CHAPTER XVII

THIRSTY ON THE DESERT

"Hold fast, everybody!" called out Tanker Ike, giving one glance backward at his passengers.

The fury of the sudden storm increased. The road became more steep, and the speed was faster.

"I hope we don't meet any other wagon," thought Jack. He gave one glance at the girl at his side. He could see that she was pale, but there was no sign of fear in her brown eyes. She was clinging tightly to the side of the seat, and Jack edged closer to her, hoping he might be of some service.

"Look out!" suddenly cried the driver.

An instant later Jack and his chums knew the reason why. The wagon struck a big stone in the road, and the occupants of the seats were nearly thrown off them.

Then followed a sound as of something breaking, and the next moment Jack felt the seat, on which he and the girl were, sliding forward. It had broken loose from its fastenings. Another jolt of the wagon threw the end on which Mabel sat down into the bottom of the vehicle, and she pitched sideways over the edge of the wagon, which at that moment was on a narrow part of the road, skirting a big cliff. On one side the rock rose sheer like a wall. On the other there was a precipice, dropping away for a hundred feet or more.

Mabel could not repress a scream as she felt herself tossed out of the wagon, and she threw her hands upward, vainly clutching for something to cling to. Her father turned and saw her. He prepared to leap backward to her aid, but he could not have done it.

But Jack saw what had happened. His end of the seat was elevated, as the other was depressed, and, taking in the situation at a glance, he made a spring toward the girl, and clasped her about the waist just in time to prevent her falling out.

He braced himself against the edge of the wagon, and held on with all his strength, for the girl was no lightweight, and the swaying of the vehicle threatened to toss them both out.

By this time Mr. Pierce had left his seat beside Tanker Ike, who was doing his best to safely guide the horses down the winding, steep road in the storm, and Mabel's father came to the aid of her and Jack.

"I've got her!" Jack managed to gasp.

"So I see!" cried Mr. Pierce, and then, lending his strength to that of our hero, he pulled Mabel safely within the wagon.

"That--that was a narrow squeak," commented Mr. Pierce, when Mabel, pale and gasping from fright, had been assisted to the seat, which was replaced and braced up after a fashion.

"Rather," admitted Jack with a smile.

"You saved her life, Ranger," went on Mr. Pierce, and there was a husky note in his voice. "She's--she's all I've got, and--and--I don't know how to thank you. If she'd gone over the edge there--well, I don't like to talk about it."

"Oh, if I hadn't grabbed her some one else would," said Jack modestly.

Mabel did not say much, but the glance she gave Jack from her brown eyes more than repaid him.

The excitement caused by the second accident calmed down, and then the occupants of the wagon had time to notice that the progress of the vehicle was slower. The road was not so steep, and a little later Tanker Ike guided his horses to a comparatively level stretch. The snow squall, too, suddenly ceased.

"Well," remarked the driver slowly as he halted the team and got out to repair the broken brake, "I don't want a thing like that to happen again. I wanted to help you, Mabel, but I didn't dare leave the horses."

"I--I was helped in time," answered the girl with a little blush.

"Guess we'll wait for the freight wagon," went on Tanker Ike. "Then I'll fix things up and we'll go on. There's no more danger, though. We're over the worst part of the road."

Mexican Pete, who drove the freighter, soon came up, he having had no mishap on the trip down. The three men soon mended the broken brake, and the journey was resumed. That night they arrived at the stage station, which marked the beginning of the two days' trip over the desert. It was here that Mr. Pierce and his daughter were to leave the boys, to go on a different route.

"Now don't you young fellows forget to come to Pryor's Gap if you get a chance," commanded Mr. Pierce. "My daughter and I will be there in a few weeks, after I do a little more visiting. You can get there from where you are going to hunt without crossing this desert, though it's rather a long, roundabout way. But I hope I'll see you again."

"Yes, try to come," added Mabel as she shook hands with the boys, Jack last of all.

Was it fancy, or did she leave her hand in his a little longer than was absolutely necessary? I rather think she did, or perhaps Jack held it.

"I hope you'll come to see me--I mean us," she said.

"I'll come," was Jack's answer.

Mr. Pierce and his pretty daughter went to stay with a friend that night, while the boys, Tanker Ike and Mexican Pete put up at the stage hotel.

