"If all goes well we may be back to-night," said Mr. Bell as he slipped into the seat set tandem-wise behind Jimsy.

"And if not?" inquired Roy.

"In that case," and Mr. Bell's voice held a grave note, "in that case you will take the other monoplane and start out to look for us."

The roar of the motor as Jimsy started it drowned further words. Blue smoke and livid flames burst from the exhausts. The structure of the flying machine shook and quivered under the force of the explosions. The next instant the first aeroplane to invade the Big Alkali scudded off across the level floor of the desert, and after some five hundred feet of land travel soared upward. In fifteen minutes it was a fast diminishing speck against the burnished blue of the Nevada sky.

There was some feeling of loneliness in the hearts of those left behind as they turned back toward the camp under the straggly willows. But this was speedily dissipated by that sovereign tonic for such feelings-namely, work. Much was to be done on the remaining monoplane, and with the exception of brief intervals of "fooling" the young people spent the rest of the day on finishing its equipment. Sunset found the machine ready for flight and the girl aviators and Roy very ready indeed for the supper to which Peter Bell presently summoned them by loud and insistent beating on a tin pan.

You may be sure that as the sun dipped lower, the sky toward the southwest had been frequently swept by expectant eyes, but supper was served and eaten, and the purple shadows of night began softly to drape the glaring desert and still there came no sign of the homing aeroplane.

"Reckon they don't want to risk a night flight and so have decided to camp at the mine," suggested old Peter Bell in response to Miss Prescott's rather querulous wondering as to the reason of the non-return.

"That must be it," agreed Roy easily, demolishing the last of a can of chicken.

Truth to tell, inwardly he had not expected the travelers back that night, and perhaps there lingered, too, in his mind, a faint desire to test out the other aeroplane in a task of rescue, in the event of the one Jimsy was driving breaking down.

But when morning came without a sign of the missing monoplane speculation crystallized into a real and keen anxiety. It was determined to delay no longer but set out at once in search of it. To this end the recently equipped airship was stocked with food and water, and shortly before noon Roy finished the final tuning up of the engine. The others watched him anxiously as he worked. It seemed clear enough that some real accident must have occurred to the other machine.

"James would never keep us in suspense like this," said Mr. Bell, "if he could reach us and relieve our anxiety."

Roy was just about to clamber into the chassis when Peggy and Jess, who had been missing for several minutes, emerged from their tent. Each girl wore an aviation hood and stout leather gauntlets. Plainly they were dressed for aerial flight. Roy gazed at them quizzically.

"I hate to disappoint you girls," he said, "but I've got to play a lone hand in this thing."

"No such thing," said Peggy in her briskest tones; "what if anything happened to you? Who would run the machine if we weren't along?"

"That's quite true, Roy," struck in Jess, "and besides if—if anything has gone wrong with Jimsy who has a better right to be near him than I?"

Roy looked perplexed.

"What am I to do, Aunt Sally?" he appealed, turning to Miss Prescott.

To Peggy's astonishment, as much as anyone else's, Miss Prescott did not veto their going.

"I think it would be great folly for you to go on an expedition of this kind alone," she said, addressing Roy. "As Peggy says, if anything went wrong what could you do alone?"

"Oh, aunt, you're a dear!" cried Peggy, giving the kindly old lady a bear hug.

"But I make one condition," continued Miss Prescott, "and that is, that whatever you find, you do not delay, but report back here as soon as possible. I could not bear much more anxiety."

This was readily promised, and ten minutes later the three young aviators were in the chassis of the big monoplane. After a moment's fiddling with levers and adjustments Roy started the motor. Heavily laden as it was the staunch aeroplane shot upward steadily after a short run. As it grew rapidly smaller, and finally became a mere black shoe button in the distance, Miss Prescott turned to old Peter Bell with a sigh.

"Heaven grant they all come back safe and sound," she exclaimed.

"Amen to that, ma'am," was the response, and then unconsciously lapsing into his rhythmical way of expressing himself, the old man added: "Though flying through the air so high they'll come back safely by and by."

And then, while old Peter shuffled off to water the stock, Miss Prescott fell to continuing her fancy work which the good lady had brought with her from the Fast. An odd picture she made, sitting there in that dreary grove in the desert, with her New England suggestion of primness and house-wifely qualities showing in striking contrast to the strange setting of the rest of the picture.



CHAPTER IX

AGAINST HEAVY ODDS

"Any sign of them yet, Roy?"

Peggy leaned forward and gently touched her brother's arm.

"I can't see a solitary speck that even remotely resembles them," he said. "It looks bad," he added with considerable anxiety in his tones.

Peggy took a peep at the plan which was spread out before Roy on a little shelf designed to hold aerial charts. Then she glanced at the compass and the distance indicator.

"We must be close to the place now," she said; "it's somewhere off there, isn't it?"

"There" was a range of low hills cut and slashed by steep-walled gullies and canyons. In some of these canyons there appeared to be traces of vegetation, giving rise to the suspicion that water might be obtained there by digging.

Roy nodded.

"That's the place, and there's that high cone shaped hill that the plan indicates as the location of the mine."

"But there's not a trace of them-oh, Jimsy!"

Jess's tones were vibrant with cruel anxiety. Her face was pale and troubled. As for Peggy, her heart began to beat uncomfortably fast. But she wisely gave no outer sign.

"Don't worry, girlie," she said in as cheerful and brisk a tone as she could call up on the spur of the moment, "it will be all right. I'm sure of it."

Circling high above the range of barren hills they took a thorough survey of them. There was no sign of the missing aeroplane or her occupants, but all at once beneath them they saw something that caused them all to utter an astonished shout.

In one of the shallower gullies there was suddenly revealed the forms of an immense pack of animals of a gray color and not unlike dogs.

"Wolves!" cried Peggy.

"No, they are coyotes," declared Roy; "I recollect now hearing Mr. Bell say that these hills were frequented by them."

While they still hovered above the strange sight, a sudden swing brought another angle of the gully into view, and there, hidden hitherto by a huge rock, was the missing aeroplane.

But of its occupants there was not a trace.

"We must descend at once," decided Roy.

"But, Roy, the coyotes!"

It was Jess who spoke. The sight of the immense pack of the brutes thoroughly unnerved her. As they swung lower, too, they could hear the yappings and howlings of the savage band.

"I don't think they will bother us," said Roy. "I've heard Mr. Bell say that they are cowardly creatures."

"If they do we'll have to fly up again," said Peggy; "but we simply must examine that aeroplane for some clue of the others' whereabouts. Besides we have our revolvers."

"And can use them, too," said Roy with decision. "Now look out and hold tight, for I'm going to make a quick drop."

The gully seemed to rush upward at the aeroplane as it swooped down, coming to rest finally, almost alongside its companion machine. Luckily, the big rock before mentioned concealed the new arrivals from the view of the pack gathered further up the gully.

No time was lost in alighting and examining the machine, but beyond the fact that none of the food or water had been disturbed there was no clue there. Another puzzling fact was that the rifles Mr. Bell and Jimsy had brought with them still lay in the chassis. This seemed to dispose of the theory that they had been attacked. But what could have become of them? Was it possible that the coyotes—? Roy gave an involuntary shiver as a thought he did not dare allow himself to retain flashed across his mind. And yet it was odd the presence of that numerous pack all steadily centered about one spot.

"I'm going to try firing a shot into the air," said Roy suddenly; "if they are in the vicinity they will hear it and answer if they can."

"Oh, yes, do that, Roy," begged Jess. "Oh, I'm almost crazy with worry! What can have happened?"

The sharp bark of Roy's pistol cut short her half hysterical outbreak. Following the report they listened intently and then:

"Hark!" exclaimed Peggy, her eyes round and her pulses beating wildly. "Wasn't that a shout? Listen, there it is again!"

"I heard it that time, too," exclaimed Roy.

"And I!" cried Jess.

"It came from down the canyon where those coyotes are," went on Peggy.

"That's right, sis, and it complicates our search," said Roy, "but we've got to go on now. You girls wait here for me while I investigate, and—and you'd better take those rifles out of the other aeroplane."

"Oh, Roy, you're not going alone?" Peggy appealed.

"I'm not going to let you girls take a chance till I see what's ahead, that's one sure thing," was the rejoinder.

Before another word could be said the boy, revolver in hand, vanished round the big rock. Hardly had he done so, when there was borne to the girls' ears the most appalling confusion of sounds they had ever heard. The bedlam was, punctuated by several sharp shots, and Roy appeared running from round the rock. His hat was off, and as he approached he shouted:

"Get back to the aeroplanes! The pack's after us!"

At the same instant there appeared the leaders of the onrush. Great, half-famished looking brutes, whose red mouths gaped open ferociously and whose eyes burned wickedly.

But Roy had hardly had time to shout his warning before an accident, entirely unexpected, occurred. His foot caught on a stone and he came down with a crash. The next moment the pack would have been upon him, but Peggy jerked the rifle she had selected to her shoulder and fired into the midst of the savage horde. With a howl of anguish one of the creatures leaped high in a death agony and came toppling down among his mates, a limp, inanimate mass. This checked the surging onrush for an instant, and in that instant Roy was on his feet and sprinting briskly toward the girls.

Straight for the aeroplanes they headed. Reaching them they entrenched themselves in what they could not but feel was an immensely insecure position.

"Thank you, sis," was all that Roy, with a bit of a choke in his voice, was able to gasp out before the leaders of the pack were on them.

More by instinct than with any definite idea, the young people began desperately pumping lead into the seething confusion of gray backs and red gaping mouths.

All at once poor Jess, half beside herself with terror, gave a throaty little gasp.

"I think I'm going to faint," she exclaimed feebly.

Peggy gave her a sharp glance.

"You'll do no such thing, Jess Bancroft," she said sharply, although the pity in her eyes belied the harshness of the words, "if you do I'll—I'll never speak to you again!"

The words had their calculated effect, and Jess made a brave rally. At almost the same instant a shot from Roy's rifle brought down the largest of the creatures of the desert, a big hungry looking brute with tawny, scraggy hair and bristling hackles. As he rolled over with a howl of anguish and rage a sudden wavering passed through the pack. It was like a wind-shadow sweeping over a field of summer wheat.

"Hooray, we've got them beaten!" shouted Roy, enthusiastically.

The lad was right. Their leader fallen, the remainder of the pack had seemingly no liking for keeping up the attack. Still snarling they began to retreat slowly—a backward movement, which presently changed into a mad, helter skelter rush. Panic seized on them, and down the dry arroyo they fled, a dense cloud of yellow, pungent dust rising behind them. In a few seconds all that remained to tell of the battle in the gulch were the still bodies of the brutes that had fallen before the boy and girl aviators' rifles.

