Malcolm, weary indeed with the long hard riding on the three days
previous, did not waken, nor did Uncle Tex when, at a very early
hour, the four girls stole out of the ranch house and, while the
stars were still shining in the paling sky they skipped down to the
wrangling corral. In a nearby shelter hung the saddles and Virg,
with Margaret’s help, soon had the four ponies ready to ride. If
Malcolm had known of their expedition, he would have insisted upon
accompanying them, not knowing what dangers might await them. In
fact he had intended to warn Virginia not to leave the immediate
neighborhood of the ranch until he and Lucky had discovered the
hiding place of the mysterious caravan, but, although he thought of
it after he had retired, he reminded himself that it would be time
to tell them at breakfast.
Virginia indeed had little hope of coming upon the trail of the
rumored caravan, for, during the night, a sandstorm had swept across
the desert and though of but brief duration, it would have
obliterated whatever tracks had been visible the day before. She had
thought of explaining this to the girls, but, knowing that Betsy
would be greatly disappointed, she decided to ride with them at
least as far as the Three Sand Hills.
This she often did, and, as the hills were surrounded by a vast
waste of open desert, she knew that unless the gypsies were camped
on the other side of the hills themselves, they would not come
unexpectedly upon them.
Betsy, before she had left school, had expected to be timid about
riding the western horses but Virg chose for her a gentle pony that
was well broken and so interested was the Eastern girl in the quest
upon which they were starting, that she found that she was not at
all afraid.
The east was beginning to glow with pale rose and lilac when the top
of the mesa was reached and Virginia, in the lead, pointed, as they
all drew rein, to the Three Sand Hills that loomed dark and
isolated, standing alone like sentinels on an otherwise flat expanse
of desert.
Betsy looked up with glowing eyes. “It’s wonderful!” she said, “just
to see this sun rise on the desert is worth a great deal, even if we
don’t find a trail.”
Then they started on again riding single file. Betsy’s pony had
taken the lead which delighted the young rider.
“It’s going to be a glorious day,” Margaret smiled back at Virg. “If
it weren’t for the lost yearlings and the anxiety it means to you
and Malcolm, I would be Oh, just ever so happy to think that we are
home again.”
Virginia was pleased to hear her adopted sister call the desert
“home.”
“Dear,” she said, “I am not going to worry over the loss nor will
Malcolm. Being unhappy and making others unhappy never restores the
thing that is lost. I mean to try to forget it as soon as we are
sure that the herd cannot be recovered.”
For a moment they rode on in silence, then Megsy looked back again
and smilingly nodded toward Betsy, who, quite forgetting that she
intended to be afraid of Western horses, was leaning far over in her
saddle and gazing at the sand that had been ribbed and scalloped by
the wind during the night. Suddenly she stopped her pony to await
the others. “Virg,” she asked eagerly, “are we near the place where
Lucky first saw the wagon trail?”
Virginia had to confess that they were yet many miles from the edge
of the Burning Acres where that trail had been seen. “I’m sorry to
disappoint you, Betsy,” she said, “but it would be impossible for us
to ride that far unless we were prepared for a hard journey and were
accompanied by Malcolm or Uncle Tex.”
They paused at the foot of the group of hills and Betsy shuddered as
she said, “I don’t know why they seem so uncanny to me. Did anything
ever happen here, Virg, anything spooky?”
“Why, nothing that I know about.” The Western girl laughed at the
eager expression on the face of their youngest. “What, for
instance?”
“Oh, some famous bandit might have been captured and bound to that
giant yucca that stands all alone on the highest hill, and the
masked men who had captured him might have stood down here and shot
him, then silently ridden away while the vultures came with their
weird cries to—”
Megsy put her hands over her ears. “Betsy,” she remonstrated,
“you’re telling the story of that moving picture we saw at Vine
Haven. My, but it was gruesome!”
Betsy laughed mischievously but Virg said seriously, “Those popular
pictures give a very wrong impression of our desert life, as it
really is. Now, if the rest of you would like to climb to the top of
Yucca Hill, I’ll stay here with the ponies. It might be hard to
catch them if they strayed in search of grass, and I do want to get
home before Malcolm can miss us and be worried.”
