At intervals they stopped and Curt’s great voice boomed through the night.
“We’d better turn back to camp,” the cowboy star finally advised. “Maybe some of the others have news.”
But when they gathered in the ghost town, Helen knew that the search had been fruitless.
Each searching party brought back the same report—no trace of the missing Janet had been found.
“Everyone try to get some sleep now,” said Helen’s father. “We’ll resume the search at dawn.”
Helen went to the room assigned to her and lay down, fully dressed, to try and rest in the short interval before dawn. But sleep would not come and thoughts raced through her head. Something was decidedly amiss and, like Curt Newsom, she could now sense impending disaster to the company. Just what it was or how it would strike she could not determine, but a terrible uneasiness gripped her.
Breakfast was served at dawn. Most of the women in the company were on hand to aid in the search, but Henry Thorne called only upon the men.
Half a dozen cars were manned and they swung out again to comb the desert floor.
“Let them go,” said Curt Newsom to Helen. “We’ll ride. If there are any tracks, we’ll be able to follow them easier.”
The tall, well-built cowboy star swung into his saddle and they trotted away between two tumbledown houses of the ghost town.