BUD TO THE RESCUE
"I'm going to look for water!"
Wandering William spoke decisively after an hour or more of futile
endeavors to start the motor with the little fluid they could spare
from the water kegs. But even without the leaky radiator it would
have been an impossibility to cool the cylinders with the small
quantity they were thus able to command.
"Look for water!" Peggy echoed the words blankly.
In all that sun-blistered expanse it seemed to be an impossibility
to even dream of discovering a drop of moisture. And they needed
buckets full.
Wandering William, perhaps deeming it wise not to strain the
over-wrought girl's nerves further by keeping up the conversation,
strode off. Apparently he wandered aimlessly, but in reality his
keen, trained eyes were on the alert every instant. To the desert
traveler the most insignificant signs may betray the presence of the
life saving fluid.
Peggy watched the strange figure till it vanished from view over a
low rise, for although the desert seems flat on a superficial view,
it is, in reality, no more level than the tossing sea. Rises and
hollows make its surface undulating.
In the meantime Peggy ministered to Roy as best she could. With a
spare bit of canvas she made a shelter to keep off the blazing rays
of the sun. Roy thanked her with a smile. The first sharp keen
pain of his injury had gone, but he felt weak and dizzy. Presently
he begged for a drink of water, and Peggy, not daring to tell him
how low the supply was gave it to him. The boy was feverish from
his injury, and almost drained the canteen of luke-warm stuff she
held to his lips. Then he lay back with a satisfied smile.
"Get the radiator fixed yet?" he asked presently.
Peggy had told him that it would not be long before they were under
way again.
"Not yet, Roy dear. But don't worry about that. It will be fixed
presently. Suppose you try to go to sleep."
The boy closed his eyes and tried to compose himself to slumber.
Before long he actually did doze off and lay in that state while the
long hours dragged slowly by. Wandering William had not reappeared,
and Peggy wondered in a dull, vague sort of sort of way if he ever
would come back. Perhaps he had deserted them, she thought. But,
even this reflection brought no poignant sensation of despair. The
girl had sunk into a sort of apathy in which nothing' seemed to
matter much. Only she fairly ached with thirst. But Roy would
awake presently and want water. The little they had must be saved for
him.
And so the hours wore on and the sun marched blazingly across the
sky. It was mid-afternoon, and Roy had not awakened, when Peggy was
startled from her gloomy thoughts by a loud hail.
"Hul-lo!"
Springing to her feet she looked across the desert. On the summit
of a distant earth wave she saw the figure of Wandering William. He
was gesticulating frantically and shouting something. He had his
hands to his mouth, funnelwise, to make the sound carry better.
What was it he was crying out? It sounded like--yes, it was:
"Water! I've found it! Water!"
Peggy hastily snatched up the two buckets with which the aeroplane
was equipped, and hurried toward the distant figure. She reached
Wandering William's side in quicker time than she would have thought
possible, such was the stimulating effect of the glad news. The
strange "professor" said not a word, but took her by the hand and
began striding in great steps across the sandy dunes.
They had walked about a quarter of a mile when they reached a spot
where yuccas and prickly desert plants of different varieties grew
thickly. At the bottom of this desolate little valley was a pool on
which the sunlight shone glitteringly. It was shallow and warm, and
the color of rusty iron, but it was water.
Taking the folding tin cup that Wandering William produced from one
of his pockets, the girl drank eagerly. Never had sparkling spring,
water in the fruitful Eastern country tasted half so good as that
tepid, dirty alkaline stuff that Wandering William had so
providentially stumbled upon.
"How did you find it?" gasped Peggy.
Wandering William indicated a tumble down sign post a few paces off.
To it was nailed board with sun faded lettering on it.
"Read it," commanded Wandering William.
"'To the lost in the desert inferno,'" read Peggy, "'water is twenty
paces to the west.'"
"If it hadn't been for the white soul of the man who put that up
there," commented the "professor," "we might have perished
miserably. Heaven bless him, wherever he is."
"Amen," murmured Peggy.
They filled the buckets, and staggering under their weight,
Wandering William led the way back to the aeroplane. Roy was awake
and thirsty. He drank greedily of the turbid stuff they offered
him.
"And now," said the professor, "let's get to work on that radiator."
But try as they would, they could not stop the leak. Indeed, so
much water was wasted in their experiments that several more trips
to the pool were necessary.
"Looks like we have run into the worst streak of hard luck I ever
heard of," sighed Wandering William despairingly, after the failure
of the twentieth trial to get the cooling system to hold water.