Betsy was scrambling down from the back of her patient mount as she
replied, “I’m going to climb up there, and stand right where the
bandit stood—and—”
“Well, go on then.” It was Barbara who spoke. “We’ll wait for you
down here. I, for one, am not pining for such a hard climb before
breakfast.”
“Do you dare me?” the twinkling eyed Betsy asked, her arms akimbo.
“Double dare!” Babs retorted. Then they all laughed to see the speed
with which Betsy began the ascent, but she soon found that she
slipped back about as far as she progressed. However, in time, she
reached the top and holding to the giant yucca she waved her other
hand to the watching group. Then, shading her eyes, she looked long
and intently in the direction of the Burning Acres. Suddenly she
began to beckon wildly. Virginia was puzzled. “I wonder if she is
doing that to tease or if she has really seen something of
interest.”
[Illustration: “It seems to be all wings, and it’s white, isn’t it?”]
Virg was the first to climb to the top of Yucca Hill, Margaret
having offered to remain with the four ponies. Barbara, breathless,
reached them a moment later, in time to hear an excited Betsy
exclaim, as she pointed toward the south, “Virg did you ever see a
bird as big as that? It seems to be all wings, and it’s white, isn’t
it?”
Babs protested. “Goodness Betsy. Did you call us way up here and in
such a hurry just to show us a bird?”
But Virginia, whose eyes were keener, since she was used to desert
distances, watched the wide-winged object which was high in the air,
and at least half a mile away.
“If it is a bird, which I doubt, it has hurt one of its wings for
surely it is not flying in—” she interrupted herself to exclaim:
“Oh, I see now! there goes one of the little whirlwinds that scud
over the desert so often. Whatever that flying thing is, it was
evidently tossed high in the air and is fluttering back to earth.”
Virg had surmised correctly for, with awkward movements of
apparently wide stretched wings, the something, which had so aroused
Betsy’s curiosity, fluttered groundward, but before it touched the
sand it caught on the arm of a formidable thorny cactus which stood
near the mesa trail. Laughingly the girls descended and told the
curious Margaret what Betsy’s excitement had been over.
“And there I had hoped that it might be a clew,” that maiden
mourned, as again, single file, they rode back toward V. M.
“Not a wagon track have we found nor anything exciting or even
interesting,” Babs began, when Virg, being in the lead, called over
her shoulder as she pointed at the great cactus that appeared near
the trail not far ahead:
“There’s your wide-winged bird, Betsy. Nothing but a newspaper that
tried to soar for a time but failed.”
Since they were in a hurry to reach V. M. before the hour which
Malcolm had suggested that they have breakfast together, the girls
did not stop to examine the newspaper, but, when they had reached
the ranch yard, Betsy, who had been unusually quiet during the
downward ride, suddenly exclaimed:
“Girls, I’m not sure but that we missed a clew, after all, when we
passed that newspaper. If you don’t mind, Virg, I’m going back and
get it. However,” and she smiled in a mischievous way, “if it’s all
the same to everybody, I guess I’d rather walk. It’s ages since I’ve
been on horseback, and I’m getting powerfully stiff.”
“If you’ll wait until after breakfast I’ll go back with you,” Babs
told her friend.
“Can’t be done, old dear,” Betsy declared. “Another whirlwind might
come along and where would my newspaper be?”
“Well, do hurry. I can tell by a certain appetizing fragrance on the
air that ham and eggs are being prepared, and Oh! but I’m hungry.”
Betsy acknowledged that she herself was most starved, but added that
if Babs had the real detective instinct which she possessed, mere
eating would not even be considered when there might be a clew to be
had for just a little effort.
The three girls, having turned their unsaddled ponies into the
corral, walked arm in arm up to the house. Their youngest had
already started on a run toward the mesa trail.
“It’s at least a quarter of a mile back to that cactus,” Virginia
said, “so we needn’t expect Betsy for quite a while.”
But to their surprise, ten minutes later, as they were emerging from
their rooms, having changed their khaki riding habits for gingham
morning dresses, they heard a familiar voice shouting without. Then
the front door burst open and a most excited Betsy waved torn
fragments of an old newspaper as she cried: “It’s a clew, it is a
clew; just listen to this.”