They were contemplating the scene when, from further up the gully, there came a sound that set all their pulses beating.

It was the shout of a human voice.

"Thank heaven you were not too late!"

While they were still standing stock still in startled immobility at the recognition of Mr. Bell's voice, there came another hail.

"Hello, Jess! Hello, Peggy and Roy!"

Emerging from the cloud of dust which was still thick, there staggered toward them two uncanny looking figures in which they had at first some difficulty in recognizing Mr. Bell and Jimsy Bancroft. But when they did what a shout went up!

It echoed about the dead hills and rang hollowly in the silent gully. An instant later the reunited adventurers were busily engaged in exchanging greetings of which my readers can guess the tenor. Then came explanations.

"On arriving in the arroyo," said Mr. Bell, "Jimsy and I decided to set out at once to examine the mine site, and lay if off for purposes of proper location with the United States government. I must tell you that the mine—or rather the site of it—is located in that cavern yonder further up the arroyo."

"Why it was round the entrance to that that the coyotes were gathered when we first dropped!" cried Peggy.

"Exactly. And very much to our discomfort, too, I can tell you," rejoined Mr. Bell dryly.

"They had you besieged!" exclaimed Roy.

"That's just it, my boy. They must have been famished, or they never would have gathered up the courage to do it, for, as a rule, one man can put a whole pack of the brutes to flight. I suppose, however, they realized that they had us cornered, for, with a sort of deadly deliberation, they seated themselves round the mouth of the cavern, seemingly awaiting the proper time for us to be starved out or driven forth by thirst. Luckily, however, we had canteens with us and a scanty supply of food, otherwise it might have been the last of us."

Jess shuddered and drew very close to Jimsy.

"And you had no weapons," volunteered Roy.

"Ah, I see you encountered our guns in the chassis of the aeroplane. No, foolishly, I'll admit, we omitted to arm ourselves for such a short excursion. Of course we never dreamed of any danger of that sort in this lonely place, and least of all from the source from which it came. But I can, tell you, it was an ugly feeling when, on preparing to emerge with some specimens of the ore-bearing rocks, we found ourselves facing a grim semi-circle, banked dozens deep, of those famished coyotes. They greeted our appearance with a howl, and when we tried to scare them off they just settled down on their haunches to wait."

"Their silence was worse than their yapping and barking, I think," struck in Jimsy.

"It certainly was," agreed Mr. Bell; "both of us tried to keep up good hearts, but when the night passed and morning still found the brutes there, things began to look bad. Of course we knew that you would set out to look for us when we did not return, but we did not know if you would reach here in time."

"But you did," cried Jimsy, regarding the dead bodies of coyotes the vanquished pack had left behind.

"And excellent work your rifles did, too," declared Mr. Bell warmly.

"Our rifles and—the Girl Aviators," said Roy, and proceeded to tell the interested listeners from the cavern some incidents which caused them to open their eyes and regard our girls with unconcealed admiration.



CHAPTER X

RESCUED BY AEROPLANE

"What's that down there?"

Roy pointed downward from the aeroplane to a small black object crawling painfully over the glistening white billows of alkali far below them.

The lad, his sister and Jess were on their way back from the arroyo in which the battle with the coyotes had occurred. Mr. Bell and Jimsy had been left behind, for the former was anxious to "prospect" his mine as thoroughly as possible in order to ascertain if it gave indications of living up to its first rich promise. A brief inspection of the cave had thoroughly disgusted Peggy and Jess.

"Is this a rich gold mine!" Jess had cried, indignantly regarding the dull walls on which the torches had glowed unflatteringly; "it looks more like the interior of the cellar at home."

"All is not gold that glitters," Mr. Bell had responded with a smile. At the same moment he had flaked off a chunk of dark colored metal with his knife.

"There, Miss Jess," he exclaimed, handing it to the girl, "that is almost pure gold, and I am in hopes that there is lots more where that came from."

And they had been kind enough not to laugh too immoderately at Jess's discomfiture.

A short time later, having located a water hole and partaken of a good lunch, Roy and his companions had re-embarked and started back to camp with the joyful tidings that the missing adventurers had been found. They had been under way but a short time when Roy's attention had been attracted by the moving dot which had caused him to utter the exclamation recorded at the beginning of this chapter.

Against the flat, baking, quivering expanse of alkali the crawling splotch of black showed up as plainly as a blot of ink on a sheet of clean white blotting paper. Peering over the edge of the chassis they all scrutinized it closely.

"It's—it's a man!" cried Jess at length.

"So it is!" declared Peggy, "and on foot. What can he be doing out in this desert country without a horse?"

"He's in trouble anyhow," declared Roy, excitedly. "See, he's staggering along so painfully that it looks as if he couldn't go a step further. I'm going to drop and find out what the trouble is."

As he spoke the boy threw in the descending clutch, and the big monoplane began to drop as swiftly as a buzzard that has espied some prey far beneath him.

As they rushed downward the whirr of their descent seemed to arouse the being so painfully crawling over the hot waste beneath them. He looked up, and then, extending his hands upward in a gesture of bewilderment, he staggered forward and the next instant stretched his length on the alkali, falling face downward.

"Oh, he is dead!" shrilled Jess, clasping her hands.

"I don't think so," was Roy's grave reply, "but we must get to him as quickly as we can."

There was no need to tell Peggy to get the water canteen ready. Her busy little, fingers were fumbling with it. As they touched the ground she leaped nimbly from the chassis and sped over the burning desert floor to the side of the recumbent wayfarer. A second later Roy and Jess joined her. Very tenderly they turned the insensible man upon his back and dashed the water upon his face.

He was a short, rather stockily built man of middle age, and obviously, from his mahogany colored skin and lank black hair, a Mexican. He was dressed in a tattered shirt with a serape thrown about the neck to keep off the blazing rays of the sun. His feet were encased in a kind of moccasins over which spurs were strapped. Evidently, then, he had been mounted at some time—presumably recently, but where was his horse? How did he come to be wandering under the maddening heat of the sun over the vast alkali waste. But these were questions the answers to which had to be deferred for the present, for it began to appear doubtful if they had arrived in time to fan the wanderer's vital spark back into flame.

But at length their ministrations met with their reward. The man's eyelids flickered and a deep sigh escaped his lips. Before long they could press the water canteen to his mouth. He seized it with avidity and would have drained it.

"Only a little," cried Peggy; "I read once how a man, dying of thirst, was killed outright when he was given too much water to drink."

So Roy wrenched the canteen from the prostrated man's feeble grasp before he had drained more than a mouthful or two. But even that had revived him, and he was able to sit up and gaze about bewilderedly. All at once his eyes rested on Peggy, and he seemed to regard her as the means of his salvation from a terrible death on the alkali. Kneeling down he cried out in a pitifully cracked voice:

"You missie angel from heaven. Me Alverado your servant always. No go away ever!"

"By ginger, Peggy, you've made a conquest!" cried Roy, half hysterically.

Now that the strain of the struggle between life and death was over Peggy flushed and looked embarrassed. She was not used to the exaggerated character of the Mexican. But if she feared another outburst it did not come. Far too much exhausted to say more, Alverado—as he called himself—sank back once more on the alkali.

"Quick! Carry him to the aeroplane and get him into camp," cried Roy, raising the half-conscious Mexican's head. "You girls take his feet and we'll put him in the bottom of the chassis on those cushions."

Consequently, when the aeroplane once more took the air it was to fly lower than usual under its additional burden, but in the hearts of all three of its American occupants there rang the joy of having saved a human life from the unsparing alkali.

"Aunt Sally! Aunt Sally! Everything's all right and we've got a patient for you," was Peggy's rather uncomplimentary greeting as the aeroplane alighted and came spinning across the dusty expanse toward the willow clump.

Miss Prescott threw up her hands and old Mr. Peter Bell hastened from amidst his beloved horses.

"Everything's all right but you've got a patient!" cried the New England lady, who looked very prim and unwesternlike in a gingham gown and sun bonnet to match.

"No time for explanations now," cried Roy. "Come on, Mr. Bell, and help us get our sick man out and then we'll tell you all about how we found Jimsy and Mr. Bell at the mine."

With Mr. Bell's assistance it did not take long to transfer Alverado from the aeroplane to a cot, and Miss Prescott, who, as Roy said, would "rather nurse than eat," ministered to him to such good effect that by nightfall he was able to sit up and tell his story. In the meantime the excited youngsters had related their narratives, which Miss Prescott interrupted in a dozen places by: "Land's sakes!" "Good gracious me!"

"Oh, what a dreadful country!" and much more to the same effect.

All the time he was relating his story Alverado kept his eyes fixed on Peggy's face, with much the same expression as that worn by a faithful spaniel. At first this fixed gaze annoyed the young girl not a little, but soon she realized that it was entirely respectful and meant as a tribute, for the Mexican evidently regarded her as his rescuer in chief.

Alverado's story proved vague and sketchy, but he could not be induced to enlarge upon it. In brief his tale was that some years before, when crossing the desert on his way from a mine he owned, he had been attacked by a band of highwaymen. They had wrecked his wagon and murdered his family, who were traveling with him. They had attacked him because of their impression that he was carrying much gold with him, whereas, in reality, he had secured nothing but a living from his desert mine. In their rage at being thwarted, the miscreants had wiped out the Mexican's family and left him for dead with a wound in his skull.

But a wandering band of Nevada Indians had happened along while the Mexican still lay unconscious and, reviving him, carried him with them over the border into California. He had parted from them soon after and drifted down into Mexico. In time he accumulated a small fortune, but the thought of the wrong he had suffered never left his heart. At last his affairs reached a stage where he felt justified in returning to Nevada to try to find some trace of his wrongers, and demand justice. He had set out well equipped, but, a few days before the young aviators encountered him, his water burro had stumbled and fallen, and in the fall had broken the water kegs it carried. From that time on his trip across the alkali had been a nightmare. First his pony had died, and then his two remaining pack burros. He had obtained a scanty supply of thirst quenching stuff from the pulpy insides of cactus and maguey leaves, but when the aviators had discovered him he had been in the last stages of death from thirst and exhaustion—the death that so many men on the alkali have met alone and bravely.

"Do you know the name of the men who attacked you and treated you so cruelly?" asked Peggy, breaking the tense silence which followed the conclusion of the Mexican's dramatic narrative.

