SCOUTS OF 
 THE DESERT 
 
 JOHN FLEMING WILSON 
 
SCOUTS OF THE DESERT 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO 
 DALLAS ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 .THE MACMILLAN CO. OP CANADA, Lia 
 
 TORONTO 
 

*.". * . 
 
SCOUTS 
 OF THE DESERT 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN FLEMING WILSON 
 
 Jleto gorfe 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1920 
 
 All Rights 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1920, 
 BT THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1920. 
 
XL. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 GETTING NEXT TO TROUBLE ..... 3 
 
 THE PRICE OF CITIZENSHIP 40 
 
 THE VANISHED CAR 70 
 
 THE MAGI OF THE MOJAVE 102 
 
 TREASURE IN THE AIR 139 
 
 4261 00 
 
SCOUTS OF THE DESERT 
 
 GETTING NEXT TO TROUBLE 
 
 WHEN Sid Moulton left Yaquina Bay to 
 visit his Uncle Joe Moulton, who lived in 
 the desert region of Southern California, he 
 traveled to San Pedro with Captain Ben Lovett 
 on the steam schooner White Heron. Not satis- 
 fied with taking his guest this far, the captain ac- 
 companied Sid from the harbor to Los Angeles, 
 where he was to take the train to Helen's Station, 
 the nearest point to the Moulton ranch. 
 
 On the train platform Captain Ben drew Sid 
 aside for a last word of warning. 
 
 "You're mostly sailorman, Sid," he told him, 
 "and whenever a seafaring man leaves the sea 
 he's likely to find difficult navigation. I know 
 you're all right in the big timber and along the 
 
 3 
 
4 Scouts &/ the Desert 
 
 coast. But the desert is different from anything 
 youVe ever known. I've been there a few times 
 and each time I've felt queer. You'll find it 
 queer. You'll find the desert full of trouble, too. 
 Remember one thing: when there's trouble 
 ahead, go right up next to it." 
 
 "You mean, don't run away, sir?" Sid asked. 
 
 "More than that," said the captain, taking off 
 his stiff hat and staring at its sleek shape with 
 some embarrassment. "A word in your ear, 
 Sid: Most all of us are afraid of trouble, espe- 
 cially when it's a new kind. We stand off and 
 look at it and swear at it and talk about it and 
 get all heated up over it and kick because we're 
 up against it. I've found that you'd best not 
 wait for trouble to find you. Get next to it 
 quickly. It's bound to come and it's no use 
 pussyfooting around and trying to stand clear 
 and saying how terrible it is. You can usually 
 lick it if you get right up to it and tell Mr. 
 Trouble you're not afraid of him and you've 
 been expecting him and you're happy to meet 
 him. Walk right up to Old Man Trouble and 
 
 
Getting Next to Trouble 5 
 
 say, Well, you're here and I'm here. You're 
 going to get out.' Then get smack under his 
 guard and look him in the eye and smash him. 
 When you once get him down put your knee in 
 his stomach and don't let him up. I find one 
 wins if one is not too much scared." 
 
 Now Captain Lovett was a man of skill, 
 experience, and a reputation for being success- 
 ful. Sid made up his mind to make use of this 
 rather lengthy advice in his new surroundings. 
 But the train was ready and by the time the 
 scout had settled himself in the. day coach and 
 the car was moving, he forgot the old cap- 
 tain in the changing scene that slid by the win- 
 dow. But there was to come a day very soon 
 when Sid Moulton would remember Ben Lovett 
 and take heart because that knowing old boy had 
 told him trouble could be licked if you didn't 
 try to run away. 
 
 The train spent a couple of hours going 
 through the orange groves to San Bernardino 
 and then hooked on another engine for the climb 
 through Cajon Pass. The soft, warm air began 
 
6 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 to grow dry and sparkling as Sid found himself 
 looking backward on the country they were 
 coming up from and when he reached the sum- 
 mit he was excited. Never had he breathed such 
 air, nor felt such a high, dry, exhilarating wind 
 as poured out of the great desert that extended as 
 far as the eye could see, dotted with buttes, 
 rimmed by arid mountain ranges, glistening here 
 and there in the distance where some soda lake 
 lay hard and rippleless, baking under the blaz- 
 ing sun. 
 
 For half an hour the train slipped down, first 
 through a scant forest of shrubby junipers, then 
 into a queer, thin wood of yucca palms which 
 stood out in an endless variety of shapes, throw- 
 ing grotesque shadows over the greasewood and 
 sagebrush that dotted the sand. It entered the 
 little gorge of the Mojave River and rattled into 
 Victorville. This town, set in a bowl rimmed by 
 high mesas and some rocky buttes, Sid knew to 
 be only sixteen miles from Helen's Station. 
 During the ten minutes that the train stopped 
 he got out and stretched his legs along the track 
 
Getting Next to Trouble 7 
 
 and felt the hot, pungent breath of the desert on 
 his face and the mighty slap of the sun on his 
 back. Just half an hour later he was deposited 
 on the bare gravel of Helen's Station, which lies 
 just outside the cottonwoods that mark the di- 
 minishing course of the Mojave the only river 
 in America that grows feebler as it gets away 
 from its source and finally dies in mid-desert, 
 drawing its waters down into some subterranean 
 passage whence they never emerge to sight of 
 man again. 
 
 It was nearing sunset, and the day's heat 
 was tempered by a fine wind that rustled the 
 sage and rippled the soft sand. To the scout, 
 accustomed to the humid, chill air of the Ore- 
 gon coast, this vivid and sparkling breeze, so 
 dry, so pungent, so thin, seemed almost unbreath- 
 able. He felt a little light-headed. His eyes 
 smarted from the glare. His heart thumped in 
 his breast. But almost immediately a middle- 
 aged man appeared, dressed in cool cotton and 
 browned to a mahogany tint. Sid recognized 
 his Uncle Joseph. 
 
8 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 They shook hands and Mr. Moulton said his 
 wife was at the ranch waiting for him. Sid 
 noticed that his uncle seemed much preoccupied, 
 though cordial. He stood in low-voiced conver- 
 sation with two men who had also met the train; 
 the little group seemed concerned about some- 
 thing which kept their tones lowered. Presently 
 Mr. Moulton left them and joined Sid again. 
 
 "The car is right here," he remarked, and led 
 the way to a stripped roadster with a box for 
 goods behind. He wasted no time but started 
 directly off along a rutted road fringed with 
 sage and mesquite. For the next mile Sid was 
 busy observing the fresh scenery. He saw that 
 there were no trees whatever anywhere, except 
 the few cottonwoods near the station and by the 
 river bank. Everywhere else the desert lay in 
 rolling hills covered with the sparsest of vegeta- 
 tion. The soil was a mixture of rough pebbles 
 and coarse sand. So far as he could perceive 
 there was no sign of moisture anywhere. The 
 road wound and climbed and dipped without 
 any attempt at leveling it. It was endlessly 
 
Getting Next to Trouble 9 
 
 crooked. Yet every turn offered the same pros- 
 pect. And all this dull-colored waste was popu- 
 lous. Lizards darted here and there, or sat on 
 little stones and lifted their heads, their eyes 
 shining. Desert rats scurried and tumbled across 
 the road. Jack rabbits leaped off from invisible 
 forms. Here a snake was coiled. There a turtle 
 stilted along, his high-domed shell looking like 
 a dull, irregularly marked, and dusty stone that 
 had suddenly achieved motion. 
 
 All this wonderful pageant struck Sid as mar- 
 velous. He glanced at his uncle to see whether 
 he noticed it. Mr. Moulton was driving steadily 
 and keeping his eyes on the road. There was a 
 grim set about his lips. 
 
 "Trouble somewhere," Sid thought to him- 
 self, and wondered what it could be. But as his 
 uncle volunteered nothing he did not ask. 
 
 They crossed what was the bed of the Mojave 
 through deep, soft sand, which here and there 
 showed a little pool the last of the river that 
 had seemed so large at Victorville. In one place 
 they traveled over an especially bad place on 
 
10 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 timbers laid lengthwise like rails. Then the car 
 scooted up the slope of some red hills, floun- 
 dered in deep sand over a wash, and resumed its 
 speed on a hard, dry road that seemed to wind 
 interminably along the mesa. Nothing whatever 
 was in sight. 
 
 "How far is it to Aunt Mary's?" Sid 
 inquired. 
 
 "Five miles, Sid." Mr. Moulton pointed 
 with one hand into the distance. The scout 
 strained his eyes. He knew he was looking into 
 a distance where objects thirty miles off were 
 plain. But he could not pick out a single spot 
 that differed in color or aspect from the plain, 
 drab green of the desert through which they 
 were traveling. 
 
 "You can't see it till you're almost on it," his 
 uncle explained. "That's a peculiarity of this 
 country; you can see for leagues, the air is so 
 clear. But anything close to the ground is 
 invisible till you're almost on it except before 
 sunrise." 
 
 Sid was about to ask the reason for this odd 
 
Getting Next to Trouble 11 
 
 statement about sunrise, but Mr. Moulton was 
 continuing. 
 
 "That's what makes the desert dangerous for 
 a tenderfoot. He doesn't realize that the min- 
 ute he gets out of sight of his place he can't find 
 it again by sight. He has to reason out its loca- 
 tion. Many a man gets lost by simply going for 
 a walk through the brush. Before he knows it 
 he's lost all landmarks." 
 
 "How do you find any one who gets lost out 
 here?" Sid asked, getting right to the point. 
 
 "I wish I knew," was the reply. 
 
 Sid considered this. "Anybody you know lost, 
 uncle?" 
 
 Mr. Moulton nodded and increased the speed 
 impulsively. In a few moments the car suddenly 
 opened out a bare patch of desert wire-fenced 
 and with a well derrick and pump house in a 
 corner. 
 
 "Here's where we get our water, Sid," his 
 uncle explained. "The house is a quarter of a 
 mile further on." 
 
 The low, one-story house soon came into sight. 
 
12 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 Sid saw that it was different from any house he 
 had seen. In the first place it looked almost as if 
 it had walls that one could see through in a dim 
 sort of way it was screened all around, and the 
 living rooms all opened on this broad porch, so 
 that every bit of air that stirred would enter and 
 cool the air. Its roof looked rather flat but sub- 
 stantial and there was absolutely no chimney. 
 He was shortly to discover that the Moultons 
 had taken a leaf from the book of the old Span- 
 ish settlers and made what was practically two 
 houses in one: an inside one for cool nights and 
 winter days, and an outside one for the hours of 
 heat. 
 
