"Go ahead," answered Jimsy quite unperturbed, "a cold plunge would go fine right now."'
"Well, we shall have to think up some other punishment for you," decided Jess; "a quarter mile dash across the desert, for instance."
"Well, isn't that the utmost," snorted Jimsy; "here I try to cool you girls off by describing the delightful surroundings of a soda fountain and then you threaten me with bodily violence. 'Twas ever thus,'" and Jimsy, with an assumption of wounded dignity, strode off to where old Mr. Bell was already busy over the cooking fire.
The midday meal passed off more brightly than might have been expected considering the circumstances in which the adventurers found themselves.
"At all events, we can't starve an the desert," Jimsy, "even if we do run short of water."
"How is that?" inquired old Mr. Bell innocently, although the twinkle in Jimsy's eye had put the others on their guard.
"Because of the sand-wiches there," rejoined the lad with a laugh, in which the others could not help joining.
"I don't care about sandwiches, particularly ham ones," struck in
Miss Prescott ingenuously, which set them all off again.
"Looks to me as if there might be a jack-rabbit or two in these hills," observed Mr. Bell after the meal had been dispatched. "I know it's not good form in the West to eat jack-rabbits, but they're not so bad if you kill them when they are young. Anyhow, it would be a change from this everlasting canned stuff."
"I'll go," Roy declared; "I'll take that twenty two rifle and Peggy can carry that light twenty-gauge shotgun. It's just the thing for girls and children."