A dark look crossed the man's swarthy features.

"One name onlee I know, mees," he said, with a snarl which somehow reminded Peggy of the coyotes of the arroyo.

"And his name was?"

"Red Beel Soomers!"

"'Red Bill Summers!" they all echoed, except Miss Prescott and old Mr. Peter Bell, the latter of whom had fallen into a reverie.

As if they had been emblazoned in electric lights, the words of Professor Wandering William flashed across Peggy's brain.

"The most desperate ruffian on the Nevada desert."

And at the same time, with one of those quick, flashes of intuition which growing girls share with grown women, Peggy sensed a vague connection between that sinister conversation she had overheard on her wakeful night at the National House and the dreaded Red Bill.



CHAPTER XI

THE HORSE HUNTERS

Bright and early the next day the aeroplane whizzed back to the arroyo, carrying a fresh supply of food and water, for Mr. Bell had decided to investigate his "prospect" thoroughly while he had an opportunity. To his mind, he had declared, the lead, or pay streak, ran back far into the base of the barren hills, and might yield almost untold of riches if worked properly. Among the supplies carried by the aeroplane, therefore, was a stock of dynamite from the red painted box.

In the meantime Alverado had to be accepted perforce as a member of the party. In the first place, he showed no disposition to leave, and in the second, even had he done so, there was no horse or burro that could be spared for him to ride. When Mr. Bell heard of the new addition to the camp he was at first not best pleased. Every additional mouth meant an extra strain on their supplies, but he surrendered to the inevitable, and finally remarked:

"Oh, well, I guess he'll be useful enough about the place. Anyhow, if we need him we can put him to work in the mine."

Peggy and Jess had accompanied Roy over in the aeroplane to the mine, but Mr. Bell insisted on their returning. "This is not work for women or girls," he said, much to Peggy's inward disgust.

Jess, with her daintier ideas, however, was nothing averse to the thought of getting back to the creature comforts of the permanent camp in the willows.

"But who's going to get you back, I'd like to know," exclaimed Mr. Bell, shoving back his sombrero and scratching his head perplexedly; "it's important, for reasons you know of, that I should prospect this claim so that I can record it to the limit, and to do that I'll need Roy. Maybe after all, you'd better stay."

Peggy's eyes danced delightedly, but Jess spoiled it all by saying:

Why, Peggy can run the aeroplane better than either Roy or Jimsy, Mr. Bell."

"O-h-h! Jess!" shouted Roy derisively.

"Well, she can, and you know it, too," declared Jess loyally.

"Why that's so, isn't it?" cried Mr. Bell, glad of this way out of his difficulty. After that there was nothing for Peggy to do but to give in gracefully.

The two girls were ready to start back when Mr. Bell reached into his pocket and drew forth a bit of carefully folded paper.

"I'll entrust this to you," he said to Peggy; "it's for my brother. It's a correct description of the mine's location so far as we have explored it. The plan is a duplicate one, and I'll feel safer if I know that, beside the original, my brother has a copy. In the event of one being lost a lot of work would be saved."

Soon after this, adieus were said, and the aeroplane soared high into the clear, burning air above the desolate ridges. Under Peggy's skillful hands the plane fairly flew. At the pace they proceeded it was not long before the willows, a dark clump amid the surrounding ocean of glittering waste, came into view. A veteran of the air could not have made a more accurate or an easier landing that did Peggy. The big machine glided to the ground as softly as a feather, just at the edge of the patch of shade and verdure which made up Steer Wells.

That afternoon, after the midday meal, a cloud of dust to the southward excited everybody's attention. After scanning the oncoming pillar closely Alverado announced that it was caused by a party of horsemen, and it soon became evident that the willow clump was their destination.

"Oh, mercy, I do hope they aren't Indians and we shall all be murdered in our beds!" cried Miss Prescott in considerable alarm. The good lady clasped her hands together distractedly.

"We might be murdered in our hammocks, aunt," observed Peggy, indicating two gaudy specimens of the hanging lounges which had been suspended under the shade; "but only very lazy people could be murdered in bed at two o'clock in the afternoon."

"You know perfectly well what I mean," Miss Prescott began with dignity, when Alverado, who, like the rest, had been watching the advancing cavalcade eagerly, suddenly announced:

"They vaqueros—cowboys!"

"Cowboys!" shrilled Miss Prescott. "That's worse. Oh, dear, I wish I'd never come to the land of the cowboys!"

"You speak as if they were some sort of animal, aunt," laughed Peggy. "I daresay there is no reason to be alarmed at them. I've always heard that they were very courteous and deferential to ladies."

"What would cowboys be doing away out here where there isn't a cow or a calf or even an old mule in sight?" inquired Jess.

"Maybe on wild horse hunt," rejoined Alverado with a shrug.

"Are there wild horses hereabouts then?" asked old Mr. Bell, and then quite absent-mindedly he began murmuring:

"Masseppa, Masseppa tied to a wild horse; In the way of revenge, as a matter of course."

"Plentee wild horse," was the Mexican's rejoinder. "They cross the desert sometimes to get fresh range. Cowboy trail them and cut them off and lasso them. Then they break them to ride."

"Oh, what a shame!" cried Peggy, impulsively.

"No shame go-od," declared the Mexican stolidly; "bye an' bye wild horse all gone. Good."

"I think it's hateful," declared Jess; "just the same I should like to see a wild horse hunt," she added with girlish inconsistence.

"So should I if they'd let them all go again," agreed Peggy.

Old Mr. Bell laughed, for which he was gently reproved by Miss Prescott.

"I shall bring this matter to the attention of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals back home," she said somewhat snappishly.

But there was no opportunity to exchange more remarks on the subject.

Uttering a shrill series of "ye-o-o-ows" the riders bore down on the little desert camp. From the heaving sides of the ponies, plastered with the gray alkali of the desert, clouds of steam were rising. Their riders, with mouths screened from the biting dust with red handkerchiefs, were seemingly engaged in a race for the willow clump where water and shade awaited them.

"Yip-yip-y-e-e-e-e-e-e!"

The sound came raucously from behind a dozen bandaged mouths as the band swept down oil tile camp. And then suddenly:

Bang! Bang! Bang!

A volley of revolver shots resounded as the jubilant horse hunters— as Alverado had shrewdly suspected they were—dashed forward.

"Oh, Land of Goshen!" screamed Miss Prescott, as, with her fingers in her ears, she fled into her tent and pulled the flap to. Peggy and Jess stood their ground boldly enough, although Jess's face turned rather pale and her breath heaved in perturbation.

"Keep still, honey, they won't hurt you," comforted Peggy amid the uproar.

Suddenly the leader of the horsemen drew his pony up abruptly, throwing the cat-like little beast almost back upon his haunches.

"Boys! Ladies!" he shouted.

Instantly every sombrero came off and was swept round each rider's head in a broad circle. It was a pretty bit of homage and the girls bowed in acknowledgment of it.

"Hooray!" yelled the horsemen as they flung themselves from their steaming but still active little mounts.

"They're not so bad after all," breathed Jess, still, however, clinging to Peggy's shirt-waisted arm.

But the leader, hat in hand, was now advancing toward the two girls. The others hung back looking rather sheepish. They were not in the habit of meeting ladies, and to encounter two young and pretty girls in the midst of the alkali was evidently a shock to them. The leader was a stalwart figure of a man, who might have stepped from the advertising matter of a Wild West show. Leather chaparejos encased his long legs. Round his throat was loosely knotted the red handkerchief which they all wore when riding to protect their mouths and nostrils from the dust. His shirt was once blue, but it was so covered with the gray of the alkali that it was difficult to tell what color it might have been originally. For the rest he wore a big sombrero, the leather band of which was spangled with stars worked in silver wire, and a pair of workmanlike-looking gauntlets covered his hands.

"Beg pardon, ladies, for makin' sich a rough house," he said hesitating, "but, yer see, ther boys wall we didn't hardly expec' ter fin' ladies present."

"I'm sure we enjoyed it very much," rejoined Peggy quite at ease and her own cool self now "It was like—er—like Buffalo Bill—"

"Only more so," put in Jess, with her most bewitching smile.

"Um—er—quite so," rejoined the plainsman, rather more at ease now; "ye see, we're a party that's out on a horse hunt. We got on ther tracks of the band ther other side of ther San Quentin range, and figgering thet they'd cut across here ter git to ther feeding grounds on ther Pablo range on t'other side of ther desert we stopped in here fer water an' shade."

"My name's Bud Reynolds," he volunteered tentatively.

Peggy took the hint conveyed.

"And we are part of a scientific exploring party," she said.

"College gals, by gee!" breathed Bud in what he thought was an inaudible aside.

"The party is in charge of Mr. James Bell. This is his brother, Mr. Peter Bell—"

"Glad ter meet yer, I'm sure," said Bud with a low bow as the poet hermit stepped forward.

"I am Miss Margaret Prescott; this is my chum, Miss Bancroft, and there is my aunt, Miss Sally Prescott—"

Peggy, with a perfectly grave face, indicated Miss Prescott's tent, from between the flaps of which that New England lady's spectacled countenance was peering.

"Come out, auntie," she added.

"Oh, Peggy, is it perfectly safe?" queried Miss Prescott anxiously.

"Safe, mum!" exclaimed Bud expansively. "If it was any safer you'd hav ter send fer ther perlice. Jes becos we're rough and ain't got on full evenin' dress you musn't think we're dangerous, mum," he went on more gravely. "I'll warrant you'll fin' better fellers right here on ther alkali than on Fit' Avenoo back in New York."

"Oh, do you come from New York," cried the romantic Jess, scenting what she would have called "a dear of a story."

"A long time ago I did," rejoined Bud slowly. "But come on, boys," he resumed with a return to his old careless manner, "come up an' be interduced."

The others, hats in hand, shuffled forward. It was plainly a novel experience for them.

"And now," said Peggy cheerfully, when the ceremony had been concluded, "you all look dreadfully tired and hot. The water hole's right over there. When you've got off some of that dust we shall have something for you to eat and some coffee."

This announcement took the horse hunters by storm. With yips and whoops they dashed off to the water hole, while Miss Sally and old Peter Bell began to prepare a hasty meal for the unexpected visitors.



CHAPTER XII

THE WATER THIEVES

It was an hour or more later when, having inspected the aeroplane and marveled much thereat, the horse hunters arose to take their leave. They would have to press on, they explained, to reach the rendezvous of the wild horses in the San Pablo range. These hills lay far to the northeast. Bud perspiringly made the farewell speech.

