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.