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.”
“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.”