"Thankin' you one and all," he began, with perhaps a vague recollection of the last circus he had seen, and there he stopped short.

"Anyhow we thanks you," he said, getting a fresh start and jerking the words out as if they had been shots from a revolver. "It ain't every day we has a pleasure like this here hes bin—"

"Hooray!" yelled the other horse hunters, who, already mounted, stood behind their leader at the edge of the willows.

"An'—an'—wall, ther desert hes dangers uv its own an' if at any time Bud Reynolds er ther boys kin help yer out send fer them to ther San Pablo Range and if we're thar we'll be with yer ter ther last bank uv ther last ditch."

With a sigh of relief Bud flung himself upon his pony and drove the spurs home. Amidst a tornado of yells and shouts the rest, waving their sombreros wildly, dashed off after him. In a few moments they were only a cloud of dust on the alkali.

"I declare I feel kind of sad now they're gone," said Miss Sally after an interval of silence.

"Rough diamonds," opined old Mr. Bell guardedly.

"But they've got warm, big hearts," stoutly declared Peggy. "I wish"

She stopped abruptly.

"Wish what, Peggy dear?" asked Jess, noting the troubled look that had crept over her chum's face.

"Oh, nothing at all," rejoined Peggy. But she was not speaking the whole truth, for the girl had been thinking what a bulwark of strength Bud and his followers would have been against the vague menace of Red Bill.

It was late that night—after midnight as well as Peggy could judge—that she was awakened by Jess bending over her cot in the tent that both girls shared.

"O-h-h! Peggy, Peggy! I'm frightened!" wailed the girl aviator's chum.

"Frightened? Of what dear?" asked Peggy wide awake in an instant.

"I—I don't just know," quavered Jess, "but, Oh, Peggy, you'll think I'm an awful 'fraid cat, but I'm absolutely certain I heard footsteps, stealthy footsteps outside just now."

"Nonsense, girlie. It must have been a nightmare," rejoined Peggy with sharp assurance.

"I might have thought so," went on Jess, "but I looked out through the flap of the tent to make sure and I'm certain as that I'm standing here now that I saw some figures on horseback over by the water hole."

"Perhaps another party of horse hunters," suggested Peggy soothingly.

"But, Peggy dear, they made hardly any noise. That is, the horses I mean. I heard men's footsteps, but after a minute they mounted and rode off, and—oh, it was too ghostly for anything—they made no noise at all."

"You mean you couldn't hear any sound of the ponies' hoofs?" asked Peggy incredulously.

"No, they moved in absolute silence. Peggy, you don't think it was anything supernatural, do you?"

For answer Peggy drew her revolver from under her pillow and tiptoed to the tent flap. It faced the water hole and in the bright white moonlight a clear view of it could be obtained. But after a prolonged scrutiny Jess's plucky chum was unable to make out any objects other than the usual ones appertaining to the camp.

"Imagination, my dear," she said, with positiveness. But Jess still shuddered and seemed under the influence of some strange fear.

"It was not imagination, Peggy. It wasn't it really wasn't."

"Well, we'll look in the morning and if we find tracks we shall know that you are right, and we'll get the boys back for a while anyhow," reassured Peggy.

But in the morning it was Alverado who came to the tent and in an excited voice asked to see "missee" at once.

Peggy hastily completed dressing and emerged, leaving Jess still asleep. Something warned her that it would be best not to arouse her chum just then.

"What is it, Alverado?" she asked, as the Mexican, betraying every mark of agitation, hastened to her side.

"Santa Maria, missee," breathed the Mexican, "water almost all gone!"

"The water is almost all gone?" quavered Peggy, beginning to sense what was coming.

"Yes, missee. Me go there this morning and—Madre de Dios—the water hole almost empty."

"Were there any tracks?" inquired Peggy anxiously.

"Plenty tracks, but the man's had the cavallos' feet bundled in sacks so make no noise—leave no tracks."

"Let me have a look."

With Alverado at her side Peggy hastened toward the water hole. She could hardly repress an exclamation of alarm as she gazed at the hole. Bare six inches of muddy water was on the bottom, where the day before there had been a foot or more. All about were vague blotty-looking tracks which showed plainly enough the manner in which the marauders had concealed all noise of their movements. The muffled hoofs would naturally give forth no sound.

"So Jess was right after all," breathed Peggy softly; "but who could have done such a thing? And why?"

But the latter question had not framed itself in her mind before it was answered. Without water they would not be able to exist at Steer Wells for twenty-four hours. A retreat would be equally impracticable. It was all horribly clear. The theft of the water was the first step in a deliberate plan to drive them out. The motive, too, was plain enough in the light of the overheard conversation at the National Hotel. The men who wanted Mr. Bell's mine had waited till he had located it before striking their first blow. What would their next be? Peggy's pulses throbbed and the grove seemed to blur for an instant. But the next moment she was mistress of herself again. Clearly there was only one thing to do. Lay the whole matter before Mr. Bell.

"Alverado," said Peggy quietly, "after breakfast I am going to the range over yonder. You must guard the camp."

"Yes, missee," replied the Mexican; "I take care of him with—with my life."'

"I am sure you will," said Peggy in her most matter-of-fact tones, "and in the mean time say nothing to anyone else about what you have found. Bring up the water for breakfast yourself and don't let Mr. Bell come near the water hole if you can help it."

"It shall be as the senorita wishes," rejoined Alverado in low tones; but there was a ring in his voice that told Peggy that she could trust the brown-skinned "Mestizo" to the utmost.



CHAPTER XIII

DANGER THREATENS

Somewhat more than two hours later Peggy brought her aeroplane to the ground in the arroyo which had been the scene of the battle with the coyotes. The girl could not help giving an involuntary shudder as she thought of the narrow escape they had had on that occasion. But in the light of the other and more serious menace which now hung over them like a storm cloud, the adventure with the wild beasts faded into insignificance. Human enemies, more deadly perhaps than any of the animal kingdom, threatened, and if signs counted for anything it would be no long time before they would strike.

Peggy had not been able to leave the camp without some resort to strategy. Naturally Jess had been anxious to come. But a quick flight had been imperative, and the presence of even one other person in the monoplane detracted somewhat from its speed. Then, too, Peggy had ached with her whole being to be alone—to think. She wanted to reconstruct everything in her mind so that when she told all to Mr. Bell there would be no confusion, no hesitancy in her story.

Three sharp toots on the electric signaling horn the aeroplane carried—connected to a set of dry cells—resulted in an outpouring from the mine-hole of the three prospectors. Very business-like they looked, too, in khaki trousers, dust covered shirts and rolled up sleeves.

"Well, well! Early visitors," exclaimed Mr. Bell jocularly, and then struck by Peggy's sober expression as she stepped from the car of the aeroplane he stopped short.

"My dear child, what is it?" he demanded. "Where are the twin fairies of light that used to dance in your eyes?"

"My goodness, Mr. Bell, you ought to have been a poet like your brother," laughed Roy coming forward with Jimsy to meet his sister.

And then, like his senior, he, too, was struck by Peggy's anxious look.

"What's the trouble, sis; bad news?" he asked.

"Anything happened?" demanded Jimsy.

"Oh, no, no; set your minds at rest on that," responded Peggy. "Everything is all right, at least—at least—"

Her voice wavered a bit and Mr. Bell gently led her to a stool in front of the rough camp they had set up in the arroyo.

"Now then, my dear," he said, "what is it?"

Peggy faced her eager listeners, and, recovering from her momentary tremor, told her story from beginning to end in a clear, convincing way.

"Do you think I did right in coming?" she concluded. Her gaze fell appealingly upon Mr. Bell. She did not wish this sinewy, wiry, self-reliant man to think that she was a victim of a school girl's hysterical fears. But the mining man's words speedily set her at ease on this point.

"Think you did right!" he echoed, while a rather serious expression came over his face; "my dear girl, if you had not come to me I should have thought you did very wrong. You have made only one mistake and that was in not telling me before this time about what you overheard at the National House. This Red Bill, as they call him, is one of the most unscrupulous ruffians that cumber the face of the Nevada desert. In any other community he would have been brought up with a round turn long ago. But here," he shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose after all," he went on, "it's the old story of who'll bell the cat."

"Do you think that we are in serious danger?" inquired Jimsy. His eyes were round as saucers and his usually good natured face look troubled.

"Well, not in serious danger, my boy," rejoined Mr. Bell; "but, just between us four, mind, it behooves us to use all speed in getting the title of this mine recorded. This Red Bill is as resourceful as a fox, and what Miss Peggy has told us shows that he is closer on our trail than I should have imagined possible. The draining of the water hole is unfortunate in two ways. If, as I now suspect, he is camped in the hills to the east of the camp, it is plain that he has secured a supply of water sufficient to last him for some time. And this cuts both ways, for his gain in that respect means our loss. The more water he has the less we have. That much is clear."

"Clear as mud," said Jimsy ruefully; but his tone robbed the words of any humorous significance.

"You have reached a decision, Mr. Bell?" asked Roy. The boy had not spoken yet.

Mr. Bell's mouth closed in a firm line and his chin came out in what Peggy described to herself as "a fighting bulge."

"Yes," he said with characteristic vim, "I have. Steer Wells will not be safe after daylight to-day for the women of the party. Red Bill is dastard enough, through an attack on them, to try to intimidate me. We must shift to try to camp at once."

"But where?"

The question came blankly from Jimsy.

"Here. We have a moderate supply of water and there is feed of a kind. Enough at least to keep the stock alive till our work is completed. You see," he continued, turning to Peggy, "the boys and I have struck a very interesting lead. How far it goes I have no idea, but my mining experience teaches me that it is an offshoot of the mother lode. Until we have tapped that I don't want to file a claim."

Peggy nodded her head sagely.

"I see," she said, "you don't want to file your claim and then have somebody else squat down beside you and win the biggest prize of all."

"That's it exactly," said Mr. Bell, "but the question in my mind is whether I am right in exposing you, Miss Bancroft and Miss Prescott to what may be peril. And yet—"

He broke off and a troubled expression crept over his weather-beaten face.

"And yet," Peggy finished for him, "there's no way for us to go back now without abandoning the mine."

"That's it. But if you—"

"I vote to stick by the mine."

There was no hesitation in Peggy's voice now.

Mr. Bell's keen gray eyes kindled.

"You're a girl of real grit," he said, "but the others?"

"I'll answer for them. Miss Prescott need not know anything of the danger. After all, it may amount to nothing. As for Jess, she has as much, and more, nerve than I have."

