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.