 His aunt welcomed him heartily, with her eyes 
 on her husband. Now Sid knew for certain that 
 he had arrived at a time when trouble was heavy 
 on the Moulton family. But still he waited. 
 Presently he was seated at table in one side of 
 the porch and looking directly out on the western 
 mountains which seemed to rise with a great, 
 smooth sweep from the plain to the sky. A few 
 stars already shone brightly. The wind was dry 
 
Getting Next to Trouble 13 
 
 and made the brush give out a kind of whistling, 
 dreary note, like the rustling of metallic wings. 
 His plate was loaded with rabbit, hot biscuits 
 and gravy, sweet potatoes, and he saw melons, 
 dripping with moisture, piled up on a sideboard. 
 Just above him an olla hung in a leathern sling. 
 His aunt was inquiring eagerly for news of his 
 own family. But Sid observed that she ate noth- 
 ing and that his uncle made a small meal after 
 his long drive. It was dark when they were 
 through. Mr. Moulton lit a couple of lamps 
 and brought fresh water in for the olla and fed 
 the dogs. Still the silence hung heavily between 
 the intervals when either of the old people 
 forced themselves to talk. Sid remembered what 
 Ben Lovett had said. He glanced anxiously at 
 his uncle and said, "Did you tell me somebody 
 you knew was lost, sir?" 
 
 His Aunt Mary suddenly sat down and looked 
 very white and tired. 
 
 "I'm sorry about it, Sid," Mr. Moulton 
 answered. "We'd hoped to give you the cheery 
 welcome you deserve. But one of our neighbors 
 
14 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 has met with misfortune, and your aunt feels 
 that it's our fault in a way." 
 
 "We ought to have known better than to let 
 the Boyles hire old Asbestos Pete," Mrs. Moul- 
 ton said sadly. She turned to Sid. "The Boyles 
 came here from the East just a month ago and 
 settled about two miles from us. They came to 
 the desert because of their health. They wanted 
 some one to help about the place and your uncle 
 and I couldn't think of anybody but an old desert 
 rat people call Asbestos Pete." 
 
 "We never supposed Boyle would be so silly 
 as to believe Pete's wild tales," his uncle put in. 
 
 "About some wretched asbestos mine," Mrs. 
 Moulton went on. "He's told that story to every 
 one who will listen for years and years. Mr. 
 Boyle ought to have known better than to think 
 anything about it." 
 
 "He went to find it?" Sid asked. 
 
 His uncle nodded. "We think so. We don't 
 know. He told Mrs. Boyle he was going away 
 for a couple of days and he would bring her back 
 her birthday present her birthday was to-day. 
 
Getting Next to Trouble 15 
 
 That's all Mrs. Boyle told us, but she let fall 
 that her husband had been talking about going 
 to find old Pete's lost mine some day. 17 
 
 "Did this old Pete give him a map of the 
 country?' 1 jd asked. 
 
 "Yes," said his uncle. 
 
 "Then it ought to be easy to follow Mr. Boyle 
 up." 
 
 "It would," Mr. Moulton remarked dryly, "if 
 it weren't for the fact that Asbestos Pete is crazy 
 and the maps he draws have no counterpart in 
 this country at all. Boyle would have found this 
 out, but, like many tenderfeet, he thought Pete 
 was square and also believed that men would try 
 to do Pete and himself out of the mine if he 
 talked about it. Being an utter stranger here he 
 couldn't know that Pete's descriptions and draw- 
 ings are never the same and no man could ever 
 find his way for ten miles by them. In other 
 words, Sid, a very nice neighbor of ours has 
 vanished into the desert with only water and 
 food for two days at the utmost, and he has gone 
 on a wild-goose chase and no one has any notion 
 
16 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 what old Pete told him or the directions he gave 
 him. Pete has one of his moody fits and won't 
 talk at all, except to defy us." 
 
 " Where is this Asbestos Pete?" Sid asked. 
 
 "At the Boyle place," was the reply. 
 
 "And he won't tell where Mr. Boyle has gone, 
 
 ci r>" 
 
 SAX I 
 
 "His poor old cracked head thinks we are 
 trying to cheat him out of his asbestos mine, 
 Sid." 
 
 "We ought to have warned the Boyles!" Mrs. 
 Moulton cried. 
 
 "Who would suppose any sane man would 
 believe his wild stories?" her husband re- 
 sponded. "He's harmless and does his work 
 reasonably well. Boyle is a fool." 
 
 "A tenderfoot," his wife answered gently. 
 
 "Have you searched for Mr. Boyle at all?" 
 Sid inquired. 
 
 "Yes. But there aren't many of us who know 
 the desert at all well, Sid. And we don't even 
 have an idea which way he went. This desert 
 is a mighty big place. I just came in in time to 
 
Getting Next to Trouble 17 
 
 go and get you at the station. It's a hopeless job. 
 Boyle may be lucky enough to stay in some road 
 or follow a trail and meet some one. On the 
 other hand he may have got lost within an hour 
 after he started out. He had twenty-four hours' 
 start of us." 
 
 Sid got up and gazed out on the desert over 
 which an almost full moon was now rising 
 swiftly. The mountains on the horizon had van- 
 ished; he saw only an infinite expanse of waste, 
 shimmering in the bright light like a lake, 
 shadowed here and there, but shoreless. And 
 somewhere out in its luminous depths the wind 
 was beating its metallic wings with a low, 
 melancholy note. 
 
 "How far could he have got by this time, sir?" 
 
 His uncle shook his head. "Figure it your- 
 self thirty miles, maybe. Take that as the 
 radius of a circle and you have twenty-eight 
 hundred miles you might have to travel to find 
 him. Remember, you can't see or hear a man a 
 half a mile out here, unless there's a mirage." 
 
 "I know what a mirage is at sea, sir," the 
 
18 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 scout said. "But out here I don't know what 
 you mean." 
 
 Mrs. Moulton explained that before the sun 
 rose there was frequently a quarter of an hour 
 when the whole desert seemed to rise around the 
 ranch like the edges of a bowl and they could 
 sometimes see cabins ten miles away, or a wild 
 horse five miles away, or even a pack train fif- 
 teen miles away. "But when the sun comes up 
 over the horizon it all disappears, Sid." 
 
 They talked this over for an hour. Then Mr. 
 Moulton got up wearily and said he would make 
 a last trip to the Bolyes' place to inquire for 
 news. 
 
 "And Sid will go to bed," said his aunt, "for 
 he must be very tired." 
 
 The scout felt like anything but bed, but 
 obeyed and was soon comfortably installed on a 
 cot in a corner of the porch. He saw the car 
 lights vanish into the glorious shimmer of the 
 moon and lay thinking over the problem that 
 the story of the Boyles had propounded. He 
 
Getting Next to Trouble 19 
 
 was awake when his uncle returned to tell his 
 wife that Mrs. Boyle had no news. 
 
 "Old Pete is still sullen," he added, in a low 
 tone. "You know it only makes him worse to 
 irritate him with questions." 
 
 "I wonder if Pete ever did discover an asbes- 
 tos mine?" Mrs. Moulton sighed. 
 
 "He spent years enough prospecting," was the 
 reply. "But if he ever did, he's forgotten all the 
 details. They say he's been crazy for years ever 
 since he was picked up almost dead with thirst 
 beyond Old Woman's Springs." 
 
 Sid heard this and began to think harder than 
 ever, with the result that he went to sleep and 
 knew nothing until he wakened in chill dark- 
 ness, wholly conscious, and his mind clear. How 
 it happened he could not tell; but he thought 
 he had solved the problem of finding Mr. Boyle. 
 It struck him that in such a pinch no time should 
 'be lost. Should he waken his uncle and aunt and 
 tell them? He sat up and looked for the moon. 
 Its shadow told him that it was after three 
 
20 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 o'clock. He shivered in the cold wind and hesi- 
 tated. But he knew that hours must count. He 
 got up and roused Mr. Moulton. 
 
 "I want to have a try to find Mr. Boyle," the 
 scout said quietly. "I have an idea." 
 
 Mr. Moulton got up and led the way inside 
 where he lit the oil stove and put the kettle on. 
 "I can't sleep anyway with this tragedy hanging 
 over us," he remarked. "If you have an idea, 
 out with it." 
 
 "You know I've been scouting for some time, 
 sir," Sid said modestly. "The desert is new to 
 me. But I think my notion is a good one and I 
 am willing to try it." 
 
 "I'll go with you," his uncle said promptly. 
 "I am going to make another try, anyway." 
 
 "I'll have to do this alone," Sid said earnestly. 
 
 "You're as foolish as Boyle," his uncle 
 responded. 
 
 But Sid knew his own mind and when he had 
 explained just what he was going to try to do 
 Mr. Moulton became thoughtful. At last he 
 said, "Very well. I warn you it will be a ter- 
 
Getting Next to Trouble 21 
 
 rific task. You have no idea of what it means. 
 But if you will promise one thing, I'll let you 
 go." 
 
 "Certainly I'll promise," was the reply. 
 
 "Leave a trail I and others can follow, Sid. 
 We won't interfere. We'll give you six hours' 
 start, at least. But if you reach the end of your 
 resources you will know that we are behind 
 you. If need be you can turn on your steps and 
 come back the way you came so long as you are 
 absolutely sure of your trail. But you must 
 promise that if you get lost you will remain 
 exactly where you are when you stop the first 
 time. I want you to understand that /it is the 
 hardest thing in the world to back-track on the 
 desert. There is risk that even I and others who 
 are accustomed to it may miss you. I hate to let 
 you go. But I know your oath. I respect it. 
 Go ahead." 
 
 In half an hour Sid had eaten a hearty break- 
 fast and been provided with a sack of provisions 
 and two canteens of water. Mr. Moulton then 
 took him in the car, with the lights out, to within 
 
22 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 a mile of the Boyle place. When the scout had 
 got out and stood under the dark sky whence 
 the moon was departing, his uncle leaned out 
 and shook hands. 
 
 "You'll find Pete staying in a little shanty at 
 the far corner of the Boyle place. You say you 
 want to come on him by surprise and have hiiri 
 know that nobody else is with you. I'll tell Mrs. 
 Boyle later about it. Good luck, Sidl" 
 
 The car turned round and vanished almost 
 instantly. In that few seconds of time Sid found 
 that he had almost lost his sense of the direction 
 he ought to go. But he had marked the compass 
 direction and the road led lightly towards the 
 Boyles', though crossed and recrossed with other 
 ruts. However, he managed to keep the main 
 trail and soon emerged into what is known on 
 the Mojave as a "clearing" where the sand is 
 scraped clean of brush and sage and plowed for 
 planting. He stood still on the edge of it till 
 he had picked out the dim shadow of the Boyle 
 house (with a lamp glimmering in a window 
 where the wife kept her lonely watch) and 
 
Getting Next to Trouble 23 
 
 another small blocklike shadow which, he knew, 
 was Asbestos Pete's shanty. Towards the latter 
 he made his way quickly, though the soft sand 
 hindered his progress and made him breathe 
 quickly. He found the old man seated in his 
 doorway, like a gaunt, gray shadow. In the dusk 
 his eyes shone like black mirrors. 
 