"When it comes to eating ice cream," put in Jimsy irrelevantly.

Peggy, glancing about her, could not but reflect at the moment what a strange contrast the scene about them offered to the peaceful landscape and commonplace adventures of hum-drum Long Island. Not but what the Girl Aviators had had their meed of excitement there, too, as readers of the "Girl Aviators and the Phantom Airship" well know. But in the scoriated hills with their scanty outcropping of pallid wild oats, the fire-seered acclivities and the burning blue of the desert heavens above all, she beheld a setting entirely foreign to anything in her experience.

"It's like Remington's pictures," she thought to herself as she gazed at the roughly clad group about her, the shabby tent, the mining implements cast about carelessly here and there and the smoldering fire with the blackened cooking pots beside it.

Only one sharply modern note intruded-the two big, yellow-winged monoplanes. Even they appeared, in this wild, outre setting, to have taken on the likenesses of giant scarabs, monsters indigenous to the baked earth and starving vegetation. She was roused from her reverie by Mr. Bell's voice cutting incisively the half unconscious silence into which they had lapsed.

"Roy, you and your sister will take the monoplane in which Miss Peggy rode over and bring Miss Prescott, Miss Bancroft and my brother over at once."

"But the stock and Alverado?"

The question came from Peggy.

"Alverado, as you call him, can drive the stock across the desert. It should not take him more than twenty-four hours if he presses right ahead. We can send out an aeroplane scouting party for him if he appears to be unduly delayed."

After some more discussion along the same lines Roy, nothing loth for an aerial dash after his hard work in the mine hole, made ready for the trip. From a locker he drew out his solar helmet and goggles and advised Peggy to don her sun spectacles also. But Peggy, as on several previous occasions, declined positively to put on the smoked glasses designed to protect the eyes from the merciless glare of the desert at noon day.

"They'd make me look like a feminine Sherlock Holmes," she declared stoutly.

"I hope that you won't take it amiss if I say that you have already proved yourself one, and a good one, too," laughed Mr. Bell as the brother and sister clambered into the chassis.

But as Roy adjusted his levers for the rise from the depths of the sun-baked arroyo Mr. Bell held up his hand.

"One moment," he said, "bring back some of the dynamite with you. We're almost out of it and it's needed badly. We've got to blast through that streak of hard pan."

"We'll bring it," nodded Roy, "although I'm not going to tell Aunt Sally about it. I guess she wouldn't be best pleased at the idea of traveling in company with such a dangerous cargo."

As he spoke the propeller began to whir, and after a brief run, the monoplane took the air, rising in a graceful angle toward the burning blue. As they rose above the hills a reddish haze that overspread the horizon became distinctly visible. Peggy viewed it with a little apprehension.

"I hope that doesn't portend another electrical storm," she said rather anxiously, leaning forward and addressing her brother.

Roy shook his head.

"Guess it's just heat haze," he decided. "Mr. Bell says that those dry storms don't often come twice in one season."

"Well, let's be thankful for small mercies anyhow," said Peggy with a return to her former cheerfulness.

The news that camp was to be broken at once and the base of operations removed to the hills, came as a shock to those left behind in the camp. Somehow the pleasant shelter of the ragged willows had become a sort of makeshift home to them, and the idea of winging to the barren hills was not pleasing. Miss Prescott, however, was the only one who made an open wail about it. Old Mr. Bell took it as stoically as he did most things. Only, as he hastened about the camp making preparations for the departure, he could have been heard humming:

"We've got to go far, far away, To the mountains, so they say; I hate to leave the willows' shade, But Brother James must be obeyed."

Alverado received his instructions with a silent shrug. He informed Roy and Peggy that there was just enough water left to fill the bags for the dash across the desert. He said no more, but there was a curious kind of reticence in his manner, as if he was holding back something he did not wish to express outwardly. It was not till everything was packed ready for the start, and old Mr. Bell and Miss Sally had been hoisted and dragged into the chassis, that he drew Roy apart and spoke. Peggy was included in the confidence.

"While you gone I follow up tracks from the water hole," he said; "bime-by I come to place where sacks slip off one pony's feet. Then I see a track that I make stick in my memory long, long ago. That day they leave me for dead on the desert."

He stooped and drew the outline of a peculiarly shaped hoof on the Alkali-impregnated dust. The boy and girl watched him curiously.

"Well?" asked Peggy, and she and her brother hung on the answer.

Alverado's face became overcast by a black look. His eyes glowed like two live coals.

"I think then I never forget that track. I think the same to-day. The pony that made that track was ridden by Red Bill."



CHAPTER XIV

LOST!

Good news awaited them on their return to the camp in the arroyo. Mr. Bell and Jimsy, while working in a desultory fashion on the vein while awaiting their return, had struck what is known in desert parlance as a water-pocket. They had at once set to work excavating a fair-sized hole in the floor of the mine tunnel, and by the way in which the water gushed in it appeared as if there was a plentiful supply to draw upon.

It is hard to convey how much this bit of news raised their spirits.

"Isn't it queer to think how just finding a little water will make you feel good out here, while at home all we had to do was to turn a faucet and we got all we wanted and never dreamed of being thankful for it," observed Jess philosophically.

"Wish we could strike an ice-cream soda pocket," observed Jimsy, who was vigorously scouring the dust off his classic lineaments. "Say, girls, how would you like right now to hear the cool, refreshing 'fiz-z-z-z' of a fountain, and then hear the ice clink-clinking against the sides of a tall glass of say—lemonade or—"

"Jimsy Bancroft, if you say any more we'll duck you head first in that water hole," said Peggy with decision.

"Go ahead," answered Jimsy quite unperturbed, "a cold plunge would go fine right now."'

"Well, we shall have to think up some other punishment for you," decided Jess; "a quarter mile dash across the desert, for instance."

"Well, isn't that the utmost," snorted Jimsy; "here I try to cool you girls off by describing the delightful surroundings of a soda fountain and then you threaten me with bodily violence. 'Twas ever thus,'" and Jimsy, with an assumption of wounded dignity, strode off to where old Mr. Bell was already busy over the cooking fire.

The midday meal passed off more brightly than might have been expected considering the circumstances in which the adventurers found themselves.

"At all events, we can't starve an the desert," Jimsy, "even if we do run short of water."

"How is that?" inquired old Mr. Bell innocently, although the twinkle in Jimsy's eye had put the others on their guard.

"Because of the sand-wiches there," rejoined the lad with a laugh, in which the others could not help joining.

"I don't care about sandwiches, particularly ham ones," struck in Miss Prescott ingenuously, which set them all off again.

"Looks to me as if there might be a jack-rabbit or two in these hills," observed Mr. Bell after the meal had been dispatched. "I know it's not good form in the West to eat jack-rabbits, but they're not so bad if you kill them when they are young. Anyhow, it would be a change from this everlasting canned stuff."

"I'll go," Roy declared; "I'll take that twenty two rifle and Peggy can carry that light twenty-gauge shotgun. It's just the thing for girls and children."

"Oh, indeed," sniffed the embattled Peggy scornfully; "I suppose you think I can't handle a man's size gun?"

"I didn't say so, my dear sister, and I humbly beg your pardon for anything I may have said which may have hurt your feelings," said Roy with a low and conciliatory bow; "what I meant was that the light twenty-gauge doesn't kick so hard and, moreover, won't blow a rabbit to pieces if you happen to hit him."

"Happen to hit him!" shouted Jess, going into a convulsion of laughter.

"Oh, you know what I mean well enough," protested Roy, coloring somewhat under his tan.

"Want to come, Jimsy?" he asked, after a moment's pause.

"Tramp over those old hills that look as baked as a loaf of overdone bread?" snorted Jimsy. "No, thank you. I'm going to stay home and read a nice book about Greenland's icy mountains."

"And I," declared Jess, vivaciously, "am going to persuade Aunt Sally to make us some vanilla and strawberry ice cream."

So Roy and Peggy set off alone on their tramp in quest of game. It did not look a promising country for hunting; but, as Mr. Bell had pointed out, an occasional jack rabbit might be met with. It was rough going over the rocks and heavy sand, but Peggy stuck to it manfully, and as a reward for her perseverance, had the honor of bringing down the first game—a small jack rabbit, young and tender, that bounded almost under her feet from the shade of the sage brush in which he had been lying.

This put Roy on his mettle, and brother and sister wandered further than they had intended, urged on by the hope of further success. But no more game of any kind was put up, if we except one distant view they had of a sage hen. This bird was "sage" enough to take wing long before they came within shot of her.

"Good gracious, that sun is lower than I thought," exclaimed Roy, suddenly awakening to the fact that they had wandered a considerable distance from the camp. Several of the monotonous ground-swells of the desert hills, in fact, separated them from it.

"We'd better hurry back," declared Peggy, "they'll be worrying about us at the camp."

But to talk about hurrying back and doing it were two different things. Roy discovered, to his dismay, that not only had he lost the location of the camp, but that their footsteps, by which they might have retrailed their path, had been obliterated in the shifting sands. He said nothing to his sister, however, for several minutes, but plodded steadily on in the direction in which his judgment told him the arroyo of the gold mine lay.

It was Peggy herself who broke the ice.

"Roy, do you know where you are going?"

Roy stammered a reply in what was meant to be a confident tone. But he felt it did not deceive the gray-eyed girl at his side. Evasion was useless.

"Frankly, I don't, sis. Everything seems to have twisted around since we came this way earlier in the afternoon. I thought we could use the tops of the rises for land marks, but they all look as much alike as so many sea-waves."

A sharp shock, which was actually physically painful, shot through Peggy at the words. The sun, a red-hot copper ball, hung in livid haze almost above the western horizon. On every side of them were scoriated hills, desolate, forbidding, sinister in the dying day, and all fatally similar in form.

"We must try shooting. Perhaps they will hear us," suggested Peggy, a sickening sense of fear—fear unlike any she had ever known—clutching at her heart.

Roy blazed away, but the feeble reports of the light weapons they had did not carry to any distance. Indeed, it was only the necessity of doing something that had impelled Peggy to make the suggestion.

All at once an uncanny thing happened. A big, black desert raven flew up with a scream, almost under their feet, and soared above their heads, screeching hoarsely. To such a tension were their nerves strung that both boy and girl started and hastily stepped back.

"Ugh, what a fright that thing gave me," exclaimed Peggy with a shudder that she could not control.

"Nasty looking beast, and that cry of his isn't beautiful," commented Roy in as easy a tone as he could assume.

