"Really, Mr. Bell, that is too bad of you, when you know I am trying to grow old gracefully," retorted Miss Prescott.
"And now," said Mr. Bell, running a watchful eye over the entire outfit, "we are all ready to start."
A cheer, which the girls took up, came ringing from the boys' throats.
"Hooray!" they shouted.
"Good luck!" cried Cash Dallam from his porch, and several in the crowd caught up the cry..
Juan uttered a series of extraordinary whoops, and working his legs like the long limbs of a seventeen-year locust, he dashed to the head of the procession. The next minute they were off, the pack burros trotting behind in a sedate line.
But just as they started an odd thing happened. Peggy experienced that peculiar feeling which sensitive persons feel when they are being watched. Glancing quickly round she encountered the penetrating glance of the tall, dark young man who had formed one of the group on the porch the previous evening. He turned his eyes away instantly as he perceived that his interested gaze had been intercepted. As he did so, Peggy, despite the heat, felt a little shiver run through her.
But the emotion passed in a moment under the excitement of the dash forward. Before long, the rough habitations of Blue Creek lay far behind them, and in front there lay, glittering under the blinding sun, the far-reaching expanse of the desert. Off to the southwest hovered what seemed to be a blue cloud on the horizon. But they knew that in that direction lay the Black Rock hills, a desolate chain of low, barren mountains.
As if by instinct they all drew rein as the solitudes closed in about them. Rising in his stirrups Mr. Bell pointed into the distance. "Yonder lies the end of the rainbow!" he exclaimed with a touch of rude poetry.
"And back there are the wings to fetch forth the pot of gold," laughed Jess, indicating the packing cases on the burros' backs.