"We've just got to plug that leak somehow, or--"
He didn't finish the sentence. There was no need for him to do
that.
Suddenly Peggy, who had looked up from the baffling task for an
instant, gave a cry:
"Look! Look there! What's all that dust?"
"It's horsemen of some kind, and they're coming this way!" cried
Wandering William.
As he spoke his hand slid to his hip, and he drew out his well-oiled
and worn old forty-four.
"Do you think that they are--that they are Red Bill's men?"
"Don't know yet. The dust's thick and the light's bad."
"If they are?"
"Then we are in for a mighty bad quarter of an hour. Consarn the
luck, everything seems to be going wrong at once."
On and on swept the dust cloud, growing close with great rapidity.
With what anxious feelings the strange herb doctor and the girl
watched its advance may be imagined. As for Roy, he lay on the
floor of the chassis unaware of what was transpiring without.
There seemed to be several of the riders--a dozen at least.
"What beats me is, if those are Red Bill's men what are they doing
in this direction?" said Wandering William, a puzzled look creeping
over his weather-beaten countenance.
"Perhaps they have seen that the aeroplane is stranded and are
coming to destroy it," hazarded Peggy.
"Maybe," rejoined Wandering William in a far-away voice. His eyes
and mind were bent on the approaching cavalcade. If the riders were
not Red Bill's men it meant succor and aid. If they were the
outlaw's band, it meant-well, Wandering William did not care to
dwell upon the thought.
"A few seconds will tell now," he observed as through the dust cloud
the outlines of the horsemen became visible.
All at once a shrill series of cries rang out:
"Yip-yip-yip-yee-ee-e-e-e-e-e-e!"
There was something familiar in the sound to Peggy. She leaned
forward, straining her ears. Suddenly an active little bronco
seemed to separate from the ruck of the riders and dashed forward
alone. On his back sat a familiar figure and not a beautiful one,
but to Peggy no angel from heavenly regions could have appeared
more, beatific just then, for in the rider she had recognized the
redoubtable Bud, the leader of the horse hunters.
Bud swept off his sombrero as he dashed up, and was apparently about
to make some jocular remark, but he stopped short at the sight of
Peggy's pale, anxious face.
"Wa-al, what's all ther trouble hyar?" he demanded; "your sky
bronco foundered? Why hello, thar's Wandering William. Didn't know
as you was a sky pilot feller?"
"I'm not, I guess," rejoined Wandering William quietly. "I wish I
were, and then may be I could help out on this difficulty."
"Wa-al, what's up?" drawled Bud, as his followers came loping up;
"anything I kin do? We're on our way back to ther hills frum town,"
he explained. "We caught more than twenty wild horses and took'em
inter Blue Creek. One of ther boys sighted you away off or we'd
have missed yer I reckin.
"Now, miss, I ain't one ter fergit a blow-out like thet yer gave us
at Steer Wells. Jes say ther word an' if you like we'll tow this
here cloud clipper back inter town."
"Let's see if we can't hit on a way of fixing it first," said
Wandering William; "you see," he explained to Bud, "the radiator--"
"Hyar, hold on thar. Talk United States language. What's wrong
with this arrangement meter.
"It's sprung a leak," volunteered Peggy; "look here, you can see for
yourself. The hole is tiny, but it's big enough to let out all the
water that we need to cool the cylinders."
"Humph," said Bud crossing his hands on the horn of his saddle and
gazing abstractedly at the leak, "what you need is solder," he
announced presently.
"If we'd had any we'd been out of here long ago," rejoined Peggy, as
Roy, hearing the unusual noise, peered over the edge of the chassis.
"Hullo, kid; what's biting you?" demanded the breezy Bud.
"Guess I'm out of commission for a while," rejoined Roy bravely.
Peggy hastily explained the accident, and then, as she saw no harm
in doing so, she gave Bud a hasty sketch of the events leading up to
their being marooned on the alkali.
"So you're after that ornery varmint, Red Bill, are yer?" remarked
Bud as she concluded; "wa-al I'll do all in my power to help you.
I've bin a studyin' that thar leak while you was a talkite. What
you need is suthin' to stop it up."
"Obviously," said Peggy with a trace of annoyance in her tone.
"Now don't git riled, fer I've hit on a scheme ter git yer out of
yer troubles."
Bud shoved back his sombrero and gazed triumphantly at the
astonished girl aviator.