"Alverado told me that those desert ravens were inhabited by the souls of those who had lost their way and perished on the alkali," shivered Peggy.

"Say, sis, don't be creepy. You surely don't believe all the rot those superstitious Mexicans talk, do you?"

"No, not exactly—but—oh, Roy," even plucky Peggy's voice broke and quavered, "it's so lonely, and whatever are we to do?"

The last words came wildly. Peggy was not, as we know, a nervous girl, but the situation was enough to unstring the nerves of the most stolid of beings.



CHAPTER XV

THE PERILS OF THE HILLS

Suddenly Roy gave a sharp exclamation. Something about a cone-shaped peak to the west of them appeared familiar.

"The camp is in that direction, I'm sure of it," he declared, "come on, Peg, we'll strike out for it, and in half an hour's time we'll be telling our adventures over a good supper."

By this time Peggy was willing to start anywhere if she was moderately sure the camp lay in that direction, and Roy's enthusiasm was contagious. Filled with renewed hope the brother and sister struck out for the cone-shaped peak. Its naked base showed violet in the evening shadows, while its sharply rounded top was bathed in a rosy glow of light. Even in her agitation Peggy could not help admiring the wonderful palette of colors into which the dying day transformed the dreary desert sea.

Beyond the range the vast expanse of solitude spread glitteringly. All crimson and violet, with deep purple marking the depressions in its monotonous surface, and here and there the dry bed of one of its spasmodic lakes, showing almost black in its obscurity. These lakes were water-filled only in the early spring, and their moisture had long since died out of them. Under a noon-day sun they showed like shallow bowls filled with scintillating crystals.

But, had they known it, Roy and Peggy were striking out on a course precisely opposite to that which they should have taken. Every step of the advance to the sugar-loaf shaped peak was a step in the wrong direction. Like many other travelers, whose bones whiten on the alkali, they had become confused by the monotonous similarity of one feature of the dreary hills to the other.

The true extent of their blunder did not dawn upon them till they had reached the foot of the queer peak, and even the most minute survey of their surroundings failed to show them any trace of the camp. No cheerful glow of a fire illumined the fast darkening sky. For all the signs of human life they could discover, they might have been alone in a dead world. In fact, the scenery about them did resemble very closely those maps of the moon—the dead planet—which we see in books of astronomy. There were the same jagged, weird peaks, the same dark centers, dead and extinct, and the same brooding hush of mystery which we associate with such scenes.

Somewhere off in the distance a coyote howled dismally as the sun rushed under the horizon and the world was bathed in sudden darkness.

Peggy turned to her brother with a low little moan. She caught her arms about his neck and hung there sobbing. In his solicitude for her, Roy forgot his own dismay and misery, which was perhaps a good thing, for by the time Peggy recovered herself, the boy was already casting about for some means of passing the night as comfortably as possible.

"We'll stick it out till daylight some how, Peg," he promised, "and I'm confident that by that time they'll send up one of the monoplanes, and from up in the air they'll have no difficulty in locating us."

The thought was a comforting one, and Peggy's first flush of passionate grief and fear gave way to calmer feelings. No doubt it would be as Roy had forecast. After all, she argued, it was only one night in the open, and they had their weapons and plenty of ammunition.

By a stroke of good luck, Roy had stuffed his pockets full of the hard round biscuits known as "pilot bread" before they left the camp. He also had matches and a canteen full of water. Poor Peggy still carried the lone jack-rabbit, the trophy of her gun, and Roy at once set about grubbing up sage brush and making a fire with the oleaginous roots as he had seen Mr. Bell do.

Before long a roaring blaze was ready, and then the boy began the task of skinning and preparing the rabbit for cooking. Peggy turned away during this operation, but summoned up fortitude enough to gaze on while her brother spitted the carcass on the cleaning rod of his rifle and broiled it in primitive fashion.

"First call for dinner in the dining car forward!" he announced in as gay a voice as he could command when the cooking seemed to be finished.

"The first course is broiled jack rabbit with pilot bread and delicious, sparkling alkali water. The second course is broiled jack rabbit with—"

"Oh, Roy, don't," cried Peggy half hysterically; "it reminds me of the train and the good times we had on the way out from the East. We didn't think then that—"

"Let me give you some broiled jack-rabbit," proffered Roy, gallantly extending a bit of smoking meat on the end of his knife.

Peggy bit it daintily, expecting to make a wry face over it, but to her surprise she found it not half bad. Between them, the two hungry young people speedily reduced that rabbit to first principles.

"And now for dessert," exclaimed Roy, in a triumphant voice. "No, I'm not joking—look here!"

He drew from his pocket a flat, pink box which, on being opened, proved to contain several cakes of chocolate of Peggy's favorite brand.

"Oh, dear," sighed Peggy as she nibbled away at the confection, "if only I knew positively that we were going to come out all right I'd really be inclined to enjoy this as a picnic."

"Hooray! here comes the moon," cried Roy, after an interval, during which the chocolate steadily diminished in quantity.

Over the eastern horizon, beyond the desolate peaks and barren "ocean" of the desert, a silver rim crept. Rapidly it rose till the full moon was climbing on her nightly course and flooding the alkali with a soft radiance almost as bright as subdued electric light. Against the glow the weird, ragged peaks stood out as blackly as if cut out of cardboard. One could see the tracery of every bit of brush and rock outlined as plainly as if they had been silhouetted by an artist at the craft.

All at once Peggy gave a frightened little cry and shrank close to Roy. The firelight showed her face drawn and startled.

"Oh, Roy, over there! No, not that peak—that one to the right!"

"Well, sis, what about it?" asked Roy indulgently.

"Something moved! No, don't laugh, I'm sure of it."

"A coyote maybe or another jack rabbit. In that case we'll have a chance at a shot."

"No, Roy, it wasn't an animal." Peggy's tones were vibrant with alarm—tense as a taut violin string. "What I saw was a man."

"A man. Nonsense! Unless it was someone from the camp looking for us."

"No, this man was watching us. He may have been crouching there for a long time. I saw the outline of his sombrero black against the moonlight behind that rise. Oh, Roy, I'm frightened."

"Rubbish," declared Roy stoutly, although his heart began to beat uncomfortably fast. "What man could there be here unless it was Alverado, and he couldn't possibly have arrived by this time."

"But, Roy, it wasn't my fancy. Truly it wasn't. I saw a man crouching there and watching us. When I looked up he vanished."

"Must have been a rock or something, sis. Moonlight plays queer tricks you know. Don't let's make the situation any worse by imagining things."

"It was not imagination," repeated Peggy stoutly.

But Roy, perhaps because he did not wish to, would not admit the possibility of Peggy's vision being correct.

A long, loud cry like the laughing of an imprisoned soul cut the stillness startlingly.

"Ki-yi-yi-yi-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!"

"Coyotes!" laughed Roy, "that's what you saw."

Peggy said nothing. The sudden sharp sound had rasped her overwrought nerves cruelly.

"Ki-yi-yi-yi-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!"

The demoniacal laughing, half howl, half bark, cut the night again.

This time it came from a different direction. From other grim peaks the cry was caught up. It seemed that the creatures were all about them.

"Surrounded!" muttered Roy a bit nervously. He had not forgotten the fight in the canyon, although, as he knew, coyotes, only on the very rarest occasions, when driven desperate by hunger, attack mankind.

The cries appeared to come from all quarters now. And they were drawing nearer, course lay to the eastward there was no mistaking that.

"They are closing in on us, sis. Better load up that gun."

As he spoke Roy refilled the magazine of his little twenty-two rifle.

"Ki-yi-yi-yi-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!"

This time the cry was quite close and behind them. Roy switched sharply round. The surroundings, the uncanny cries, the solitude were beginning to tell on his nerves, too. His self-control was being wrought to a raw edge.

Was it fancy, or as he switched abruptly about did he actually see a dark object duck behind a rock? An object that bore a strange resemblance to a sombrero.

"Good gracious, I musn't become as shaky as this," the boy thought, making a desperate effort to marshal his faculties, and then he sniffed sharply.

"What is it, Roy?" asked Peggy strangely calm now in the face of what she deemed must prove an emergency.

Roy's answer was peculiar.

"I smelled tobacco just now, I'm sure of it," he whispered in a low tone. "I guess you were right, sis."

"But the coyotes?"

"Are men signaling to each other and closing in on us."

As he spoke the boy scattered the fire, and seizing Peggy by the arm dragged her into the black shadow of the cone-shaped peak.



CHAPTER XVI

RED BILL SUMMERS

A keen chill, sharp as if an icy wind had swept her, embraced Peggy. It was succeeded by a mad beating of her heart. Roy said nothing but clutched his rifle. He jerked it to his shoulder as, out of the shadows, a figure emerged sharp and black against the moonlight. As if she were in a trance Peggy saw Roy's hand slide under the barrel of the little repeater and then came the sharp click of the repeating mechanism, followed by the snap of the hammer as it fell forward.

But no report followed.

"Jammed!" exclaimed the boy desperately.

At the same moment the figure approaching them, which for an instant had vanished behind a shoulder of rock, emerged boldly, the moonlight playing on a revolver barrel pointed menacingly at the brother and sister.

"No foolin' thar, youngsters," came a harsh voice; "we've got you where we want you."

Coincidently from all about them the rocks seemed to spawn figures, till half a dozen men in rough plainsman's garb stood in the moonlight. Resistance was useless; worse, it might have resulted in a calamity more dire than the one that had overtaken them.

But curiously enough the very hopelessness of their situation inspired in Peggy a far different feeling to the terror that had clutched at her heart a moment before. She was conscious of a swift tide of anger. In one of the figures she had recognized the renegade guide.

"Juan—you!" she exclaimed in tones in which scorn struggled with indignation.

The guide turned away. Even his effrontery wilted before the young girl's frank contempt. It was all clear enough to Peggy now. Evidently, Juan had been bribed by these men to stay with the party till he had learned their plans, which he was then to betray to the band. For, in the moonlight Peggy had had no difficulty in recognizing the men whose conversation she had overheard at the National House.

There was the red-headed man, with his coarse, bristling crop of hair, and the mustache like the stumpy bristles of an old tooth brush, the tall, dark young fellow with the red sash and the silver spurs, poor Peggy's "romantic brigand," and the hawk-nosed man with the drooping mustache, who had formed the red-headed one's companion on the train.

"Hearn of Red Bill Summers, I op-ine," shot out the man with the red hair in a voice that rasped like a file on rusty iron.