 Within ten feet of him Sid stopped. His whole 
 scheme depended on Pete's being actually crazy 
 and subject to illusions. If his first approach 
 failed his plan fell to the ground. The scout 
 drew his breath stoutly and went forward, mak- 
 ing the peace sign. 
 
 He saw that his noiseless coming was 
 observed. The figure in the doorway stirred. A 
 skinny hand was lifted and returned the sign 
 plainly. Sid came near and stood still and silent. 
 It was his cue to wait till the old fellow spoke. 
 
 For a full ten minutes the scout remained 
 stock-still, his eyes fixed on Pete. And all that 
 time the old prospector glared at him intensely, 
 suspiciously. Here was an utter stranger, rising 
 out of the desert to make a single sign and then 
 
24 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 wait. As Sid had reckoned, the old man was 
 seized with the notion that this was an extraor- 
 dinary occasion. It was plain that before long 
 he would have interpreted it. If he interpreted 
 this weird visit as Sid hoped and prayed he 
 would, the rest would be clear sailing. But the 
 strain was horrible. 
 
 Suddenly Pete's face twitched dreadfully and 
 his voice came from his dark lips like a croak. 
 
 "You died twenty-two years ago come next 
 month." 
 
 Sid repeated the peace sign slowly and sig- 
 nificantly. 
 
 Pete got up and peered at him. His meager 
 limbs were shaking. 
 
 "You don't hold it agin me?" His voice broke. 
 He swallowed and resumed, "Ye don't hold it 
 agin' me pard?" 
 
 Sid turned and swung his arm out in a wide 
 gesture, coming to a point at a star in the north. 
 Pete shambled forward and his eyes bored into 
 the boy's. Then he sighed and whispered, in an 
 appalling voice, "Ye came after me?" 
 
 ".We must hurry," Sid answered him, also in 
 
Getting Next to Trouble 25 
 
 a whisper. "We must hurry before others get 
 ahead of us." 
 
 Insanity rang in the old man's voice and 
 froze Sid's blood: "Yes, we'll go back to the 
 same old spot, you and me, pard." 
 
 It needed no acting on the scout's part to utter 
 "Now" in a ghastly tone. 
 
 In three minutes the two of them were stealth- 
 ily making their way across the little clearing 
 and into the brush. Sid glanced back. Mrs. 
 Boyle's little light still glimmered in the dark- 
 ness, sign that she waited for her husband's 
 return. He quickly noted the stars. Pete was 
 leading directly off in a northerly direction. As 
 he smelt the dawn the boy drew back slowly, till 
 an interval of a hundred feet separated himself 
 and his unconscious guide. He determined to 
 come to no closer quarters unless it was neces- 
 sary. He must maintain the illusion that he was 
 the returned form of the prospector's long-dead 
 partner. He knew that his scout's dress made 
 the picture pretty convincing to a man long 
 obsessed with delusions. 
 
 "Lucky for me I caught that sentence about 
 
26 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 Asbestos Pete's having been found wandering 
 almost dead not far from the body of a young 
 chap who had been prospecting with him," Sid 
 thought. "I wish I knew that fellow's name and 
 who he was." 
 
 The sun began to lighten the eastern sky and, 
 remembering what his uncle and aunt had told 
 him of the mirage, he kept a good lookout. 
 Presently when he glanced behind him he was 
 amazed to see the Moulton ranch, apparently a 
 short mile away, and the Boyle place close beside 
 it. He detected his uncle outside with the dogs. 
 He saw Mrs. Boyle peering out under the sharp 
 of her hand. Then he followed on after the old 
 man, who was plunging along unweariedly, fol- 
 lowing some strange sense of direction with ease, 
 as a dog runs down a scent. The sun rose swiftly, 
 and in its sudden heat the desert swallowed 
 everything up again except the objects immedi- 
 ately in their path. 
 
 All morning Asbestos Pete kept doggedly on. 
 Sid could see that the old fellow was almost 
 exhausted. Now and again he stumbled. The 
 
Getting Next to Trouble 27 
 
 scout himself was panting and cruelly tortured 
 by thirst. But he was aware that he must not 
 pause even to drink. Now and then Pete would 
 cast a hasty and searching glance behind him. 
 
 "He thinks I'm haunting him," Sid thought, 
 and then let his mind race on to Boyle. He 
 figured that, after all, Pete had told Boyle the 
 truth so far as his cracked brain conceived it. 
 In fact, Boyle was certainly not wholly a fool. 
 He had been convinced that the mine was a fact, 
 and within reach. He had also agreed to Pete's 
 terms of keeping it a secret from all. But had 
 'Boyle come this way? Was Pete now going in 
 the direction he had told Boyle to go? 
 
 This question became urgent. Sid strained his 
 eyes to see any track of another. The prospector 
 was leading him now in an apparently aimless 
 but really straight course, and so far they had 
 fallen into no trail or semblance of one. 
 
 At noon Sid's heart leaped. They came to the 
 tracks of a man traveling quickly, and in the 
 same direction they were going. Pete observed 
 this and began to lag. Sid saw that he was anx- 
 
28 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 ious for him to come up. He kept the interval 
 carefully. And at last the old man boldly took 
 up the new trail and pushed on. 
 
 For another hour they kept up this queer pro- 
 cession. Sid felt his strength boiling away, so 
 to speak. His throat was swelling, the calves of 
 his legs began to ache unbearably, and he saw 
 dark blots floating before his eyes. The figure 
 of the man ahead of him began to grow vague 
 and wavering. But he kept his mind on the 
 tracks that they followed and presently, by an 
 effort, he detected the truth : the man they fol- 
 lowed had set a compass course. Sid, with a 
 grunt at his own forgetfulness, got his own out 
 and observed the direction. It was eight degrees 
 east of north. An hour later it marked the same. 
 He saw far ahead a single landmark, a bare, 
 scarred butte with a notch in the west side of it. 
 He waited till he saw the old man glance back 
 over his shoulder to see if he was coming and 
 then quickly withdrew from the dim trail and 
 threw himself down in the scant shade of a 
 mesquite bush. He drank some water pnlv 
 
Getting Next to Trouble 29 
 
 enough to wash out his throat and ate some 
 bread and butter. He rested for twenty minutes. 
 Then he went on, infinitely refreshed. An hour 
 later he caught sight of the old man again. Pete 
 had stopped and was staring round him. Sid 
 quickened his pace till he had closed the interval 
 to a hundred yards and was rejoiced to see his 
 crazy guide start on. The course was still eight 
 degrees east of north. The tracks of the man he 
 supposed and hoped was Boyle were still visible. 
 
 Towards sundown they reached the foot of the 
 butte that rose to the sky in one tremendous out- 
 burst of raw, volcanic rock. Here Sid realized 
 that he was in difficulties. The hard and jagged 
 surface showed no tracks at all. But Pete seemed 
 not to hesitate. He climbed up the long slope 
 to the base of the butte, clambered over several 
 ridges, and disappeared into a gullylike crevice. 
 Sid followed him and found himself entering a 
 kind of greenish arbor. A moment later he came 
 upon Pete, stooped over a shallow bowl in the 
 rock which was filled with water. 
 
 Though the old man was going through the 
 
30 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 motions of dipping the cool, clear liquid up in 
 his cupped palms and lapping it, Sid noticed 
 that he 'was not drinking it. He caught the wild 
 gleam in the haggard eyes that flashed back on 
 him. He felt suddenly faint and sick. Under 
 foot a thin, hollow bone splintered with a sharp 
 crackling. Other white bones, multitudes of 
 them, lay scattered around skulls, thighs, ver- 
 tebras. The scout knew he had solved part of 
 the mystery of Asbestos Pete's insanity. He 
 knew that he was acting the part of the partner 
 who had died years before. He knew why Asbes- 
 tos Pete was mad and why none of those who 
 had listened to his tale had ever found the mine. 
 The water was poison. But he must act the part 
 out. The old man got up with every sign of 
 satisfaction and drew aside, smiling horribly. 
 
 Sid waited without a word and then slipped 
 up to the deadly pool, threw himself down with 
 his face over it and closed his eyes. He thrust his 
 head down under the surface, holding his breath. 
 He remained thus for as long as he could, then 
 lifted his head. With a great effort he spat and 
 
Getting Next to Trouble 31: 
 
 sputtered, like a man who has drunk his fill and 
 almost strangled himself. Then he drew back 
 silently and sat down. Pete's eyes were on him. 
 He could almost feel them burning on him. And 
 the bones of men and animals who had drunk 
 long since of those deadly bright waters glim- 
 mered in the dusk. 
 
 So weary was the scout that he almost fell 
 asleep. But presently he perceived that Pete was 
 cautiously crawling closely to him. He knew 
 why: it was to see if he were dying as another 
 youth a generation before had died, and with 
 him the secret of the mine. He rose quietly and 
 faced the murderer. 
 
 The crazed man gulped and gaped. Then he 
 laughed and the noise of his unholy merriment 
 rang out in the cavern of the night and echoed 
 like wild mockery of some spirit unclean and 
 in torment. 
 
 "My old pard!" cried Pete, and slapped his 
 withered thigh. "Come back after twenty-two 
 years! The poison spring can't hurt ye now, ye 
 say? True. It can't. But that spring has saved 
 
32 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 the secret for both of us, pard. Ever since I left 
 ye dead down the trail I've kept it safe and 
 sound. I've told many a man about our mine 
 and sent them out into the desert to die, the fools! 
 But you and I can't die, old pard! We'll keep 
 our secret still from them all!" 
 
 The madman, shaking, pallid, sweating with 
 fear, torn by remorse, suffering the furies that 
 had burnt out his manhood, cackled shrilly. Sid 
 felt his heart stop in his breast. He would have 
 run for his life had he been able to move. Asbes- 
 tos Pete laughed again hysterically, sobbing. 
 Then he ceased, stared, and fumbled with his 
 lips. A moment later he was crawling over to 
 the spring, glancing fearfully back at the still 
 figure of the scout. He reached the pool, rippled 
 it with a sweep of his crooked hand, dipped up a 
 palmful and drank it noisily. Sid tried to leap 
 up to prevent him. Something like a nightmare 
 paralyzed him. The old man drank deeply, 
 swallowing the poison in great gulps, babbling 
 to himself inarticulately. Then he rolled over 
 
Getting Next to Trouble 33 
 
 quietly on his back and fixed his bright old eyes 
 on the stars. Sid rose and went to him. 
 
