"Hopping horn-toads!" he gasped.
"What's up?" asked Jack, who sat beside him.
"Oh, nothing," said Dick, "the wagon gave an extra hard jolt, that was all, and I thought my head was coming off."
But the cause of Dick's exclamation had been this: From behind a squalid hut he caught sight of three shadowy figures, dimly seen in the half light, apparently watching the wagon and its occupants.
They quickly withdrew as they saw Dick looking at them, but not before the young reporter had received a startling impression that one of them at least was familiar to him. The wagon drove out over the desert and rumbled along till it came to a deep arroyo, or gulch, in which stood a deserted, bleaching hut.
"This is the place," said Zeb.
"Sure, you can stay thar fer a year an' a day an' nuthin' but tarant'las an' rattlers ull ever bother ye," said old McGee cheerfully.
The cases they had brought were quickly unloaded and lowered into the arroyo which led down to where they could see the turgid flood of the Colorado flowing between low banks. For at this spot the river is a very different stream from what it is above and below, where it makes its way to the Gulf of California between unscalable walls of cliffs and is a succession of cruel rapids and unpassable falls.
When old McGee drove back for the second and last load, for the Wondership was constructed so as to "take-down" very compactly, Dick elected to go with him. When they arrived at the freight depot the young reporter took the first opportunity to wire his paper in Boston.
"Find out if Bill Masterson is in town," was the substance of his message.