got up close we found we’d been bamboozled, and that these were only a couple of Indians, or Mexicans going back home after trading in some American town?”
“There’s always a little chance that way,” Frank admitted, “but all the same I don’t believe we’re going to be disappointed. Traders would hardly strike across this desert, you understand. It’s a bad place to get lost in, and mighty unpleasant traveling at the best. Few people cross it, they said at the ranch. Once in a while some Indians wander down here from their reservation in the northern end of the State. You know the Navajos used to be in this region, and the Comanches too, I was told, before the Government rounded them up, and gave them lands up there, besides paying them a big sum every year in money and supplies.”
“I wonder——” began Andy, and then stopped, while he screwed his eyes still closer to the ends of the twin tubes of the marine glasses.
“What’s the matter now?” asked Frank, realizing that in all probability Andy had made some fresh discovery.