THE SAND STORM.
As he spoke, a queer, moaning sort of sound, something like the low,
distant bellow of a steer in pain, could be heard. The air seemed
filled with it. Coming from no definite direction, it yet impregnated
the atmosphere. The air, too, began noticeably to thicken, until the
sun, from a pallid disc--a mere ghost of its former blazing self--was
blotted out altogether. A hot wind sprang up and swept witheringly
about the travelers.
"Ouch!" exclaimed Ralph Stetson suddenly. "Something stung me!"
"That's the sand, son," said Coyote Pete. "The wind's commencin' ter
drive it."
"Is it going to get any worse?" inquired the professor anxiously.
"A whole lot, afore it gits any better," was the disconcerting reply.
"What'll we do, Pete?" asked Jack, turning to the cow-puncher.
It had now grown so dark that he could hardly see Pete's face. It was
hot, too, with a heavy, suffocating sort of heat. The wind that drove
the myriads upon myriads of tiny sand grains now darkening the air, was
ardent as the blast from an opened oven-door.
"Get your saddles off, quick! Lie down, and put your heads under 'em,"
ordered the cow-puncher, briskly swinging himself out of his saddle as
he spoke.
The others hastened to follow his example. It was not a minute too
soon. Already their mouths were full of gritty particles, and their
eyes smarted as if they had been seared with hot irons. The ponies
could hardly be induced to stand up while the process of unsaddling was
gone through. As for the burros, those intelligent beasts had thrown
themselves down as soon as the halt was made. With their heads laid as
low as possible, and their hind quarters turned to the direction of the
hot blast, they were as well prepared to weather the sand storm as they
could be.
The instant the saddles were off the ponies, down they flopped, too, in
the same positions as their long-eared cousins. The bipeds of the
party made haste to follow their animals' example, only, in their case,
their heads were sheltered as snugly as if under a tent, by the big,
high-peaked, broad-flapped Mexican saddles.
It was well they had made haste, for, as Pete had said, the sand storm
was evidently going to get "a whole lot worse before it got better."
The air grew almost as black as night, and the wind fairly screamed as
it swept over them. Jack could feel little piles of sand drifting up
about them, just as driven snow forms in drifts when it strikes an
obstruction. How hot it was under the saddles! The boys' mouths felt
as if they would crack, so dry and feverish had they become.
"Oh, for a drink of water!" thought Jack, trying in vain to moisten his
mouth by moving his tongue about within it.
All at once, above the screaming of the wind, the lad caught another
sound--the galloping of hoofs coming toward them at a rapid rate. For
an instant the thought flashed across him that it was their own stock
that had stampeded. He stuck his head out to see, braving the furious
sweep of the stinging sand.
He withdrew it like a tortoise beneath its cover, with a cry that was
only half of pain. Through the driving sand he had distinctly seen
three enormous forms sweep by, seen like dim shadows in the gloom
around. What could they have been? In vain Jack cudgeled his brains
for a solution to the mystery.
The forms he had seen drift by had been larger than any horse. So
vague had their outlines been in the semi-darkness, however, that
beyond an impression of their great size, he had no more definite idea
of the apparitions. That they were travelling at a tremendous pace was
doubtless, for hardly had he sighted them before they vanished, and he
could not have had his head out of its shelter for more than a second
or so.
While the lad lay in the semi-suffocation of the saddle, his mind
revolved the problem, but no explanation that he could think of would
fit the case. "Might they not have been wild horses?" he thought.
But no,--these were three times the size of any horse he had ever seen.
Besides, their blotty-looking outlines bore no semblance to the form of
a horse.
But presently something happened which put the thought of the
mysterious shadows out of his mind. The wind began to abate. To be
sure, at first it hardly seemed to have diminished its force, but in
the course of half an hour or so the party could once more emerge, like
so many ostriches, from their sand-piles, and gaze about them.
Very little sand was in the air now, but it was everywhere else. In
their eyes, mouths, ears, while, if they shook their heads, a perfect
little shower of it fell all about them. The animals, too, struggling
to their feet out of the little mounds that had formed around them,
were covered with a thick coat of grayish dust. It was a sorry-looking
party. With red-rimmed eyes, cracked, parched lips and swollen
tongues, they looked as if they had been dragged through a blast
furnace.
The sky above them now shone with its brilliant, metallic blue once
more, while ahead, the sun was sinking lower. In a short time it would
have set, and, as Ralph Stetson, in a choked voice, called for "Water,"
the same thought flashed across the minds of all of them simultaneously.
If they didn't get water pretty soon, their predicament promised to be
a serious one.
An examination of the canteens showed that not much more than a gallon
remained. If only they could yet "pick up" the mesa before dark, this
would not be so serious a matter, but, situated as they were, it was
about as bad as bad could be.
"Waal," said Pete, at length, stroking the last grains of sand out of
his bleached moustache, "waal, I reckon we might as well hang fer a
sheep as er lamb, anyhow. Ef we don't hit water purty soon, we'll be
thirstier yet, so we might as well fill up now."