 Instead of madness, composure had come with 
 approaching death. The scout looked down into 
 a face from which the pain and agony and 
 dementia of years was being wiped away. The 
 old lips were curved in a smile. The cracked old 
 voice muttered softly. Sid stooped. 
 
 "Pard; old pard!" whispered the dying man. 
 "Ye know I warned ye against that poison water 
 when we were packing out to record our mine 
 and because you were young and hasty and 
 didn't know enough to keep a hand on yourself, 
 you drank it and went mad with me on the 
 desert. I never went back to the mine, pard I 
 I left it just where it was, all that wealth and 
 money, because it was yours as well as mine and 
 I never yet went back on a pard. But they tried 
 to steal it from us, pard. I kept the secret. I 
 lied to 'em all. But it's been misery. Sometimes 
 I'd get to thinking I might ha' done more to 
 keep you from drinking that water and it 
 
34 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 bothered me. I used to dream you thought I'd 
 poisoned you to keep the mine for myself. I 
 didn't, and you know I didn't. Now we're 
 together." 
 
 The old man's voice grew feebler. Sid leaned 
 over gently. The steady eyes met his with affec- 
 tion and confidence. The fumbling hand sought 
 his. 
 
 "We'll both of us go back to the mine," he 
 murmured. "I never let on to a soul where it 
 was ... it's purs . . s fore.yer . . . and . . . 
 ever." 
 
 That look of faithfulness died slowly. The 
 hand that clutched his Sid felt relax. He was 
 alone under the butte. The rising moon threw 
 its silvery beams into the pool of poison water 
 and made it glitter like a polished mirror. 
 
 The scout got to his feet. He had solved the 
 problem of Asbestos Pete, and discovered the 
 tragedy of his sorrow-maddened life. But there 
 was still his duty to perform to find Boyle. 
 
 Had Boyle drunk of this water? 
 
 If he had, Sid told himself, his body would 
 
Getting Next to Trouble 35 
 
 not be far away. If he hadn't and his footsteps 
 had led almost to the spot he likewise would 
 not be far away. It was perfectly clear that the 
 old prospector had given his employer the route 
 to this spring. Whether he had cunningly 
 planned for him to drink of it, and so perish, 
 was doubtful. Though inexperienced in the 
 ways and moods of crazy men, the scout knew 
 perfectly well that their actions are never from 
 simple motives but always from impulses 
 mingled of the sane and insane. 
 
 He lit a fire of greasewood roots and then 
 began a methodical search in the moonlight 
 around the base of the butte. After an hour of 
 this, the fire having burned out, he relit it and 
 prepared his supper. He found himself almost 
 exhausted and thought it best to rest and keep 
 the fire blazing. If Boyle were anywhere in the 
 neighborhood he would see it and come. If he 
 had drunk of the poison water he was past help. 
 But after two hours of watchfulness Sid began 
 to feel compunctions. He got up presently and 
 addressed himself to going clean around the 
 
36 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 butte, a matter of two or three miles, he reck- 
 oned. At dawn he came on fresh tracks on the 
 other side. They led off northward. He con- 
 sulted his compass. The course was sixteen de- 
 grees east of north. He studied the landscape. 
 In that direction he saw another landmark, this 
 time the spur of a low range of mountains. He 
 judged that the distance must be twenty miles, 
 across an absolutely arid valley. Suddenly he 
 became alert. The mirage had lifted the floor of 
 the valley into stark visibility. A figure was 
 trudging through the white sand. It was coming 
 back to the butte. Sid's trained eyes saw that 
 the man, whoever he was, was utterly worn out. 
 He staggered and fell twice and twice got to his 
 feet in his sight before the rising sun dissipated 
 the vision and the desert again spread out in 
 solitude. 
 
 Within two hours the scout reached the man. 
 It was Boyle, as he gathered from a few broken 
 words muttered through blackened lips and with 
 a swollen tongue. A few sups of water and a 
 morsel of bread helped the man to recover him- 
 self. By noon the scout had him in the shade of 
 
Getting Next to Trouble 37 
 
 the gully where the poison pool lay obscure and 
 treacherous. Into this same shade the two of 
 them dragged the body of Asbestos Pete. 
 
 The question long hot on Sid's lips came out: 
 "Did you drink of that pool, Mr. Boyle?" 
 
 Boyle shook his head wearily. "No. Pete 
 warned me about it. I filled my canteens from 
 the upper one." 
 
 "The upper one!" 
 
 Boyle painfully led the way up the gully past 
 the shallow basin of poison water. Not a dozen 
 yards beyond it a little spring bubbled out of 
 the rocks, overran in a thin sheet an immense 
 boulder, and so vanished. 
 
 "Pete told me to drink of the upper one," 
 Boyle explained. 
 
 Sid shot another question : "Did you find the 
 asbestos mine?" 
 
 "Never heard of it," Mr. Boyle answered 
 promptly. "Here's what I went to get." 
 
 He drew out a little cotton sack and poured 
 out a half dozen odd-looking stones. Sid picked 
 one up. 
 
 "Fire opals!" 
 
38 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 "Worth about a thousand dollars, the lot," 
 Mr. Boyle said with satisfaction. "Pete told me 
 there were lots of them out here. So I came. I 
 thought I'd die, though." He became serious. 
 "I don't think I'd have survived if it hadn't 
 been for you, son." 
 
 Sid said nothing. His mind was on the his- 
 tory of the old prospector who had told his story 
 to scornful men for a score of years, who had 
 passed an existence divided between periods of 
 childish forgetfulness and of mad recollection 
 of the great tragedy of his life. It struck the 
 scout that Asbestos Pete had been woefully mis- 
 judged. There was still time to justify him in 
 the eyes of the people who had despised him. 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Boyle, "I owe my life to you, 
 
 son." 
 
 Sid Moulton pointed to the gray, withered 
 old man who lay so peacefully in the shade of 
 the bushes. 
 
 "No, there's the man who came to find you. 
 He was afraid you'd get lost and he knew the 
 way." 
 
Getting Next to Trouble 39 
 
 "Funny he didn't know enough not to drink 
 that poison water after warning me about it." 
 
 Sid felt his eyelids grow heavy in the heat. 
 Mr. Boyle's husky voice seemed very far away. 
 The sun was blazing on the pitiless desert and 
 the air that eddied in through the brush was 
 stinging to the nostrils. He glanced up. A speck 
 in the sky, a vulture hovered, its piercing gaze 
 having detected its rightful prey. It waited 
 there until the living should have abandoned 
 the dead. 
 
 "I don't see anything queer in his drinking 
 that water," Sid murmured, staring into the hot 
 firmament. "His partner did." 
 
 "Who was his partner?" demanded the other. 
 
 The scout's answer, odd as it sounded, was 
 true. 
 
 "I was," Sid answered, and closed his eyes 
 in sleep. 
 
THE PRICE OF CITIZENSHIP 
 
 TT was not long before Sid had found a new 
 -*- friend, who lived about four miles across the 
 desert from his uncle's ranch near Helen's Sta- 
 tion. Bob Child, otherwise known as "Angel" 
 Child, was a scout belonging to a troop in North- 
 ern California. He, too, was a visitor to the des- 
 ert, staying at his grandfather's ranch on the 
 Barstow road. 
 
 Angel came to spend the Fourth of July 
 with Sid. They woke early, in the sharp air that 
 foretold the dawn, slipped out of their cots and 
 ran silently, barefooted and in nightclothes, for 
 the water barrel that supplied the household 
 baths. A moment, and both were laughing and 
 gurgling and dashing the cold liquid at each 
 other with lard buckets. Then they raced back 
 into the big screen porch and dressed lightly 
 while the eastern hills began to burn and 
 smolder. 
 
 40 
 
The Price of Citizenship 41 
 
 "Fourth of July!" Sid remarked. "Uncle 
 Joe's going to start for Victorville before it gets 
 too hot." 
 
 Child grinned. "I hear 'em stirring on the 
 other porch, but I'll bet you a nickel the ther- 
 mometer reaches a hundred before breakfast." 
 
 Sid nodded. His eyes were fixed on the blaz- 
 ing horizon. A huge, steady flame had risen into 
 the sky, as if blown by some tremendous blast 
 from below the mountain. It licked the stars 
 quickly up, blackened the steel blue clear to the 
 zenith, and then died down. Through a notch in 
 the far sierra a blob of hot gold rose, like mol- 
 ten metal rising above the lip of a dam. It 
 showed larger and larger and then burst into a 
 dazzling flood of almost insufferable light which 
 filled the end of the valley and spread out brim- 
 ming to the San Bernardinos on one side, to the 
 Calicoes on the north. Just in front of the ranch 
 a lake appeared, shimmering and twinkling 
 silently among the yucca palms. 
 
 The scouts breathed deeply at this ever-recur- 
 ring miracle of the mirage. 
 
42 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 "It means an awfully hot day," Sid remarked. 
 "And wind." 
 
 "Sand storm," Angel agreed. 
 
 "Hot." 
 
 "Hot," Angel Child repeated. 
 
 Their forecast was accepted by Mr. Moulton 
 good-naturedly. "We desert people oughtn't to 
 worry over it," he said, smiling at his wife. 
 "And all the Fourths mostly I ever knew were 
 pretty warm, even in other places." 
 
 But at seven the sun was scorching the sand. 
 The morning breeze had died completely and 
 the little party found the car's rapid travel up 
 the waterless bed of the Mojave all too slow for 
 comfort. At eight they had reached Victorville, 
 where already a big, contented crowd had gath- 
 ered for the day's celebration. The scouts re- 
 ceived instructions where to meet their elders 
 for dinner and quickly mingled with the cow- 
 boys, horse wranglers, miners, prospectors, 
 homesteaders, millmen, and business men who 
 had come in from all quarters for the day. 
 Other scouts turned up and presently they all 
 
The Price of Citizenship 43 
 
 went by themselves above the river gorge for a 
 swim in one of the few pools that remained to 
 mark the course of the dying stream. Then Sid 
 and Angel determined to go back to town and 
 find their people. 
 
 "Somehow it seems to be getting hotter than 
 I ever heard of," Sid remarked. "Maybe Uncle 
 Joe and Aunt Mary will want to go back to 
 the ranch." 
 
 "It's certainly hot/' his companion replied, 
 wiping the sweat out of his hat. "But maybe 
 it's just because we had a swim that we feel it 
 
 so." 
 
