Chapter 2

THE SAND STORM.

As he spoke, a queer, moaning sort of sound, something like the low, distant bellow of a steer in pain, could be heard. The air seemed filled with it. Coming from no definite direction, it yet impregnated the atmosphere. The air, too, began noticeably to thicken, until the sun, from a pallid disc--a mere ghost of its former blazing self--was blotted out altogether. A hot wind sprang up and swept witheringly about the travelers.

"Ouch!" exclaimed Ralph Stetson suddenly. "Something stung me!"

"That's the sand, son," said Coyote Pete. "The wind's commencin' ter drive it."

"Is it going to get any worse?" inquired the professor anxiously.

"A whole lot, afore it gits any better," was the disconcerting reply.

"What'll we do, Pete?" asked Jack, turning to the cow-puncher.

It had now grown so dark that he could hardly see Pete's face. It was hot, too, with a heavy, suffocating sort of heat. The wind that drove the myriads upon myriads of tiny sand grains now darkening the air, was ardent as the blast from an opened oven-door.

"Get your saddles off, quick! Lie down, and put your heads under 'em," ordered the cow-puncher, briskly swinging himself out of his saddle as he spoke.

The others hastened to follow his example. It was not a minute too soon. Already their mouths were full of gritty particles, and their eyes smarted as if they had been seared with hot irons. The ponies could hardly be induced to stand up while the process of unsaddling was gone through. As for the burros, those intelligent beasts had thrown themselves down as soon as the halt was made. With their heads laid as low as possible, and their hind quarters turned to the direction of the hot blast, they were as well prepared to weather the sand storm as they could be.

The instant the saddles were off the ponies, down they flopped, too, in the same positions as their long-eared cousins. The bipeds of the party made haste to follow their animals' example, only, in their case, their heads were sheltered as snugly as if under a tent, by the big, high-peaked, broad-flapped Mexican saddles.

It was well they had made haste, for, as Pete had said, the sand storm was evidently going to get "a whole lot worse before it got better." The air grew almost as black as night, and the wind fairly screamed as it swept over them. Jack could feel little piles of sand drifting up about them, just as driven snow forms in drifts when it strikes an obstruction. How hot it was under the saddles! The boys' mouths felt as if they would crack, so dry and feverish had they become.

"Oh, for a drink of water!" thought Jack, trying in vain to moisten his mouth by moving his tongue about within it.

All at once, above the screaming of the wind, the lad caught another sound--the galloping of hoofs coming toward them at a rapid rate. For an instant the thought flashed across him that it was their own stock that had stampeded. He stuck his head out to see, braving the furious sweep of the stinging sand.

He withdrew it like a tortoise beneath its cover, with a cry that was only half of pain. Through the driving sand he had distinctly seen three enormous forms sweep by, seen like dim shadows in the gloom around. What could they have been? In vain Jack cudgeled his brains for a solution to the mystery.

The forms he had seen drift by had been larger than any horse. So vague had their outlines been in the semi-darkness, however, that beyond an impression of their great size, he had no more definite idea of the apparitions. That they were travelling at a tremendous pace was doubtless, for hardly had he sighted them before they vanished, and he could not have had his head out of its shelter for more than a second or so.

While the lad lay in the semi-suffocation of the saddle, his mind revolved the problem, but no explanation that he could think of would fit the case. "Might they not have been wild horses?" he thought.

But no,--these were three times the size of any horse he had ever seen. Besides, their blotty-looking outlines bore no semblance to the form of a horse.

But presently something happened which put the thought of the mysterious shadows out of his mind. The wind began to abate. To be sure, at first it hardly seemed to have diminished its force, but in the course of half an hour or so the party could once more emerge, like so many ostriches, from their sand-piles, and gaze about them.

Very little sand was in the air now, but it was everywhere else. In their eyes, mouths, ears, while, if they shook their heads, a perfect little shower of it fell all about them. The animals, too, struggling to their feet out of the little mounds that had formed around them, were covered with a thick coat of grayish dust. It was a sorry-looking party. With red-rimmed eyes, cracked, parched lips and swollen tongues, they looked as if they had been dragged through a blast furnace.

The sky above them now shone with its brilliant, metallic blue once more, while ahead, the sun was sinking lower. In a short time it would have set, and, as Ralph Stetson, in a choked voice, called for "Water," the same thought flashed across the minds of all of them simultaneously.

If they didn't get water pretty soon, their predicament promised to be a serious one.

An examination of the canteens showed that not much more than a gallon remained. If only they could yet "pick up" the mesa before dark, this would not be so serious a matter, but, situated as they were, it was about as bad as bad could be.

"Waal," said Pete, at length, stroking the last grains of sand out of his bleached moustache, "waal, I reckon we might as well hang fer a sheep as er lamb, anyhow. Ef we don't hit water purty soon, we'll be thirstier yet, so we might as well fill up now."

