The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure Part 6

Kit was chuckling. Never before had retribution come so quickly to her young brother who delighted in playing tricks on a newcomer to the desert.

But she only smiled at the boy. She wanted to say, "It serves you right," but she had only been back for ten minutes and decided that it was too soon to plague the child. But Billy saw her gleam of triumph and decided he would get even with Kit at some later date.

"Let's get started, girls! Everybody pile in!" commanded the Judge.

"You girls go in that car with Matt Larkin. I want Tommy Sharpe with me."

There wasn't a prouder boy in the whole world at that moment than Tommy. Judge Breckenridge wanted him, and maybe someday he would be his right-hand man, as the Judge playfully called him. To himself Tommy promised that it would not be his own fault if he did not measure up to the Judge's estimate of what a right hand man should be. Bet was amused to notice the slight swagger that Tommy a.s.sumed as he took his place beside his friend in the car. She exchanged a smile of understanding with Enid.

A shower of sand hit the cha.s.sis of the car as the driver started along the road. The girls gave a cry of alarm as they saw a jack rabbit that had been startled, bound ahead of them for a few yards, then with a wild jump it landed in the shelter of the sage brush.

"Doesn't everything smell good?" Shirley sniffed the air in long indrawn breaths.

"Didn't I tell you it was wonderful!" said Kit. "I used to get so lonesome just for a whiff of the desert. And you girls could never understand it."

"Of course we didn't understand. How could we? We'd never been here!"

Bet Baxter's face was glowing with happiness.

It was only ten o'clock but already the sun was blazing hot. There was a fury about the heat that the girls had never before experienced.

They were glad to be under the shelter of the automobile top.

"Oh, Matt," called Kit, when they had driven a few miles, "let's stop and get the girls some of those cactus fruits. They've never tasted them, think of that!"

"You don't say so!" The driver smiled back at the eager young faces and brought his car to a stop. The girls jumped out glad to get nearer to the strange plants of the desert.

Suddenly a rasping whirr seemed to come from the ground at their feet.

It was a sound to hold the nerves taut, to send the cold shivers up and down the spine.

"A rattler!" exclaimed Kit delightedly. "Now I do feel as if I were really home again. Where is it? I want a good look at my old friend,"

she added as another insistent whirr was heard.

Matt Larkin had taken his automatic from his belt and pointed it, and in that instant the girls saw a black and yellow skinned snake coiled, its head poised with darting tongue, ready to strike.

There was a menace in that coil.

But the next minute the head had been neatly severed by a shot and the long body writhed and squirmed on the ground.

"Oh!" cried Bet. "Look at the pretty pattern on its skin."

"Pretty!" snapped the man beside her. "When you live in Arizona you never see any beauty in a rattler. He's just plain pizen to everybody.

There ought to be a reward offered fer every snake killed. Then maybe they could be exterminated."

The girls were glad to get back into the automobile again, out of the glaring sun. Each held a luscious cactus fruit gingerly in her fingers, trying to open it without getting the tiny p.r.o.nged spikes in their fingers. The driver climbed into his place and set the car going once more, headed toward the hills that seemed to beckon them.

They had outdistanced the other car, for Judge Breckenridge was driving slowly for the sake of the invalid.

When they saw the foothills ahead of them, Kit began to get excited.

"I've been up that road," she exclaimed. "Once Dad and I went up to Jasper Crowe's claims to sell him a horse."

But Shirley was staring ahead. Suddenly she cried: "There's a lake!

Isn't it refreshing after so many miles of desert? I had no idea you had such large bodies of water in this country."

The driver turned and glanced at Kit, then spoke to Shirley: "How far away do you reckon that lake is, Miss?"

"A mile!" replied Bet decidedly.

"No, it's more than that," corrected Shirley. "I remember of reading somewhere that distances in the desert are very deceiving. It's probably a lot farther off than it seems. I'll say five miles."

"Let's hurry and get there so we can eat our lunch at the water's edge," suggested Joy.

"That's an idea!" replied Matt with a sly glance at Kit. "We'll try and get there by lunch time."

"And look at the lovely trees!" cried Joy. "It's like an oasis in the desert, isn't it?"

But half an hour later they were no nearer the lake than when they had first seen it. A haziness now hung over the water, partly hiding it, and the trees seemed to be floating in mid air.

"That lake might be called 'Lake Illusion,'" laughed Bet. "It certainly is unreal enough! Don't let us wait until we get there to eat lunch. I'm starved. After we've eaten we'll appreciate the view more, anyway."

Even as they watched the mistiness increased and then suddenly seemed to dissolve, leaving the desert stretched out before them, hard, sullen and cruel.

The lake was gone. The waving trees were gone.

Then the girls realized what they had just witnessed. The mirage of the desert! That enticing promise of water that had been the undoing of many a pioneer of the early days!

A thoughtful expression came into the faces of the girls, and their enthusiasm vanished for a few minutes. Stories of by gone days came into their minds, stories of weary travellers who had been beckoned by the mirage and taken miles out of their way by this false promise, perhaps to die of thirst.

"How hard life used to be for the pioneers," said Bet wistfully. "And so easy for us!"

"But why did the pioneers go out on the desert?" asked Joy lightly.

"They didn't have to do it, did they?"

"Of course not, Joy," answered Bet. "But they wanted adventure and they were seeing another sort of mirage. It was the hope of gold and a fortune in the hills."

Bet gazed out over the vast stretch of mesa as if she were living through those early days herself, instead of being carried along by a high-powered car that ate up the miles easily and swiftly.

A low whistle from Matt brought the girls out of their day dreams to follow his glance ahead.

Far along the sandy road was a man trudging along with a bundle over his shoulder.

"That ain't no desert man," said Matt quietly.

"How can you tell from here?" asked Bet.

"You can always tell a desert man by his walk. That fellow looks as if he were used to walking on city streets," Matt returned.

"And he hasn't even a burro," exclaimed Kit contemptuously. "Let's give him a lift and see what he's doing here so far from civilization."

The man ahead had turned at the sound of the automobile, deposited his bundle on the ground and stood waiting expectantly.

The girls smiled as they greeted him. His clothes, a neat business suit and light colored shirt, were soiled, his face was streaked with dust but in his eyes there was that indefinable gleam that marks the soul of an adventurer. He was offered a lift.