"Surrounded!" muttered Roy a bit nervously. He had not forgotten the fight in the canyon, although, as he knew, coyotes, only on the very rarest occasions, when driven desperate by hunger, attack mankind.
The cries appeared to come from all quarters now. And they were drawing nearer, course lay to the eastward there was no mistaking that.
"They are closing in on us, sis. Better load up that gun."
As he spoke Roy refilled the magazine of his little twenty-two rifle.
"Ki-yi-yi-yi-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!"
This time the cry was quite close and behind them. Roy switched sharply round. The surroundings, the uncanny cries, the solitude were beginning to tell on his nerves, too. His self-control was being wrought to a raw edge.
Was it fancy, or as he switched abruptly about did he actually see a dark object duck behind a rock? An object that bore a strange resemblance to a sombrero.
"Good gracious, I musn't become as shaky as this," the boy thought, making a desperate effort to marshal his faculties, and then he sniffed sharply.
"What is it, Roy?" asked Peggy strangely calm now in the face of what she deemed must prove an emergency.
Roy's answer was peculiar.