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 inMiss 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 AuntSally 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.
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 toRoy. 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.
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 steppedPeggy'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 behindBuck 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."
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," roaredRed 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 remarkedPeggy; "well, brother mine, there is no use in borrowing trouble.Let's make the best of it. I've an idea that that redheaded manmeans 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 callsClara'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," parriedRoy, 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.
"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 stub—and 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.