"Illogical, but sensible," pronounced the professor, leading an eager
rush for the water canteens, which were carried on the pack burros.
"Here, hold on; that's enough!" cried Jack, as Ralph Stetson bent over
backward with the canteen still at his lips.
"Why, I haven't begun to drink yet," protested Ralph.
"Chaw on a bullet, son," advised Pete. "Thet's highly recommended for
the thirst."
"Water suits me better," grumbled Ralph, nevertheless yielding the
canteen to Jack. The lad drank sparingly, as did Pete and the others.
Ralph, alone, of all the party, appeared not to realize how very
precious even the little water that remained might become before long.
Refreshed even by the small quantity they had swallowed of the tepid
stuff, they remounted, and Pete clambered up upon his saddle. While
his pony stood motionless beneath him, he stood erect upon the leather
seat. From this elevation, he scanned the horizon on every side. Far
off to the southwest was sweeping a dun-colored curtain--the departing
sand-storm, but that was all. Otherwise, the desert was unchanged from
its previous aspect.
"Let me hev a look at thet thar compass," said Pete, resuming a sitting
posture once more.
Jack extended his wrist.
"The compass is all right, I know," he said confidently.
"And I know that we've bin hitting the right trail," declared Pete.
"Last time I come this way was with an old prospector who knew this
part of the country well enough to 'pick up' a clump of cactus. If
that compass is right, we're headed straight."
"Yes--if," put in the professor. "But are you quite sure it is?"
This was putting the matter in a new light. Not one of the party was
so ignorant as not to know that, in the many miles they had traveled,
the deflection of the needle, by even the smallest degree, might have
meant a disastrous error.
"Why, I--I--how can it help being right?" asked Jack, a little
uncertainly.
"Which side have you been carrying your revolver on?" asked the
professor.
"Why, you know--on the left side," rejoined Jack, with some surprise.
"And the compass on the left wrist?"
"Yes. Why? Isn't it----"
"No, it ain't!" roared Pete. "I see it all now, perfusser; that thar
shootin' iron has bin deflectin' ther needle."
"I fear so," rejoined the professor.
Under his direction, Jack moved the compass into various positions, and
at the end of a quarter of an hour they arrived at the startling
conclusion that they had travelled perhaps many miles out of their way.
The metal of the weapons Jack carried having, as they saw only too
clearly now, deflected the needle.
"What an idiot I was not to think of such a possibility!" exclaimed
Jack bitterly.
"Not at all, my boy," comforted the professor. "The same thing has
happened to experienced sea-captains, and they have navigated many
miles off their course before they discovered their error."
"All of which, not bein' at' sea, don't help us any," grunted Pete.
"Suppose now, perfusser, that you jes' figger out as well as you kin,
how far wrong we hev gone."
"It will be a difficult task, I fear," said the professor.
"It'll be a heap difficulter task, ef we don't hit water purty soon,"
retorted the cow-puncher.
Thus admonished, Professor Wintergreen divested himself of his weapons,
and, taking out a small notebook, began, with the compass before him,
to make some calculations. At the end of ten minutes or so, he raised
his head.
"Well?" asked Jack eagerly.
"Well," rejoined the professor, "it's not as bad as it might be. We
are, according to my reckoning, about twenty-five miles farther to the
south than we should be."
He consulted his notebook once more.
"The bearings of the mesa require us to travel in that direction." He
indicated a point to the northward of where they were halted.
"And it's twenty-five miles, you say?" asked Pete.
"About that. It may be more, and again it may be less."
"Waal, the less it is, ther better it'll suit yours truly. This stock
is jes' about tuckered."
With the professor now bearing the compass, they set out once more,
this time taking the direction indicated by the man of science.
"Suppose the professor is wrong?" Ralph whispered to Jack, as they
urged their almost exhausted cayuses onward.
Jack shrugged his shoulders.
"What's the use of supposing?" he said.
It was sun-down, and a welcome coolness had begun to be noticeable in
the air, when Jack gave a shout and pointed directly ahead of them.
"Look, look!" he cried. "What's that?"
"That" was only a small purplish speck on the far horizon, but it broke
the monotony of the sky-line sharply. Coyote Pete scrutinized it with
keen eyes for a moment, narrowing his optics till they were mere slits.
Then--
"Give me the glasses, perfusser," he requested. Every one in the party
knew that their lives, or deaths probably, hung on the verdict of the
next few seconds, but Pete's slow drawl was more pronounced and
unperturbed than ever. He put the glasses to his eyes as unconcernedly
as if he were searching for a bunch of estrays. Presently he lowered
them.
"Is--is it----?" began Jack, while the others all bent forward in their
saddles, hanging on the rejoinder.
"It is," declared Pete, and he might have said more, but the rest of
his words were drowned in a ringing cheer.