"Now, miss, I'll help you to mount. Sorry we ain't got a side saddle, but we don't hev much use fer such contraptions with our outfit."
It was the red-sashed man speaking. He held out a stirrup for Peggy, and the girl, perforce, mounted the pony. She caught herself wondering as she did so what her friends at home in the East would have thought if they could have seen her at the moment. It was Roy's turn next. Brother and sister were permitted to ride side by side. Juan, to Peggy's secret satisfaction, was compelled to give up his burro to one of the outlaws while he tramped along.
"Serves him right," thought the girl.
The man whose pony Roy bestrode leaped nimbly into the saddle behind
Buck Bellew.
Hardly a word was spoken, but their captors closed in silently about the boy and the girl prisoners.
"Death Valley," ordered Red Bill briefly, swinging himself into the saddle. Peggy guessed that the sinisterly named place must be their destination.
Amid the maze of pinnacles, minarets and spires of the desert range the horsemen forged slowly forward. From the fact that they traveled toward the newly risen moon Peggy surmised that their course lay to the eastward . But presently it shifted and they began moving north.
"Where can we be going?" Peggy found an opportunity to exchange a word or two with Roy. Owing to the rough nature of the ground their rear guard had, of necessity, fallen back a bit.
"No idea, sis. One thing seems certain, however, they don't mean to harm us, at least not yet."
The rear guard closed up again, necessitating silence once more. All night they traveled, ambling at the plainsman's "trotecito" when opportunity offered, and then again slacking to a crawling walk where the baked ground grew uneven and criss-crossed with gullies and arroyos.