"I think so," rejoined Roy quietly, and Peggy rejoiced to hear her brother's calm, steady tones.

"Wall, I'm him. You treat me right and don't make no fuss an' we'll git along all right. If not—"

He paused significantly.

"Whar's Buck Bellew?"

The red-headed one gazed about him. From the shadows stepped Peggy's "romantic brigand."

"Buck, you put a couple of half hitches about them kids."

"The gal, too?" hesitated the silver-spurred one addressed as "Buck."

"Sure. Didn't I tell yer to."

"Wa-al, I won't. That's flat. I ain't never persecuted women folks an' I ain't goin' ter start now."

Red Bill Summers paused and then grumbled out:

"All right, then. She kin ride the greaser's horse. Juan, you yellow-skinned bronco, go git ther ponies."

Juan flitted off and presently reappeared, leading half a dozen wiry little ponies. In the meantime the remainder of the band had gathered about Roy and Peggy, regarding them with frank curiosity. Except that their weapons were taken away from them no harm was offered them however, and Roy had not, so far, even been tied up.

"This isn't a bit like the story-book hold-ups", thought Peggy. "If it wasn't for their rough clothes and fierce looks these men wouldn't be so very different from anyone else."

"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.

At last, when Peggy's head was beginning to sway with exhaustion, the eastern sky began to grow gray. The coming day lit up the desert wanly, as if it had been a leaden sea. But with the uprising of the sun the familiar glaring white of the alkali blazed out once more. They had left the pinnacled hills and were now traveling over undulating country overgrown with rough brush. It was a sad, drab color, and smelled pungently where the ponies' hooves trampled it.

But presently they broke into a different country. It was flatter than that which they had already traversed and, if possible, more desolate, sun-bleached and parched. The ponies stumbled over loose shale, raising clouds of suffocating dust that tingled in the nostrils. Down they rode into its basin-like formation. All about the depression arose the craggy, stripped hills. Their jagged peaks seemed to shut out the rest of the world and compress the universe into this baked, burning basin in the desert.

Across the bottom of it the alkali swept in little vagrant puffs, proceeding from the gaps of the hills. It piled in little gray heaps like ashes. The air hung steady and still as a plumb line dropped from the sky.

"We've got ter git across hyar muy pronto, (very quickly)," grunted the red-headed man, whose perspiring, fat face was coated gray with dust and alkali. "What a hole fer white men ter be in."

"It's like a busted heat-blister on a big piecrust," commented Buck Bellew, whose jauntiness had wilted. His red sash was of a piece now with the rest of his garments-a dirty, dull gray.

After a while a hot wind sprang up. It felt like the heated blast from an opened oven door. It tore in mad witch-dances about the dismal basin, sending whirling dust-devils dancing over that dreary place.

They spread, gyrated, swelled to giant mushroom shape, and died down in a monstrous ballet. Peggy felt her senses slipping under the strain. But she kept a tight rein on herself.

"I must brace up for Roy's sake," she thought.

She stole a glance at her brother. Roy, despite his plight and the dust which enveloped him, was tight-lipped and defiant. No sign of a breakdown appeared on his features, for which Peggy breathed a prayer of thanks.

"After all, God is near us even in this dreadful place," she thought, and the reflection comforted her strangely.

Across the bottom of the bowl men and animals crawled like flies round the base of a pudding basin. From time to time the water kegs on the back of Juan's burro were sparingly tapped. At such times Buck Bellew never failed to be at Peggy's side with a tin cup of the warm, unpalatable stuff. But at least it was liquid, and Peggy thanked the man with as cheerful an air as she could assume.

But, unending as the progress across the red hot depression seemed to be, it came to an end at last, and the ponies began to climb the steep walls on the further side. At the summit, a surprise was in store for them—for Peggy and Roy that is. To the others the place was evidently familiar. Some rough huts, half of canvas and half of brush, showed that it had long been used as a rendezvous by the band.

The spot was a perfect little amphitheatre in the barren hills. Green grass, actual green grass, covered its floor and wild oats grew on the hillsides in fair plentitude. From the further end of the enclosed oasis arose clouds of steam which they afterwards learned came from boiling hot springs. But the waters of the hot springs soon lost their heat, and in the course of years had watered this little spot till it literally—in comparison with its surroundings—blossomed like the rose.

Red Bill Summers threw himself from his pony and, lying full length beside the creek that trickled through the valley from the springs above, he reveled in the water. When he had drunk his fill he stood erect.

"Wa-al," he drawled, running his hand through his stubbly red crop, "I reckon we're home again."



CHAPTER XVII

A FRIEND IN NEED

From one of the huts at the upper end of the miniature valley an odd figure emerged. It was garbed in a blue blouse and loose trousers of the same color. Embroidered slippers without heels caused a curious shuffling gait in the newcomer. As he drew closer Peggy and Roy perceived that he was a Chinaman. His queue was coiled upon the top of his skull, giving a queer expression to his stolid features, over which the yellow skin was stretched as tightly as parchment on a drum.

"Here you, Ah Sing, hurry muchee quick and cook us a meal," roared Red Bill as he perceived the newcomer.

"Alee litee," was the easy-going response, "me catchum plentee quick."

The Oriental, who was by this time quite close, allowed his slant eyes to rest curiously on the two young prisoners. His mask-like face, however, betrayed no emotion of any kind, and with a guttural grunt he was off; apparently to set about his preparations for obeying the orders of the outlaw leader.

Red Bill turned to Peggy and Roy, who had dismounted.

"I'll speak to you two after we've eaten," he said; "in the meantime the young lady kin take that hut thar." He indicated a tumble-down structure near at hand.

"It ain't a Fift' Avenoo mansion," he grinned, "but I reckon it'll hev ter do."

Then he switched on Roy.

"You boy," he growled, "you kin hev thet other shack. If you want ter wash up thar's a bucket. We've hot and cold water in these diggin's, too, so take yer choice. Hot's above, cold's below. An' one thing. You ain't goin' ter be closely watched. It ain't needful. You rec'lect that red-hot basin we come through?"

As the questioner seemed to pause for an answer Roy nodded.

"Wall the country all around hyar's jes' like that, so thet if yer moseyed you wouldn't stand a Chinaman's chance of gittin' away alive."

Red Bill, with a vindictive grin, turned on his heel abruptly and stalked off, followed by the others. Peggy and Roy were left alone. Seemingly no restraint was to be put upon them. In fact, it appeared, as Red Bill had pointed out, that an attempted escape could only result fatally for them.

"Whatever will Aunt Sally and the rest be thinking?" exclaimed Peggy as the rough looking group, talking and gesticulating among themselves, made toward the upper end of the valley.

"Poor aunt! She must be in a terrible state of mind," rejoined Roy dejectedly. "If only we could have got word to her or Mr. Bell—"

"In that case we could have taken it ourselves," wisely remarked Peggy; "well, brother mine, there is no use in borrowing trouble. Let's make the best of it. I've an idea that that redheaded man means to offer us some sort of a proposition after dinner."

"Wish he'd offer us some dinner first; I'm ravenous."

"Well, I couldn't eat a thing till I've got some of this dust off me, so please get me a bucket of water."

"Say, look at that Chinaman eyeing us," broke off Roy suddenly; "wonder what's the matter with him?"

"Guess he isn't used to visitors," suggested Peggy. "So this is where this gang, we heard talked about in Blue Creek, have been hiding themselves. No wonder the sheriff couldn't find them."

"It's an ideal hiding place," agreed Roy, "far too ideal to suit us. I don't see how we'd ever get out of here without help."

"Oh, as for that, I kept careful track of the way we came. I noted all the landmarks, and I really believe I could pick up the trail—is that the way you say it?—again."

"Good for you. I hope we have a chance to try out your sense of observation. But I'm off to get that water. Say, that Chinaman's staring harder than ever. What do you suppose he wants?"

"I haven't an idea. Opium perhaps. Don't they eat it or do something with it and then have beautiful dreams? I've heard—oh, Roy," the girl broke off breathlessly, "I've got it! You know that little jade god that Clara Cummings brought back from China with her when her father resigned as consul there?"

"Yes. But what—"

"Well, look here, you silly boy, I've got it on now. Look on my watch chain. I wonder if that could be what—what that Mongolian was regarding so closely?"

"Maybe," responded Roy carelessly, "but now I'm really off to get that water. Hot or cold?"

"Both!" cried Peggy.

The spirits of youth are elastic, and even in their predicament Peggy found her heart almost singing within her at the beauty of the green little valley after their long, dusty journey over the alkali barrens.

"After all," she assured herself, "I don't believe they mean us any real harm and—oh, what an adventure to tell about when we get home again."

A refreshing wash and a hasty adjustment of her hair before a mirror in a tiny "vanity box," which shared the watch charm snap with the little jade god, served to still further raise Peggy's spirits.

Red Bill Summers and his followers ate at the upper end of the valley, but the Chinaman brought food on an improvised board tray to the captives. Having set down two dishes of a steaming stew of some kind, flanked with coffee, sweetened and flavored with condensed milk, and real bread, the Oriental glanced swiftly about him. Red Bill and his companions were noisily convivial, and paying no attention to what was transpiring at the lower end of the valley. Like a flash the Chinaman slid to his knees and extending his hands above his head touched his forehead to the ground three times in front of Peggy.

Then rising he exclaimed:

"Melican girl, gleat joss, mighty joss. Ah Sing he come bymby. Goo'bye."

He turned swiftly and silently in his silken slippers and glided off without a backward look.

"Well, what do you make of that?" wondered Roy.

"Oh, Roy, don't you see. He was worshiping this joss, as he calls Clara's little jade god. Just think, this may be a way out of it. If we can make him believe that—that—"

"That we stand in with his josh—joss—what do you call it?—you mean that we can scare him into letting us have horses to-night and escaping.

"How you do run ahead, Roy. I hadn't thought of that yet. But it might be done. He said he was coming back by and by. I wonder what he wants?"

"Maybe your blessing," grinned Roy. "But come on. Let's tackle this stew while it's hot. It looks great to me after that jack-rabbit supper."

"And this is bread—real bread, too!" cried Peggy, following Roy's example of "tackling the stew."

It was ten minutes after the last mouthful had disappeared that the tall, red-sashed young outlaw came toward the shack in front of which brother and sister were seated.

"The boss wants to see you," he said briefly, and signed to them to follow him.

Red Bill Summers sat alone before the remains of the Chinese cook's dinner. The other outlaws were busied staking out their ponies and removing the dust and perspiration from the little animals' coats. Far off, like a lost spirit, the treacherous Juan with his burro, could be seen.

