The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings Part 19

He drew from his pocket a flat, pink box which, on being opened, proved to contain several cakes of chocolate of Peggy's favorite brand.

"Oh, dear," sighed Peggy as she nibbled away at the confection, "if only I knew positively that we were going to come out all right I'd really be inclined to enjoy this as a picnic."

"Hooray! here comes the moon," cried Roy, after an interval, during which the chocolate steadily diminished in quant.i.ty.

Over the eastern horizon, beyond the desolate peaks and barren "ocean" of the desert, a silver rim crept. Rapidly it rose till the full moon was climbing on her nightly course and flooding the alkali with a soft radiance almost as bright as subdued electric light.

Against the glow the weird, ragged peaks stood out as blackly as if cut out of cardboard. One could see the tracery of every bit of brush and rock outlined as plainly as if they had been silhouetted by an artist at the craft.

All at once Peggy gave a frightened little cry and shrank close to Roy. The firelight showed her face drawn and startled.

"Oh, Roy, over there! No, not that peak--that one to the right!"

"Well, sis, what about it?" asked Roy indulgently.

"Something moved! No, don't laugh, I'm sure of it."

"A coyote maybe or another jack rabbit. In that case we'll have a chance at a shot."

"No, Roy, it wasn't an animal." Peggy's tones were vibrant with alarm--tense as a taut violin string. "What I saw was a man."

"A man. Nonsense! Unless it was someone from the camp looking for us."

"No, this man was watching us. He may have been crouching there for a long time. I saw the outline of his sombrero black against the moonlight behind that rise. Oh, Roy, I'm frightened."

"Rubbish," declared Roy stoutly, although his heart began to beat uncomfortably fast. "What man could there be here unless it was Alverado, and he couldn't possibly have arrived by this time."

"But, Roy, it wasn't my fancy. Truly it wasn't. I saw a man crouching there and watching us. When I looked up he vanished."

"Must have been a rock or something, sis. Moonlight plays queer tricks you know. Don't let's make the situation any worse by imagining things."

"It was not imagination," repeated Peggy stoutly.

But Roy, perhaps because he did not wish to, would not admit the possibility of Peggy's vision being correct.

A long, loud cry like the laughing of an imprisoned soul cut the stillness startlingly.

"Ki-yi-yi-yi-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!"

"Coyotes!" laughed Roy, "that's what you saw."

Peggy said nothing. The sudden sharp sound had rasped her overwrought nerves cruelly.

"Ki-yi-yi-yi-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!"

The demoniacal laughing, half howl, half bark, cut the night again.

This time it came from a different direction. From other grim peaks the cry was caught up. It seemed that the creatures were all about them.

"Surrounded!" muttered Roy a bit nervously. He had not forgotten the fight in the canyon, although, as he knew, coyotes, only on the very rarest occasions, when driven desperate by hunger, attack mankind.

The cries appeared to come from all quarters now. And they were drawing nearer, course lay to the eastward there was no mistaking that.

"They are closing in on us, sis. Better load up that gun."

As he spoke Roy refilled the magazine of his little twenty-two rifle.

"Ki-yi-yi-yi-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!"

This time the cry was quite close and behind them. Roy switched sharply round. The surroundings, the uncanny cries, the solitude were beginning to tell on his nerves, too. His self-control was being wrought to a raw edge.

Was it fancy, or as he switched abruptly about did he actually see a dark object duck behind a rock? An object that bore a strange resemblance to a sombrero.

"Good gracious, I musn't become as shaky as this," the boy thought, making a desperate effort to marshal his faculties, and then he sniffed sharply.

"What is it, Roy?" asked Peggy strangely calm now in the face of what she deemed must prove an emergency.

Roy's answer was peculiar.

"I smelled tobacco just now, I'm sure of it," he whispered in a low tone. "I guess you were right, sis."

"But the coyotes?"

"Are men signaling to each other and closing in on us."

As he spoke the boy scattered the fire, and seizing Peggy by the arm dragged her into the black shadow of the cone-shaped peak.

CHAPTER XVI

RED BILL SUMMERS

A keen chill, sharp as if an icy wind had swept her, embraced Peggy.

It was succeeded by a mad beating of her heart. Roy said nothing but clutched his rifle. He jerked it to his shoulder as, out of the shadows, a figure emerged sharp and black against the moonlight. As if she were in a trance Peggy saw Roy's hand slide under the barrel of the little repeater and then came the sharp click of the repeating mechanism, followed by the snap of the hammer as it fell forward.

But no report followed.

"Jammed!" exclaimed the boy desperately.

At the same moment the figure approaching them, which for an instant had vanished behind a shoulder of rock, emerged boldly, the moonlight playing on a revolver barrel pointed menacingly at the brother and sister.

"No foolin' thar, youngsters," came a harsh voice; "we've got you where we want you."

Coincidently from all about them the rocks seemed to sp.a.w.n figures, till half a dozen men in rough plainsman's garb stood in the moonlight. Resistance was useless; worse, it might have resulted in a calamity more dire than the one that had overtaken them.