"We'll start early in the morning," said Mr. Blender as the boys were getting ready to retire. "I'll see to filling the water tanks, and the grub you ordered in advance is here. I'll stack it in the wagon, and we'll start off as soon as it's daylight. I've got good horses for us all."

"Horses? Are we going to ride horses?" asked Sam.

"Of course, from now on," replied Jack. "Didn't I tell you?"

"There's so much about this trip, I guess if you did tell us we'd forget some of it," said Bony. "But traveling on horses will be sport. I wish it was morning. Don't you, Budge?"

"I'mungry," was the queer lad's reply.

"Hungry?" remarked Jack. "Didn't you eat enough supper?"

"I guess it must be this Western air," put in Nat. "Salubrious centipedes! but I could eat a bit myself. I wish we had some of that last spread you gave, Jack."

Then, though it was almost bedtime, the boys went to the dining-room, where they bribed the only waiter to set them out some pie, cheese and glasses of milk, on which they regaled themselves.

Meanwhile, Mr. Blender and Mexican Pete had loaded the freight wagon, which was to start off ahead of the travelers, who were to go on horseback. They would catch up with the vehicle at noon, and have dinner in the shade of it.

Jack aroused his companions next morning, when there was only a faint light in the east.

"It's time to start," he said.

"How is it you're dressed?" asked Sam suspiciously.

"Oh, I--er--I was up a little earlier," replied Jack.

"Say, I know where he was," commented Bony, cracking his knuckles in the semi-darkness. "He was off to bid Mabel good-by again. I heard him say last night he'd come over before the start of the stage she was to take."

"Masticated mushrooms!" exclaimed Nat. "I wouldn't have thought it of you, Jack!"

"Come on, get up!" was all Jack replied as he hurried from the room to see if Tanker Ike had everything prepared.

The boys, after a hasty breakfast, found the horses in readiness for them. They had taken out the night before their guns and some clothes from the bundles shipped from the East, and now were equipped to take the trail and begin hunting.

They started off some time before the sun shone above the horizon, and almost immediately found themselves upon a bare and partly sandy waste.

"This is Forty-mile desert," explained Ike. "If you have any trouble at all, it'll be here. But I hope we won't have any."

It was warm, in spite of the lateness of the season, and as they jogged along on their horses they began to feel the discomfiture of the journey. But no one minded it.

"We ought to come up with Mexican Pete soon," remarked Ike, when they had trotted along for several miles. "That looks like the wagon over there," he added, pointing ahead. Jack and his chums could make out a white speck on the trackless waste. As they approached it grew larger, until it evolved itself into the freight wagon.

They halted at it for a meal, and, resting the horses, gave Pete a chance to get some distance ahead of them. Then they resumed their jaunt. It was the middle of the afternoon when Ike, who was in the lead, made a sudden exclamation.

"What's the matter?" asked Jack.

"Mexican Pete's just ahead," replied the old plainsman with a worried accent in his voice. "I wonder what he's stopping for? I told him not to halt until we reached Stinking Spring, where we are to camp for the night."

"Maybe something's happened," suggested Bony.

"I hope not, but it looks so."

A moment later Tanker Ike had leaped from his horse, and was examining something on the ground. It looked like a small streak of darker sand than any which surrounded it.

"His water tank has sprung a leak!" he exclaimed. "You can see where it's been running out. That's why he's halted to wait for us. Come on, boys; let's hurry up. I can see trouble ahead."

They soon reached the driver of the freight wagon. He met them with a rueful face.

"Water mos' gone," he said.

Tanker Ike made a hasty examination. There was only a small quantity left in the second tank, the full one, which had not yet been drawn upon, being completely empty, from a leak that had sprung in the bottom.

"Well, this is tough luck, boys," commented the plainsman. "I don't know what to do. We're bound to be up against it bad whatever we do. We haven't hardly enough water to last us going back for a fresh supply, and if we keep on we'll be awful dry by to-morrow night. I don't like to waste time going back, either."

"Didn't you say something about Stinking Spring?" asked Jack. "Can't we get water there?"

"Yes, but neither man nor beast can drink it. It's filled with some kind of vile-smelling chemical, and it gives off a gas so deadly that at times it will kill animals that come too close. I've even seen a big bear killed by it. No, we can't get water there."

"Then what can we do?" asked Sam.

He and the other boys were alarmed by the accident, the most serious that had yet befallen them.