From time to time he cast a covert glance toward Peggy and Roy. In his own country treachery such as he had shown would have been visited with death even if the avenger had to die for it himself the next minute.

The outlaw chief looked up as his dapper follower came up with the young Easterners.

"Grub all right?" he asked.

"Not bad at all," responded Roy non-committally. He didn't want to show this red-headed law-breaker that he was afraid of him.

"Wa-al, thet's jes' a sample of ther way I'm willin' ter treat yer as long ez you're here. I've got a hard name around ther alkali, but I ain't ez black ez I'm painted."

To this the two young prisoners made no reply, and Red Bill looked at them searchingly, but if he expected to read anything from their faces he was speedily undeceived.

"Now, then," he went on, "as you'll have guessed, I didn't kidnap you two fer fun. I did it fer infermation. I reckin' you know pretty well the location of Jim Bell's mine.'

"No better than you do," responded Roy boldly; "I guess that scoundrel Juan told you all you wanted to know."

"Oh, as fur as thet goes," rejoined Red Bill easily, "I could ride right frum hyar to yer camp. But what I'm gittin' at is this: You've seen the papers Jim Bell is goin' ter file. You know ther exact location. Thet's what I want. Give it to me an' I'll hev my men take yer as close ter yer camp as it's safe ter go without kickin' up a rumpus."

"In other words, you wish me to betray Mr. Bell's plans to you before he—"

Roy stopped. He had been on the verge of saying, "Before he's filed the claim himself." just in time, however, he recollected that this might be news to the outlaw, and he stopped short. But Red Bill was as astute as a desert fox.

"Before he files the claim himself, you wuz goin' ter say, I be-lieve," he drawled, purposely accentuating his words so that they fell like drops of ice water from his cold lips.

Roy could have bitten his tongue out. Quite unmeaningly he had betrayed a secret which might prove of tremendous import in the desperate game Red Bill seemed bent on playing.

"I said nothing about the filing or not filing of a claim," parried Roy, after a pause.

"Yer don't hev ter say everything ter make yerself understood, younker," snarled Red Bill, facing the boy and blinking his little red-rimmed orbs into Roy's honest open countenance.

"Thet's somethin' you've foun' out anyhow, Bill," drawled the red-sashed young outlaw, drawing his thin lips back in a sarcastic smile.

Roy felt himself turning red with chagrin. He had intended to play a cunning game with Red Bill, but the outlaw seemed to be capable of reading his mind. Steeling himself to be more careful in the future he awaited the further questions of his inquisitor. Upon the manner in which he answered them he felt that not alone his safety and Peggy's depended, but also the security and possibly the lives of the party in the distant arroyo.



CHAPTER XVIII

AH SING'S JOSS

"That'll be all on that line," said Red Bill presently. He turned to his companion.

"Got a pencil and a bit of paper, Buck?" he asked.

The red-sashed one produced the required pencil—a much bitten stuband then set off toward the cook house for a bit of paper. He returned with the fly leaf out of an old account book.

"Good enough," said Red Bill. "Now then younker," turning to Roy, "you take this pencil, lay that paper on that flat rock and write as I tell you."

Wondering what was coming, Roy obeyed, while Peggy with wondering eyes looked on anxiously at the strange scene. It had grown quite still in the little valley. The only sounds that occasionally interrupted the hush were the shouts of the men tethering the ponies and the harsh scream of a buzzard swinging high against the burning blue of the desert sky.

"Mister Bell, dear sir," began Red Bill, dictating in his rasping voice.

"All right," said Roy, transcribing the words to the paper. The boy had an inkling of what was to come, but he didn't wish to make trouble before he actually had to.

"Got that, did you?"

'Yes.

"Very well. Now write this: 'Me an' my sister is in the hands of those who are our friends at present. It depends on you if they remain so. The messenger who brings you this will arrange for the transfer of the location papers of the mine to these parties. If you don't do this they will—'"

Red Bill paused and shoving back his sombrero scratched his rubicund poll.

"Make it 'they will-take other measures.' Jim Bell's no fool an' he'll know what's meant by that," concluded the outlaw of the alkali.

"Why you ain't bin writing what I tole yer," he whipped out suddenly, just becoming aware that Roy's pencil had been idle. Peggy breathed hard. There was menace in the man's very attitude.

Roy looked up boldly.

"You don't suppose that I'm going to be party to any scheme like that," he demanded with flaming checks.

Peggy, watching the little drama closely, saw that the ruffian was plainly taken off his feet by this. He had not expected—or so it seemed clear—that he would encounter any opposition in carrying out his rascally plan of playing off the safety of a boy and a girl who had never wronged him for the sake of gaining the title to a mine.

"What, you won't write it!" he bellowed at length. The great veins on his neck swelled. His little pig-like eyes gleamed malevolently.

Roy stood his ground firmly, although his heart was beating far faster than was pleasant, and a mist swam in front of his eyes. But he had seen Peggy watching, and knew that her trust in his integrity and honor had never faltered. Right then Roy took an inward oath that he would not destroy her faith.

"No, I will not," he flashed back; "I don't see how you could expect me to take part in a plan to trap and trick my own friends."

Red Bill's lip curled up, exposing a row of ragged yellow teeth.

"Not even at the cost of your own life?" he snarled.

Roy had half an idea that the ruffian was "bluffing" him. But even had he thought Red Bill in deadly earnest his reply would have been the same.

"No!"

The word was ejaculated like a pistol shot.

"Then listen. Your sister—"

To emphasize his words the outlaw launched his clumsy, thick-set frame forward. But the next instant he recoiled as if he had stepped on the edge of a fearful abyss. Simultaneously Roy and Peggy became aware of a curious buzzing, whirring sound like the rattling of dried peas on a griddle. A long dark body glided off through the yellow blades of sun-bitten grass.

"It's—it's a rattler!" gasped Red Bill.

He stooped as if to catch his ankle, and reeling fell in a clumsy huddled heap on the floor of the valley. As he fell a shot reverberated through the silent place. With one bullet from his revolver the tall young outlaw had dispatched the reptile, which had lain hidden in the grass.

"Get you, Bill?" he asked laconically stooping over his chief.

"Yes. I'm a gone coon I guess, Buck."

His red face, contorted and purple from pain, the stricken man slid backward. His lips parted and became ashen. The poison was coursing through his veins with terrific rapidity.

"Let me see. Maybe I can be of some use. Stand aside, please."

It was Peggy. The group of outlaws that had gathered about the recumbent man gave place respectfully. From a bag at her waist Peggy drew out a little oblong leather case. It had been a present to her from Mr. Bell before they set out to cross the reptile-haunted desert.

Opening the case she drew out a fairy-like little squirt, trimmed in silver. It was a hypodermic syringe. From a case she produced some crystals of a purplish color.

"A cup of water, please," she begged.

It was in her hand almost as quickly as she made the request. In the meantime, with a handkerchief she had deftly bandaged the outlaw's leg above the bite. This was twisted tightly with a stick and prevented the poison circulating above the wound.

On Red Bill's ankle the reptile's bite was plainly to be seen. Two tiny blue punctures, fine enough to have been done with a needle. Yet through the fangs that gave the bite had been delivered enough poison to kill a strong man.

With flying fingers Peggy immersed the crystals in the water, turning it a deep crimson. Then filling the syringe she pushed its needle-like point under the outlaw's skin and just above the wound. Then she injected the antidote which she had mixed—permanganate of potassium—and old plainsmen will tell you there is no better opponent of a rattler's poison than the one Peggy used, the method of utilizing which had been opportunely taught her by Mr. Bell.

Red Bill's lips parted. His voice came through them painfully, hissingly.

"Thank 'ee," he muttered, and then closed his eyes.

They carried him into a shack a little way up the valley and laid him on a cot.

"Anything else to be done, miss?" asked one of the outlaws in an awed tone.

"No," answered Peggy with quite the manner of a professional nurse; "he'll do nicely now. In an hour or so he ought to be better. You can call me then."

"Wa-al, I'll be all fired, double gosh-jiggered," Roy heard one of the men say as they left the shack and emerged into the late afternoon sunlight. The outlaws were all in the shack of their leader. All, that is, but the Chinaman, who had been an interested observer from the outskirts of the crowd. As the boy and girl came out of the shack he glided up to them as softly and silently as ever.

"Me see. You welly good. Allee samee doctor. Joss he helpee you," he said in a low voice. Then glancing about he sank his voice to a whisper:

"But you no tlustee Led (Red) Bill. Him plentee bad mans. He feelee sick now. Him plentee thank yous. When he well he do you muchee harm."

"He could not be so ungrateful," exclaimed Roy; "my sister saved his life."

"Umph. That plentee big pity. Why not let him die. Good liddance," opined the cold-blooded Ah Sing. "Listen, Melican boy an' girl, helpee you escape to-night you do one littlee ting for me."

"You'll help us escape?" echoed Peggy, the blood beating in her ears. "How? We'd need horses, water, food and—"

"Me catchee eblyting. Leve him all to Ah Sing, he git um."

A cunning smile overspread his features.

"But Ah Sing wantee some leward he do dis."

"Of course. Any money you want you shall have in Blue Creek," burst out Roy.

"Me no wantee monee. Me want lillee misses joss. Him plentee big joss my countlee. I have that joss I have plentee eblyting I want."

"He means the little god that Clara gave me," whispered Peggy. "All right, Sing, you shall have it. You shall have it when you are ready to send us out of the valley."

The Chinaman's face changed just the fraction of a muscle. That was as near as he came to permitting himself to show his gratification over the promise of the joss.

"Allee litee," he said, "bymby he get dark. You wait in missees shack. When I ready I give one, two, tree knocks-so!"

As silently as he had glided up he glided off again just as the crowd began pouring from the shack where the injured outlaw lay. Roy and Peggy could only exchange wild glances of astonishment at the surprising turn affairs had taken.

But presently Peggy spoke.

"I knew when I prayed in that terrible valley, Roy, that a way would be found," she said, and her voice was vibrant with reverence and faith as the brother and sister turned away.



CHAPTER XIX

THE ESCAPE AND WHAT FOLLOWED

"Roy! Roy! Wake up!"

Peggy shook the shoulder of her brother, who had dozed off in a rough chair formed out of an old flour barrel. She glanced at her watch. It was almost midnight, and half an hour since the steady footfall of the sentry, who was keeping desultory watch on the captives, had passed the hut.