Jack finally came to a position where she found out the mistake which she believed both she and the Indian boy had innocently made. The dark objects ahead of them had been only a group of close growing sage bushes that they had mistaken for the lost stock. Crying out once more to the boy to turn back, Jack now made no pretense of waiting to discover whether or not he heeded her. For the wind was blowing more fiercely, bringing with it the heat of a sirocco, and the sand was pouring into her eyes and ears, almost blinding and choking her. Beyond her there were small sand hills and ravines where a few moments before the earth had lain smooth as a carpet.
Jack perfectly understood that the full fury of the storm had not yet reached her vicinity. Her effort must be to get beyond the sand plains, back if possible to the neighborhood of Rainbow Creek, where behind one of its great rocks she might find partial shelter.
But her heart was pounding uncomfortably and her fair skin felt as though it were being pricked by innumerable needles. Moreover, Jack was frightened. She knew just what a sandstorm meant on the western prairies. She was not far from the edge of a portion of barren lands that formed a kind of miniature desert, and the worst of the situation was that she herself was very tired and that through her own selfish forgetfulness her horse was even more so. Every foot of the way the girl strove to encourage the exhausted animal. Yet it was impossible to make real headway in such a soil while buffeted by such a gale.
Then Jacqueline Ralston heard a strange noise and, as she had heard it once before in her life, she must have recognized it had not her other senses also added their warning.
The roar and rush behind her were seldom equalled by any other kind of tempest.
For half an instant rising in her saddle the girl glanced back. Carlos was not far off now and spurring his horse remorselessly.
For beyond the boy at no great distance and driving rapidly forward was an immense dark yellow cloud. The peculiarity of this cloud was not merely in its color, size and shape, but that instead of being overhead it almost touched the surface of the land.
The girl slid off her horse.
"Down, down," she said quietly, pulling hard on her bridle. And then as her horse's knees touched the ground before him, Jack flung herself face downward, clutching at the loose earth for endurance and strength.
The cloud would be upon them in another moment with terrible destructive force. For not alone did it represent the fury of the wind, but was formed of a mountain of sand driven before it.