"Well, the only thing I see is for us to keep on," replied Ike. "If we travel all to-night and keep up a pretty good pace to-morrow, we may strike the Shoshone River in time to--well, in time to wet our whistles. But it's going to be a hard pull, and I don't know whether the horses will stand it."

"Let's try," suggested Jack, who never believed in giving up in the face of difficulties.

"That's the way to talk!" commented Ike. "Maybe we can do it."

They halted for a short rest, then resumed the journey again. But this time they kept with the freight wagon, and they had to travel more slowly to accommodate the pace of the horses to the slower gait of the mules drawing the heavy vehicle.

They made a light supper, and drank sparingly of the little water that remained, doling out the smallest possible quantity to the horses and mules, which greedily thrust their tongues even against the wet sides of the pails, after all the fluid was sucked up.

"Now for the night journey," said Tanker Ike, and they started off, with the moon shining from a clear sky.

It was a trip that would have been wonderfully interesting to the boys had there not been the worry about the water. As it was, they enjoyed it at first, for in the cool, moon-lit darkness they did not suffer from thirst. But when daylight came, and the sun began to mount into the heavens, pouring down considerable heat on them, their tortures began.

Tanker Ike served out the water with sparing hand. The animals were given barely enough to wet their parched mouths, and the boys and two men got but little more. They made all the speed they could, which was not much, for the wagon held them back.

"Don't eat much," cautioned Ike as they stopped for a mid-day lunch. "You'll not be so thirsty then."

But even refraining from food did not seem to make much difference, and as the day wore on and the supply of water became lower and lower, with a consequent reduction of the ration, the sufferings of the boys grew acute.

"Oh, for a good glass of ice water," sighed Bony.

"Dry up!" commanded Nat.

"I can't be any drier than I am now," responded the bony lad.

Meanwhile, Tanker Ike had been anxiously scanning the horizon. He appeared worried, and Jack, seeing this, asked him:

"Do you think we ought to be at the river now?"

"We ought to, yes, but we're not," was his answer. "I'm afraid I've gotten off the trail. I don't see any familiar landmarks, yet I was sure I took the right route."

He called a halt and consulted with Mexican Pete. That individual was of the same opinion as Ike--that they were on the wrong trail.

"Well, there's no help for it," said the plainsman. "We'll have to go back a ways. I'm sorry, boys. It's my fault. It's the first time I ever did a thing like that."

"Oh, mistakes will happen," said Jack, and he tried to speak cheerfully, but his voice was husky and his throat was parched.

They turned around, the horses seeming unwilling to retrace their steps, and they were beginning to get restive, as were the mules.

"The last of the water," announced Tanker Ike at dusk that evening, when they halted for a short meal. "We'll have to push on with all speed to-night. If we don't find water in the morning----"

He did not finish, but they all knew what he meant.

That night was one of fearful length, it seemed. As it wore on, and the parched throats of the travelers called for water where there was none, it became a torture.

Morning came, and the sun blazed down hotter than ever. The horses and mules acted as if crazed, but they were urged on relentlessly. The tongues of Jack and his comrades began to get thick in their mouths. Those of the animals were hanging out, and foam was falling from their lips where the bits chafed.

At noon, though Tanker Ike strained his eyes for a sight of the Shoshone River or for some water hole, there was no sign of either. On and on they pushed, trying to swallow to relieve their terrible thirst.

Suddenly the horse which Sam rode gave a leap forward, and then began to go around in a circle.

"That's bad," murmured Ike in a low voice. "He's beginning to get locoed from want of water."

He urged his own beast up to Sam's, and gave the whirling animal a cut with the quirt. That stopped it for a while, and they went on.

Mexican Pete and Tanker Ike said little. They were men used to the hardships of the West, and it was not the first time they had suffered in crossing the desert. But it was hard for Jack and his chums. Nevertheless, they did not complain, but taking an example from the men, silently rode their horses. The poor beasts must have suffered dreadfully. Tanker Ike, who was riding ahead, suddenly leaped off his horse. At first the boys thought he had seen a water hole, but he merely picked up some pebbles from the sand.

"Put some of these in your mouth and roll them around," he said. "It will help to make the saliva come and keep down your thirst some."

Mexican Pete followed his example, and the boys were about to do likewise, when Budge Rankin, reaching into his pocket, called out:

"What'smatterwithis?"

And he held out several packages.