 Sid Moulton picked up a stone of curious tint 
 and dropped it quickly. 
 
 "Even that pebble's too hot to hold," he said, 
 making a face. 
 
 "Think of the people traveling across the 
 desert this weather." 
 
 "Whew!" 
 
 "And people not driving cars but riding after 
 mules and burros," Angel went on. 
 
 Sid refused to consider this at all and led the 
 
44 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 way to a group in front of the post office enjoy- 
 ing the shade of the cottonwood trees and a gen- 
 erous gossip. Mr. Moulton greeted them cheer- 
 fully but with a trace of anxiety on his face. Sid 
 observed this and wondered whether the heat 
 was really extraordinary or not. But almost im- 
 mediately his attention was drawn by the ap- 
 pearance of the postmistress, with a letter in 
 her hand. 
 
 "Now, Miss Messick!" some one drawled, 
 "don't ask a man to fetch that letter to its owner 
 this kind of a day." 
 
 The postmistress smiled but did not give an 
 inch. She looked over the little group and re- 
 peated a request which Sid instantly understood 
 she had made before: 
 
 "Here's a letter for Anton Sijota, and it's gov- 
 ernment and he lives out west by Mirage Lake 
 somewhere, and it's important." 
 
 "None of us goes that way, ma'am," said a 
 cow-puncher thoughtfully. 
 
 "One would think nobody ever went that 
 way," Miss Messick sniffed. "This letter has 
 been here six days already. Doesn't anybody 
 
The Price of Citizenship 45 
 
 want to go a little out of their way and deliver 
 it?" 
 
 Sid saw that the listeners, willing as they 
 might be to do a favor, couldn't see any neces- 
 sity of spoiling a perfectly good Fourth by bur- 
 dening themselves with a letter for some un- 
 known and foreign settler. He followed the 
 postmistress inside and asked her about the Si- 
 jotas pronouncing the name in the Spanish 
 way, See-jo-ta. 
 
 "They have lived out west somewhere near 
 the dry lake for three years," she told him. "I've 
 seen none of them except a young fellow who 
 used to come in once a month on foot and get the 
 mail for his mother. But my sister told me that 
 the father, who was a soldier in France, came 
 home three months ago and has been in eight or 
 nine times for the mail in the past six weeks. He 
 walks in and it must be twenty-five miles and 
 seems so disappointed at not getting anything. 
 My sister understood he was looking for some 
 back pay in a letter. Here it is, all ready for the 
 poor man, and he doesn't turn up." 
 
 Sid thanked her for the information and 
 
46 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 quietly went off and made other inquiries. The 
 gist of his findings was this: a little over two 
 years before Mrs. Sijota and her sixteen-year-old 
 son had arrived in Victorville and asked the 
 way to a small, abandoned ranch near Gray 
 Mountain. They had gone there, and off and on 
 the lad had come into town with a very small 
 sum of money to buy provisions and get the mail. 
 This boy, so Richardson, the storekeeper, told 
 Sid, seemed sickly. After the war was over the 
 husband and father had arrived, evidently still 
 weakened by wounds. He had made a great 
 many trips in on foot asking for his mail. 
 
 "If you ask me," Richardson told the scout, 
 "he expects his back pay and hasn't anything in 
 the meantime. I offered him goods on credit but 
 he didn't seem to understand." 
 
 "Spanish, sir?" 
 
 "No, a Pole, I think," said the storekeeper. 
 "A Russian Pole." 
 
 Of others Sid gathered that the Sijota place 
 which no one would admit going near was 
 on the edge of the dry lake known as Mirage 
 Lake, a most desolate and forbidding spot. 
 
The Price of Citizenship 47 
 
 "And at this moment," said one of his inform- 
 ants, "I'll warrant the sand is blowing a mile 
 high right there." 
 
 Having digested this, Sid called Angel Child 
 aside and gave him the news. 
 
 "They haven't been in to buy anything for two 
 weeks," Sid went on. "Both the man and the 
 boy are sick. Besides that, he has to walk when 
 he comes in he couldn't do it in this weather, 
 could he?" 
 
 "No," Child admitted. "But he's a foreigner, 
 isn't he?" 
 
 "He was an American soldier in France and 
 was wounded," Sid returned. 
 
 Angel Child nodded. "A nice Fourth of 
 July for him, eh? Broke, and a sand storm and 
 no grub. Whew!" 
 
 Sid's hot face flushed still more. "It looks 
 good for the rest of us Americans to celebrate 
 the Fourth while a man that fought for us is out 
 there on his ranch, doesn't it?" 
 
 "Dunno what we can do," the other scout re- 
 joined uncomfortably. 
 
48 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 "That letter has money in it, so Miss Messick 
 says. We might take it out to him." 
 
 "Walk? Twenty-five miles? You're crazy, 
 Sid! And it's getting so hot now people are 
 nearly dead with it." 
 
 "Ride," Sid replied firmly. "I'm game to 
 ask Uncle Joe." 
 
 "He wouldn't hear to our going," Child 
 responded. 
 
 "You go if he says yes?" 
 
 "Sure." 
 
 To the scouts' utter amazement Mr. Moulton 
 seemed much relieved when the suggestion was 
 put to him. "That letter was worrying me, boys. 
 I'll go with you, for your aunt is going to visit 
 with a friend for the day, anyway." 
 
 "But you'll miss the doings!" Sid protested. 
 
 His uncle laughed and directed the boys to 
 borrow three or four extra canteens and fill them 
 with fresh water. 
 
 It was within an hour of noon when the car 
 climbed up out of the rocky bowl in which Vic- 
 torville lies and they caught the hot blast of the 
 
The Price of Citizenship 49 
 
 wind on the mesa. Far ahead of them a dense, 
 ruddy cloud rose a mile into the burning aii; 
 shadowy, mingled with darker fumes, billow- 
 ing up like smoke from a furnace. 
 
 "Just what I feared," Mr. Moulton said 
 quietly. "A sand storm." 
 
 "Do you think we'd better risk it?" Angel 
 Child inquired. 
 
 "I happen to know the place where these poor 
 people live," was the grim reply. "I've been 
 worried ever since Miss Messick spoke about 
 them. I really oughtn't to take you boys along. 
 But we have water enough and it will get cooler 
 to-night." 
 
 "But " Sid began. 
 
 Mr. Moulton gazed intently ahead. "There's 
 been water there for several years," he said. 
 "But I remember a year when the wells by the 
 lake dried up suddenly. And I believe it's 
 twelve miles to the nearest sure well from the 
 Sijotas' place." 
 
 The scouts glanced at each other. They 
 blinked in the terrific heat, but said no more. 
 
SO Scouts of the Desert 
 
 A few miles further on they drove through 
 the little oasis of Adelanto and its orchards > now 
 steaming in the heat. All was silence, except 
 for the whine of the rising wind which swept 
 across the desolate leagues like the breath of fire. 
 At the pumping plant they refilled the radiator 
 and cooled the canteens. 
 
 "We must have still more," Mr. Moulton re- 
 marked curtly, and picked up a water bag which 
 he carefully soaked and filled. "I'll return it 
 later." 
 
 After leaving Adelanto the road became heav- 
 ier with sand. The car began to labor and be- 
 fore long they were going in second speed with 
 difficulty. Now and again a swirling dust-devil 
 would envelop them in sand and dust and fine 
 particles of dried vegetables. Each time they 
 would have to stop and clear their eyes and 
 mouths. And each time they started on the 
 going was heavier. 
 
 The speedometer marked sixteen miles from 
 Victorville when they first had to get out of the 
 
The Price of Citizenship 51 
 
 car and use the shovel to clear the ruts so the 
 wheels could revolve. For the next two hours 
 they toiled ceaselessly, closed in by the stifling 
 cloud of dust that poured up from the desert 
 floor and obscured the very sun. And all this 
 time they dared not touch their precious water. 
 But at last they won through to hard going 
 across an old sink, from which the winter's 
 waters had drained away to leave rutted adobe, 
 baked into a kind of cementlike rock. Over this 
 they had to crawl slowly for fear of breaking 
 springs. Then they reached the borders of 
 Mirage Lake and stopped, appalled. 
 
 Into this great, absolutely level expanse of 
 low ground every wash had poured its flood 
 waters for centuries untold. Each winter had 
 seen the mineral deposit heavier. Each summer 
 had seen the sun dry the water up and bake the 
 bed harder, till it was many yards deep with 
 soda. This huge cake, many square miles in ex- 
 tent, had been cracked and pulverized by blaz- 
 ing heat and torrential winds, so that it offered 
 
52 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 to the gale a dust as fine as flour, as acrid and 
 biting as salt, as parching as ashes. All this had 
 been swept up into the air and swirled and 
 fumed and smoked and eddied and drove wildly 
 over the desert like a cloud of dry poison. The 
 road, which went directly across this "lake," 
 was obliterated. 
 
 For some time Sid tried to figure out his di- 
 rections; but it was impossible. Both scouts 
 realized that to attempt to drive the car off the 
 well-defined road into this seething mist of hur- 
 tling sand and soda flakes would be death. They 
 crouched in the lee of the car and waited for 
 Mr. Moulton to make his decision. 
 
 Suddenly he waved his hand to them and they 
 got into the car and pulled the curtains snugly 
 down. 
 
 "I'm going around!" he cried. 
 
 The car swung to the left and presently en- 
 tered a vaguely marked trail across which the 
 sand had been blown in great windrows. In the 
 first one they stuck, hub deep. 
 
 "Our only chance, boys!" Mr. Moulton re- 
 
The Price of Citizenship S3 
 
 marked, and led the way out to tackle it with the 
 shovels. 
 
 Slowly they hammered their way along, using 
 the car now as a battering-ram, now gentling it 
 over some harder surface. And as their watches 
 marked six o'clock they emerged into a stretch 
 which offered fair traveling. But the heat was 
 worse than ever. 
 
 "Now we'll have a drink all around, boys," 
 said Mr. Moulton. 
 
 They stared at each other's blackened faces 
 and cracked lips and laughed. 
 
 "Do we go back the way we came?" Sid asked 
 huskily. 
 
 "No," was the reply. "First, let's find the Si- 
 jotas. Then we'll figure on the return trip." 
 
 A mile further on they emerged from the 
 choking sand storm and stared dazedly at a 
 great wall of rock that rose above them. 
 
 "Gray Mountain," Mr. Moulton gasped, and 
 swung the car to the right. "Their place is the 
 other side of it." 
 
 This piece of so-called road proved worse 
 
54 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 than all before. It was sanded over so that the 
 ruts were almost imperceptible. They kept to 
 the proper trail by observing the yucca palms 
 and the sparse greasewood and sage which, of 
 course, had been cleared from the road. But 
 many times they knew they were off it and re- 
 gained it only by arduous search. 
 
