All day, with only a short pause for lunch, Pigasus had flown north, Dorothy keeping a sharp lookout for Thunder Mountain or mountains of any sort, but the wild, desolate country through which they were flying was flat, desert-like and apparently perfectly uninhabited.
"A fine healthy chance we have of finding an army here!" snorted Pigasus as the afternoon drew to a hot, weary close, "and what we'll do when we find Thunder Mountain, I haven't the faintest notion, have you? Even if I butt my nose black, blue and blunt, and you break both knuckles beating on its rocky exterior, how can we ever hope to enter such a place, much less release our unfortunate sovereigns? I told you Kalico was a scoundrel; I'll wager he's sent us on a wild goose chase just to get us out of the way."
"Ah, don't say I told you so,
There's always some way, you know,"
said Dorothy almost as down-hearted as Pigasus, though she would not admit it. The pink pig, rather ashamed of himself, flew for several miles without saying anything, then, in rather a gruff voice, he called Dorothy's attention to the changing nature of the scenery below.
"Notice the hills?" he snorted, more hopefully. "Maybe there is a mountain, after all, but the sun's going down and I'm ready to sink myself, so let's descend and see whether we can find a soft rock on which to lay our heads."
"Not hills, dunes!" cried Dorothy, bouncing off as soon as Pigasus touched the earth. "Sand dunes; we must be near the coast and the Nonestic Ocean."
"It does smell salty," agreed Pigasus, sniffing the air eagerly, "but suppose we save the ocean for tomorrow, my feet ache, my wings ache, and I'm hollow as a drum."
"Then we'll have supper," decided Dorothy, sensibly. So seating themselves comfortably with their backs against a dune, the two weary explorers finished up all the cold meat, fruit, pie, and sandwiches Shoofenwaller had packed up for them. After a long, wistful sniff into the box convinced him there was not another crumb, Pigasus folded his wings, lay down in the soft sand at the foot of the dune, giving only indistinct grunts and snorts to Dorothy's questions and observations. Finally, getting no answer at all, Dorothy discovered he was asleep. The regular rise and fall of the pink pig's sides, the soft drowsy singing of the west wind lulled Dorothy into a pleasant state of dreaminess, and presently, with her head comfortably pillowed on the pig's plump shoulder, she fell asleep too.