"Illogical, but sensible," pronounced the professor, leading an eager rush for the water canteens, which were carried on the pack burros.

"Here, hold on; that's enough!" cried Jack, as Ralph Stetson bent over backward with the canteen still at his lips.

"Why, I haven't begun to drink yet," protested Ralph.

"Chaw on a bullet, son," advised Pete. "Thet's highly recommended for the thirst."

"Water suits me better," grumbled Ralph, nevertheless yielding the canteen to Jack. The lad drank sparingly, as did Pete and the others. Ralph, alone, of all the party, appeared not to realize how very precious even the little water that remained might become before long.

Refreshed even by the small quantity they had swallowed of the tepid stuff, they remounted, and Pete clambered up upon his saddle. While his pony stood motionless beneath him, he stood erect upon the leather seat. From this elevation, he scanned the horizon on every side. Far off to the southwest was sweeping a dun-colored curtain--the departing sand-storm, but that was all. Otherwise, the desert was unchanged from its previous aspect.

"Let me hev a look at thet thar compass," said Pete, resuming a sitting posture once more.

Jack extended his wrist.

"The compass is all right, I know," he said confidently.

"And I know that we've bin hitting the right trail," declared Pete. "Last time I come this way was with an old prospector who knew this part of the country well enough to 'pick up' a clump of cactus. If that compass is right, we're headed straight."

"Yes--if," put in the professor. "But are you quite sure it is?"

This was putting the matter in a new light. Not one of the party was so ignorant as not to know that, in the many miles they had traveled, the deflection of the needle, by even the smallest degree, might have meant a disastrous error.

"Why, I--I--how can it help being right?" asked Jack, a little uncertainly.

"Which side have you been carrying your revolver on?" asked the professor.

"Why, you know--on the left side," rejoined Jack, with some surprise.

"And the compass on the left wrist?"

"Yes. Why? Isn't it----"

"No, it ain't!" roared Pete. "I see it all now, perfusser; that thar shootin' iron has bin deflectin' ther needle."

"I fear so," rejoined the professor.

Under his direction, Jack moved the compass into various positions, and at the end of a quarter of an hour they arrived at the startling conclusion that they had travelled perhaps many miles out of their way. The metal of the weapons Jack carried having, as they saw only too clearly now, deflected the needle.

"What an idiot I was not to think of such a possibility!" exclaimed Jack bitterly.

"Not at all, my boy," comforted the professor. "The same thing has happened to experienced sea-captains, and they have navigated many miles off their course before they discovered their error."

"All of which, not bein' at' sea, don't help us any," grunted Pete. "Suppose now, perfusser, that you jes' figger out as well as you kin, how far wrong we hev gone."

"It will be a difficult task, I fear," said the professor.

"It'll be a heap difficulter task, ef we don't hit water purty soon," retorted the cow-puncher.

Thus admonished, Professor Wintergreen divested himself of his weapons, and, taking out a small notebook, began, with the compass before him, to make some calculations. At the end of ten minutes or so, he raised his head.

"Well?" asked Jack eagerly.

"Well," rejoined the professor, "it's not as bad as it might be. We are, according to my reckoning, about twenty-five miles farther to the south than we should be."

He consulted his notebook once more.

"The bearings of the mesa require us to travel in that direction." He indicated a point to the northward of where they were halted.

"And it's twenty-five miles, you say?" asked Pete.

"About that. It may be more, and again it may be less."

"Waal, the less it is, ther better it'll suit yours truly. This stock is jes' about tuckered."

With the professor now bearing the compass, they set out once more, this time taking the direction indicated by the man of science.

"Suppose the professor is wrong?" Ralph whispered to Jack, as they urged their almost exhausted cayuses onward.

Jack shrugged his shoulders.

"What's the use of supposing?" he said.

It was sun-down, and a welcome coolness had begun to be noticeable in the air, when Jack gave a shout and pointed directly ahead of them.

"Look, look!" he cried. "What's that?"

"That" was only a small purplish speck on the far horizon, but it broke the monotony of the sky-line sharply. Coyote Pete scrutinized it with keen eyes for a moment, narrowing his optics till they were mere slits. Then--

"Give me the glasses, perfusser," he requested. Every one in the party knew that their lives, or deaths probably, hung on the verdict of the next few seconds, but Pete's slow drawl was more pronounced and unperturbed than ever. He put the glasses to his eyes as unconcernedly as if he were searching for a bunch of estrays. Presently he lowered them.

"Is--is it----?" began Jack, while the others all bent forward in their saddles, hanging on the rejoinder.

"It is," declared Pete, and he might have said more, but the rest of his words were drowned in a ringing cheer.