 "The main thing is to keep close to the moun- 
 tain," Mr. Moulton explained. "We can't go 
 far wrong." 
 
 "We've boiled away two canteens full of 
 water in the radiator," Angel Child stated later 
 when they stopped to cool the engine again. 
 
 "I see a shack off there to the right," Sid 
 exclaimed. 
 
 "That's it," his uncle answered. 
 
 They plunged on and presently came to a 
 full stop about a hundred yards from a small, 
 ill-built shanty set in a little wired enclosure. 
 Door and windows were tightly shut. No tracks 
 appeared in the freshly blown sand. 
 
 "They must have gone out and quit," Sid sug- 
 gested. 
 
The Price of Citizenship 55 
 
 His uncle said nothing but led the way on 
 through the soft footing to the door. He knocked 
 loudly. 
 
 So the three of them stood in the stifling heat, 
 shielding their faces from tHe hurtling sand, lis- 
 tening for some sound from the house. None 
 came. Mr. Moulton knocked again, banging on 
 the cracked and paintless panel with his fist. 
 And from within came a queer whining sob, a 
 thin sound of misery which made the scouts' hair 
 bristle. With one accord they put their weight 
 on the door. It gave. They found themselves 
 peering into the shadowy interior, whence is- 
 sued a little, sobbing noise. They stepped inside 
 and closed the door behind them. Instantly the 
 shriek of the baffled gale rose and deafened 
 them. The house shook to the blast. But Mr. 
 Moulton was sure of what he saw and what he 
 heard. He turned and said to Sid, "Get water." 
 
 When the scout returned with two canteens 
 from the car he saw his uncle standing over a 
 narrow bed talking to a man who lay stretched 
 out, staring up with blazing eyes. Beyond sat a 
 
56 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 woman in a chair, quite still, except for a steady, 
 whispering sobbing. And beyond these two he 
 saw a dim form, very quiet and remote and 
 calm; white-faced, motionless, with closed eyes 
 and face upturned to the shadowy roof. And the 
 only sensation he felt was one of choking heat, 
 of heat that parched his throat and dried the 
 sweat on his body and blazed darkly about him. 
 
 The man on the cot raised his cracked voice: 
 "The water stopped in the well three days ago." 
 
 For some time Mr. Moulton and the boys 
 were busy giving the suffering man and his wife 
 a little water. Sid gathered a few kindlings of 
 brush and lit a fire in the stove in spite of the 
 terrific heat. 
 
 "Quite right, Sid," his uncle told him. 
 "You'll find a box of groceries in the car. Bring 
 it here and make some tea. Then open one of 
 the cans of soup." 
 
 "They've had nothing to eat?" Sid whispered. 
 
 His uncle shook his head. 
 
 Sid pointed to the third form, lying so quietly 
 by the wall. 
 
The Price of Citizenship 57 
 
 "He needs nothing," Mr. Moulton mur- 
 mured. 
 
 With the sun the wind went down and before 
 the darkness fell the desert emerged from its ob- 
 scurity, the stars appeared in the sky, and a fresh 
 breeze fanned the sage into giving out its pun- 
 gent odor. Mr. Sijota and his wife were asleep. 
 Outside and away from the house the scouts pre- 
 pared supper. They knew the story of that third 
 person who still lay motionless in the shadow of 
 the wall. That is, they knew part of it. The 
 greatest of that dead boy's history was still for 
 them to hear. 
 
 At midnight the air was still warm but all 
 sense of exhausting heat had departed. Mr. 
 Moulton sat outside the house staring at the bril- 
 liant stars while the scouts dozed at his feet. But 
 inside the dark room there was a stir. There was 
 the sound of feet shuffling feebly across the floor. 
 Anton Sijota appeared in the doorway. 
 
 The scouts roused to hear Mr. Moulton say, 
 "You'd better rest a while yet." 
 
58 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 "I can't any more," Sijota answered, turned, 
 and called gently, "Sophia!" 
 
 His wife appeared beside him, pallid-.faced, 
 tearless, bright-eyed. 
 
 "We will tell them about htm/' her husband 
 went on. 
 
 Mrs. Sijota nodded. 
 
 "He was our boy our son," the man said 
 huskily. "He was an American boy always, 
 since we brought him to America from War- 
 saw." 
 
 "You're an American, too, now?" Mr. Moul- 
 ton remarked. 
 
 "I am no\v. He made me one. But years ago 
 I wasn't. I was all Pole. I worked in this coun- 
 try but I dreamed of Poland. But Thaddeus, he 
 would study and go to school and always say he 
 was an American. Then, when the United States 
 went to war, he wanted to fight. He was too 
 young, of course. Only a boy. But he would 
 come home from school and cry out that he 
 would go and fight for his country. But he was 
 too young." 
 
The Price of Citizenship 59 
 
 The woman looked down at the scouts with a 
 profound glance of sorrow. 
 
 "A boy, like you," she whispered. 
 
 "A scout?" Sid asked softly. 
 
 "A boy scout," the man replied. "He was al- 
 ways an American, though I am a Pole. And he 
 cried because they wouldn't let him fight for 
 freedom. So I went into the army." 
 
 In the silence the boys pondered this. Mr. 
 Moulton broke the stillness with a question: 
 "You didn't have to go, but you went because 
 your son wanted you to go?" 
 
 "To fight for America," Sijota replied. "I 
 didn't want to go. Why should I quit my job 
 and go to war? I wasn't an American. I was 
 Polish. But little Thaddeus cried. He said we 
 had been made free by America and we ought to 
 fight for it. So I went." 
 
 "You were wounded?" Mr. Moulton mur- 
 mured. 
 
 The man waved his hand carelessly. "I am 
 alive. I was a soldier in France. And when I 
 went to Camp Lewis Thaddeus counted the 
 
60 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 money and said to his mother, 'We have very 
 little. We will go where we need very little and 
 build a home for my father when he comes 
 back.' He brought his mother here." 
 
 The boys stared around at the desolate ex- 
 panse of sand and sage, breathed the spicy, warm 
 air, remembered the horrors of the day and 
 wondered. 
 
 "Yes, he brought her here. Here was where 
 he was going to build our home. And all the 
 time I was away he worked and dug a well and 
 planted a garden and hauled wood and helped 
 his mother. In the evenings they studied to- 
 gether and read books the little books he could 
 get" 
 
 "I talk good American nowl" the woman 
 cried in a sudden, sharp, triumphant voice. 
 
 "Yes/' her husband went on stolidly. "Thad- 
 deus wanted us to be good Americans. He 
 wanted us always to be free. So he brought his 
 mother here and they built us a home." 
 
 "But he was sick!" Angel Child interposed. 
 
The Price of Citizenship 61 
 
 "He was sick," Sijota admitted. "Long ago 
 he ought to have had a doctor, medicine, and 
 rest. But I was away and he wanted to fix up 
 our home before I came back. Then I came 
 back, myself sick. So he worked just the same. 
 Always working and laughing and telling us 
 that we would be good Americans and fight for 
 our freedom and never be slaves." 
 
 The woman lifted her voice again : "And he 
 died before the news came!" 
 
 "No water?" Mr. Moulton whispered. 
 
 "No water," the man responded quietly. "The 
 sand blew into the well he had dug and filled it 
 up. I couldn't go for water, for he was dying 
 and I couldn't leave. And after he died, we 
 were sick and dared not leave each other." 
 
 Sid caught back at the woman's cry. 
 
 "What news was to come, ma'am?" 
 
 Mrs. Sijota brushed the dusty folds of her 
 cheap gown with her thin hands. She cast an 
 appealing glance at her husband, her eyes glim- 
 mering in the starlit dusk 
 
62 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 "He wanted me to be an American citizen," 
 the man said simply. "Having been a soldier I 
 was entitled to be one. I took the oath in San 
 Bernardino, but I didn't get my papers. I went 
 to the post office many times, but no papers. So 
 he died without being an American." 
 
 Sid and Angel Child thought this over. Sid 
 spoke first. 
 
 "Uncle Joe, did the boy want to be an Ameri- 
 can? Wasn't he already? Why did he want 
 'his father to be one so badly?" 
 
 "Because Thaddeus wouldn't be an American 
 unless his father became one," Mr. Moulton ex- 
 plained. "If Mr. Sijota got his citizenship be- 
 fore his son became twenty-one, that made Thad- 
 deus an American." 
 
 Sijota nodded. "That was it. He wanted me 
 to be a citizen. I wanted to be one, for that 
 would make him one. But the news never came." 
 
 With an ejaculation Mr. Moulton pulled the 
 letter from his pocket which the postmistress at 
 Victorville had given him. 
 
The Price of Citizenship 63 
 
 "Is this it?" he asked, and explained. 
 
 Very slowly Sijota opened the envelope. A 
 long, blue check shook in his hand. He glanced 
 at his wife and tears trickled down his cheeks. 
 The paper floated to the floor, unobserved. 
 
 "My citizenship papers didn't come," he 
 whispered. 
 
 Mr. Moulton recovered the check. "You bet- 
 ter keep this," he said gently. "It's Uncle Sam's 
 voucher for your back pay." 
 
 But Anton Sijota paid no attention. He was 
 patting his wife on the shoulder. 
 
 "I'll go into San Bernardino and get those pa- 
 pers," he told her. "He shall be buried an 
 American, my wife. Our Thaddeus shall not 
 be buried a stranger." 
 
 Mr. Moulton rose and stared thoughtfully at 
 the boys. Then he said, "I'm off now, Sid. You 
 must be careful about the water. I'm going to 
 San Bernardino by Baldy Mesa and I'll be there 
 at sun-up. I'll get those papers and be back by 
 noon," 
 
64 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 Ten minutes later the car's lights vanished 
 around Gray Mountain on the road towards the 
 high range to the west. 
 
 At noon Mr. Moulton was back and with him 
 another man who got quickly out of the car and 
 went into the house. 
 
 "It's the coroner," Mr. Moulton explained. 
 "He'll fix things up." 
 
 "Did you get Mr. Sijota's citizenship papers, 
 uncle?" 
 
 "I did. In my pocket." 
 
 "Then the boy was an American when he 
 died?" 
 
 "He was. The papers were signed ten days 
 ago." 
 
 In the afternoon a little burial party assem- 
 bled in a small canyon back of the house, a mere 
 crevice in the rocky flank of Gray Mountain. 
 Here the scouts had dug a grave. Into it they 
 placed Thaddeus, wrapped in an American 
 flag, and buried him. And when this was done 
 Mr. Moulton called Mr. Sijota aside, after see- 
 ing the coroner's officer away. 
 
The Price of Citizenship 65 
 
 "If you will come with us, I'll see that you 
 and your wife have a good place," he said. 
 
 But Sijota shook his head, as did his wife 
 when the matter was taken to her. 
 
 "Thaddeus picked out this place for our home 
 and here he built it," they explained. "We shall 
 stay." 
 
 Mr. Moulton did his best to argue the point, 
 and at last the woman took him and the boys 
 into a small room back of the main one. She 
 drew aside a burlap curtain and pointed to the 
 wall. It had been carefully covered with heavy, 
 white paper. On this was drawn with great care, 
 in colored crayons, a picture of a house sur- 
 rounded by trees, meadows, a garden, and with 
 stock feeding in the distance. 
 
 "My boy drew this," she said. "It is the pic- 
 ture of the home he chose for us. We will stay." 
 
 The man tapped on the crude, raw drawing 
 with his calloused finger. 
 
 "It was his dream of our home. We will 
 stay." 
 
 The scouts stared at it and felt a lump rise in 
 
66 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 their throats at thought of what the boy had 
 dreamt and suffered and after all had chosen 
 a spot where there was no water except at odd 
 and uncertain times. 
 
 Mr. Moulton was silent. 
 
 "He studied very hard," Mrs. Sijota pro- 
 claimed. 
 
 Her husband nodded. "He was always want- 
 ing to be an American. 'Every American has a 
 home, papa,' he would tell me. 'You fight for 
 it and I'll build it. 7 " 
 
 "But there is no water here," Mr. Moulton 
 said finally. "I admit that with water you could 
 make a home like that even here." 
 
 The woman nodded. "There is water," she 
 said simply. "Just before he died he smiled at 
 me. There was nothing to drink in the house 
 and he was hot with fever. But he smiled. 
 'There is water in the well, if you dig,' he told 
 me. He knew. He studied hard." 
 
 "There is water," her husband agreed sol- 
 emnly. "Thaddeus said so." He fixed his eyes 
 on the pictured dream and gulped. 
 
The Price of Citizenship^ 67 
 
 Quietly Sid and his companion withdrew. 
 They went to the dry, half-filled in hole that had 
 been the well 
 
 "Gimme a shovel," Sid said. 
 
 "It's hotter than yesterday,' 7 Angel remarked. 
 "But we'll dig." 
 
 The afternoon wind drove the whirlwinds 
 across the desert and veiled the dry lake in 
 clouds of dust while the scouts dug briskly. Mr. 
 Moulton came and looked at them and went 
 away. After three hours' hard work the boys 
 had gone down another five feet. The dry sand 
 rolled back on them, was caught in little puffs 
 and blown into their eyes. 
 
 "No use, Sid," Angel said hoarsely. 
 
 Sid nodded and turned his miner's shovel 
 handle upward. With a careless movement he 
 drove it into the yielding sand. He looked up to 
 see Mr. Moulton and Sijota staring down. He 
 saw their faces change strangely, heard Angel 
 Child's queer, strangled cry. Then he looked 
 down. His feet were sinking swiftly under him. 
 His uncle stooped quickly and grasped his arm 
 
68 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 and drew him up as the water boiling upward 
 rose to his waist. 
 
 "There is water," Sijota said gravely. "Thad- 
 deus said there was." 
 
 "A flowing well!" Mr. Moulton ejaculated. 
 "That means independence for you, Mr. Sijota!" 
 
 The clear water brimmed over the edge of 
 the hole and flowed away through the sand, a 
 bright, glimmering stream. And they stared at 
 the miracle, the Americans born and the Ameri- 
 cans newly made. Behind them, in the little box 
 canyon, the stars and stripes floated over the 
 grave of another American whose untiring 
 dream of a home and freedon and loyalty to his 
 country had won a part of the desolation of 
 the Mojave and made it fertile. 
 
 Mrs. Sijota raised her thin, plangent voice 
 in triumph. Her husband turned a face filled 
 with sorrow, gladness, and pain on her. He 
 patted her shoulder with his rough hand. 
 
 "You'll have to make the trip to the city," Mr. 
 Moulton said huskily, "and record this new 
 well." 
 
1 
 
 The Price of Citizenship 69 
 
 He pulled out his map and carefully marked 
 it down. Sid nodded. "Call it 'American Well,' 
 uncle," he whispered. 
 
THE VANISHED CAR 
 
 IT was a splendid winter's day in the Mojave, 
 with a sky of utter blue above and the endless 
 gray of the desert below. Sid had tramped 
 four miles from his uncle's ranch to visit 
 Angel Child. The two boys had been gather- 
 ing the white-gray holly that haunts certain 
 rocky hillsides in the Mojave and were resting 
 on a slope that overlooked the desolate valley 
 that runs round Ord Mountain like a moat 
 round a castle. 
 
 "There's lots of gold over there," Child said. 
 "Grandfather told me that years ago several 
 men made fortunes right in that valley." 
 
 Sid stared down and nodded. "There's all 
 kinds of precious metals around here," he said 
 slowly. "It only needs to be found." 
 
 "And sometimes when it is found, it gets lost 
 again," Angel replied. "Like old Bill Ames's 
 
 mine," 
 
 70 
 
The Vanished Car 71 
 
 "Who's old Bill Ames?" Sid asked lazily, 
 turning on his back to gaze up at a vulture 
 floating a mile in the air. 
 
 "He visits grandfather," Angel responded. 
 "Nice old chap, with queer, flighty eyes, like 
 a wild animal in a cage. I heard him say he'd 
 give five thousand dollars to any one who could 
 locate an automobile." 
 
 "What's locating an automobile got to do with 
 a lost mine?" 
 
 "I don't know," the other scout confessed. 
 "It's it's the way he talks, I guess. First off, 
 grandfather asked him if he'd found his lost 
 mine yet and old Bill Ames winks rapidly and 
 stares at me and then out on the desert and 
 answers, Tve never found the automobile yet' 
 That's all I know, except I asked him if it was 
 a good car that was stolen and he said he didn't 
 know, but he would give five thousand to find it." 
 
 "Five thousand is a lot of money to give for a 
 car," Sid suggested. 
 
 "Old Bill used to have lots, they say." 
 
72 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 "Where'd he lose his old car?" 
 
 "Out here somewhere," Child answered. 
 "Wish we could find it!" 
 
 Sid sat up and brushed his clothes off. "Why 
 don't we? Let's go ask this Bill Ames all about 
 it. Where is he?" 
 
 Angel picked up a huge bunch of holly and 
 got to his feet. "He stopped at our place at 
 noon," he said. "He'd be there still, I guess. 
 But how could we find his car?" 
 
 "We could try," Sid remarked firmly. 
 
 The boys set off down the wide ravine up 
 which they had climbed and presently struck 
 into the faintly marked trail that led to the 
 Child ranch. An hour's brisk tramp brought 
 them to it. On the porch enjoying the warm sun- 
 shine sat Angel's grandfather, and with him was 
 an elderly, smartly dressed man who seemed 
 always to be glancing about him, as if he had 
 dropped a valuable article. 
 
 When Sid had been introduced he waited an 
 opportunity and then said, "I hear you lost a 
 costly car, Mr. Ames." 
 
The Vanished Car 73 
 
 "Who told you?" Mr. Ames snapped. 
 
 "I heard you say you'd give five thousand 
 dollars to get hold of your automobile, sir," 
 Angel put in. 
 
 Grandfather Child puffed at his pipe and 
 smiled at his caller. "Bill, the boys always get 
 the news!" 
 
 "But that's old news," Mr. Ames responded. 
 "The car disappeared three years ago and I 
 spent more time and money than I care to think 
 about trying to locate it. No good. It had abso- 
 lutely disappeared." He turned to the boys. "So 
 I guess that five thousand will stay in my 
 pocket." 
 
 "Then the car isn't any good to you any 
 more?" Sid asked. 
 
 "It ought to be worth fifty thousand to me 
 this minute," was the astounding reply. 
 
 "No car is worth that much," was on the tip 
 of Sid's tongue, but he had learned never to 
 make such assertions. Instead he inquired, 
 "Where did you lose it?" 
 
 Mr. Ames seemed provoked. Grandfather 
 
74 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 Child waved his pipe amicably. "Oh, you might 
 as well tell 7 em the yarn, Bill. You made fuss 
 enough at the time. Give the youngsters some- 
 thing to chew over. Who knows? They might 
 find your car for you." 
 
 Ames nodded more pleasantly. "I always get 
 heated up when I think of how close I came to 
 being a rich man," he returned. "I try not to 
 think of the affair. But I ought to tell the boys 
 the story if only to punish myself for my stupid- 
 ity. And poor old Miss Harris is still waiting 
 for news of her brother." 
 
 All this did little to clear up the mystery. 
 
 "Please tell us from the start, Mr. Ames," 
 Sid asked. 
 
 "Well, I will," Ames said. "It was just three 
 years ago last August that Henry Harris a pros- 
 pector I had known for years, came to my office 
 in Los Angeles and showed me a handful of 
 nuggets. 
 
 " 'I picked 'em up out on the desert/ he told 
 me. 'Grubstake me and I go half with you.' 
 
 " Whereabouts on the desert, Henry?' I de- 
 
The Vanished Car 75 
 
 manded. 'You look as if you had enough gold 
 there to live on for some time. Why do you need 
 a grubstake?' 
 
 "Henry sat down and told me his story 
 straightforwardly and plain and true. He had 
 been prospecting back in the Calicoes and had 
 run out of grub and water. He started back for 
 Daggett and got switched off through one of 
 his burros getting away from him and ended up 
 by making for Stoddard's Well. Instead of get- 
 ting there he got lost some way and was nearly 
 dead when he made camp one night in a gully 
 near a butte he didn't know. He would have 
 died if a storm hadn't come up and rained on 
 him. The next morning he was getting ready to 
 move on when it struck him that he might as 
 well look around this strange place a while. He 
 did. He found what he described as a huge 
 pocket of gold lying uncovered in the edge of 
 a wash which the night's rain had deepened. He 
 marked the spot carefully, put the stuff in his 
 pocket, and made for the outside. He got lost 
 again and was four days reaching Victorville. 
 
76 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 There he fed himself up and then came to 
 see me. 
 
 " The whole thing, Ames," Henry told me, 
 'is that that stuff lies open to the first man who 
 comes along. And there's hundreds of pounds of 
 it. I daren't take anybody with me, and I can't 
 pack the stuff out on my back. I remember that 
 the country was fairly good and I can find the 
 butte again. But I want a first-class automobile 
 to work with. I want to run it in as far as I 
 can, leave it and make the rest of the way on 
 foot. When I find my butte I'll mark a road 
 from it to the car. I'll load the car with just 
 enough of the gravel for a good test. But what 
 I want to do is to make a road right into the 
 pocket. When I've done that I'll send for you 
 to meet me, we get in the car and go in and get 
 the gold together, on one trip, and then we can 
 prospect later to see whether the ground is really 
 rich all around.' 
 
 "That was his scheme. I knew Billy, and I 
 knew he was honest, or I thought I knew. I was 
 pretty well acquainted with the desert around 
 
The Vanished Car 77 
 
 the region he was talking of, and I saw that it 
 might take him months to locate his butte on 
 foot. With the car he could do it in a week, if 
 he had any luck. And the butte once found it 
 would be an easy matter to make the two ruts 
 which make a road in that country, drive the car 
 in and bring out the gold. I staked him to eight 
 hundred dollars and he promised to wire me 
 when he had found the butte and I was to meet 
 him and go in with him for the big trip. 
 
 "It was three weeks before I heard from 
 him. Henry wrote that he had located his butte 
 finally, but hadn't yet made the road to it. He 
 had had to come in for provisions and water and 
 was going back the next day. When he had com- 
 pleted the road he would come into Daggett and 
 wire me to meet him. In his letter was one spe- 
 cial bit that sticks in my mind : I have made a 
 careful map of the region and marked the butte 
 on It. The map I've sealed up in a tin tube and 
 hidden In the gas tank. If anything happens to 
 me take the tube out and the map 'will show you' 
 where the stuff is. 
 
78 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 "That was Henry Harris all over; he'd pros- 
 pected for years and at last he'd found the 
 treasure and he was going about getting it as 
 carefully as he had hunted for it. Or so it 
 seemed. 
 
 "Ten days later I received a telegram from 
 him sent from Hector Station telling me to meet 
 him at Victorville in two days. I saw right away 
 that Henry was afraid some one would discover 
 his secret. That was why he had driven clear 
 out so many miles to Hector to throw people 
 off the track. 
 
 "I went to Victorville and waited three days. 
 Henry never appeared. I spent a week trying to 
 find him. I found he had left Hector in the car, 
 gone to Daggett, and taken the Victorville road 
 by Stoddard's Well. I traced him along this 
 read, which was not traveled that year at all, to 
 a point about eleven miles from Daggett. An- 
 other prospector had seen him in the car along 
 in the forenoon and got some water from him. 
 From that day to this I've heard nothing of 
 
The Vanished Car 79 
 
 Henry Harris, the gold, or the car. That's my 
 story, boys." 
 
 Greatly interested, Sid and Bob Child asked 
 many questions. They accumulated a little addi- 
 tional information, but it seemed to throw no 
 further light on the mystery of Henry Harris 
 or his car. 
 
 "Do you think he got the gold and made off 
 with it?" Sid inquired, after some hesitation. 
 
 "That was my idea for some time," Mr. Ames 
 admitted. "But his sister, Ida Harris, whom he 
 dearly loved, has never heard from him, nor re- 
 ceived any money. And the fact remains that 
 nobody has ever seen the car again. And the only 
 way to find out all about it is to find the car and 
 the map that is hidden in a tin tube in the gas 
 tank." 
 
 The scouts went off and discussed the matter 
 for some time. At last Child said roundly that 
 the thing was a mystery and would never be 
 solved. 
 
 Sid said nothing at the time, and presently 
 
80 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 went home. But all that night he dreamt of the 
 lost car and in the morning he thought of noth- 
 ing else. Two days later he went to find Angel. 
 
 "I've been thinking about that lost car and the 
 gold pocket," Sid told him. "I don't care if it 
 was three years ago. I'm going to hunt for it." 
 
 Angel looked at him curiously. "I've been in 
 the Mojave long enough to know that hunting 
 for a lost article of any kind is pretty poor busi- 
 ness to make a living at," he said. "While you're 
 looking I wish you'd find my hunting knife I 
 lost the other day picking holly." 
 
 "All right," Sid said promptly. "It's a go." 
 
 "You're a chump," Child remarked. "You 
 know as well as I do that anything you drop in 
 the desert is quickly covered up with sand. 
 Grandfather laid his rifle down a few moments 
 ago just to walk a ways to pick up a rabbit. He's 
 never found the rifle since." 
 
 Sid's eyes shone. "If I find the knife and the 
 rifle, will you go with me to hunt the lost auto- 
 mobile?" 
 
 "You'll never find the knife, Sid." 
 
The Vanished Car 81 
 
 "But if I do?" 
 
 "Cars can't be found, anyway," Angel said. 
 "But I'll call it a bargain." 
 
 "Now for the knife," Sid said. 
 
 Much against his will Child agreed to under- 
 take the search for his hunting knife. The scouts 
 returned to the hillside where they had picked 
 the holly and carefully searched for their old 
 tracks. When they found the trail they had 
 made in the sandy gravel Sid blushingly pro- 
 duced a large magnet and tied it to the end of 
 a cottonwood stick. At first his companion 
 laughed, then confessed that the idea was worth 
 trying. Pretty soon they both became greatly 
 interested in poking the magnet around and see- 
 ing what it attracted. Unluckily it was not very 
 strong and they began to be discouraged. How- 
 ever in time Sid stooped and gave a yell of 
 triumph. He held up the knife, as brightly shin- 
 ing as ever, for the dry air of the desert rusts 
 nothing. 
 
 "All right, Sid," Angel Child confessed. 
 ".Good for you! The idea worked. But you 
 
82 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 can't work it on a rifle, for a rifle weighs nine 
 pounds and your magnet wouldn't budge it, nor 
 feel it in the sand, unless you actually touched 
 the barrel." 
 
 "That's so," Sid answered. "But I don't in- 
 tend to use a magnet of this kind. We scouts 
 along the Oregon coast have to learn a good 
 many things about magnetism, and I'm going to 
 use an idea I got hold of two years ago. A com- 
 pass, as you know, is attracted by steel or iron 
 that comes near it. This attraction works at 
 some distance, varying with the amount of the 
 iron near the compass. With a compass needle 
 we can go over the place where your grand- 
 father says he lost his rifle. When the compass 
 needle is pulled aside, we can dig down and 
 see what's there." 
 
 Child looked puzzled, then grinned. "You 
 have a head on your shoulders, Sid. You found 
 my knife all right. I believe we'll find the rifle." 
 
 The next day, after carefully satisfying them- 
 selves as to the location where Mr. Child 
 
The Vanished Car 83 
 
 thought he had shot the rabbit and laid down 
 his rifle the two scouts quietly set out with their 
 compasses. But an hour's trial convinced them 
 that they were wholly at sea. 
 
 "The difficulty is," Child remarked, "that we 
 don't know when the compass is pointing away 
 from the magnetic north. Every time we move 
 it might as well move too, for we have nothing 
 to look at to tell us where the north is." 
 
 "That's true," Sid confessed, much chagrined. 
 "It won't work." 
 
 As they trudged back both boys were silent. 
 When they parted Sid said, "Just the same I'm 
 going to stick to my scheme. I think I can make 
 it work some way. The principle is right that 
 a compass shows when iron or steel is near. I'll 
 find your rifle yet." 
 
 For several days Sid spent all his spare time 
 by himself. He consulted several books and 
 finally went off to bed one night grinning. 
 
 "What pleases you so much, Sid?" asked his 
 Aunt Mary. 
 
84 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 The scout laughed. "I hit on a scheme as old 
 as the hills," he said. "If it works I'm going to 
 go after Bill Ames's car." 
 
 Mrs. Moulton smiled. "Still dreaming of that 
 five thousand? I hope you get it, Sid." 
 
 The next morning the scout finished his little 
 apparatus and quietly experimented with it. 
 When he was satisfied that it worked he went 
 over and found Child and showed it to him. 
 
 "The geographies say that the compass 
 needle goes down and up as well as sideways, 
 Angel," he told him. "I fixed a needle so that 
 it can work up and down like a teeter board. 
 Look!" 
 
 Sid held the needle, swung between two little 
 wooden posts so that it hovered level like a 
 board balanced on a cross piece, over a crow- 
 bar. One end promptly tipped downward and 
 remained there. 
 
 "You've got something " Child exclaimed. "I 
 can see that. Let's not say a word. If we find 
 grandfather's rifle he'll think scouts are real 
 people." 
 
 It took them three afternoons of hard work 
 
The Vanished Car 85 
 
 with the delicate instrument Sid had devised, but 
 in due time the needle suddenly dipped and the 
 boys swiftly dug where it indicated. The rifle 
 quickly appeared. 
 
 "I never!" said Angel Child, astounded at 
 their success. 
 
 Sid smiled modestly. "It took time, but we 
 showed that the idea was all right," he re- 
 sponded. 
 
 "Now we'll have a try for Bill Ames's lost 
 car." 
 
 Child made no response to this. But after 
 Grandfather Child had expressed his delight at 
 the recovery of the rifle and assumed that they 
 had merely run on it by accident, Sid took his 
 brother scout aside. 
 
 "You thought I was joking when I said I 
 wanted you to help me find the car. I'm in 
 earnest." 
 
 "You're crazy!" 
 
 "I'm not!" 
 
 "No big automobile could just get buried in 
 the sand like a knife or a rifle." 
 
 "We don't know for sure. All we know is that 
 
86 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 a car and a man both vanished completely on 
 an old, imtraveled road. Let's scout along that 
 road first and then figure it out," Sid insisted. 
 
 "It's miles back. The folks won't let us go." 
 
 "I'll have a talk with Uncle Joe. Maybe he'll 
 think the notion is worth while, Angel." 
 
 Further debate ended in both boys agreeing 
 to leave the matter in Mr. Moulton's hands. 
 
 Mr. Moulton that night listened to his 
 nephew's story and made no comment for some 
 time. Then he said quietly, "I am sure you are 
 wrong about the car. The thing is impossible. 
 But because you've used your head and found 
 both Bob Child's knife and his grandfather's 
 rifle, I'm going to help you as far as I can. I'll 
 drive you over the Daggett Stoddard's Well 
 Victorville road." 
 
 "That's all I ask, sir," Sid replied, well satis- 
 fied. "Can Angel go along?" 
 
 "Certainly," said Mr. Moulton with a smile. 
 "I can see you're more anxious to convince him 
 than you are to make me believe you can find 
 that lost automobile." 
 
The Vanished Car 87 
 
 On a fine day not long after Mr. Moulton 
 drove the two scouts to Daggett and then turned 
 off on the road to Stoddard's Well. Before they 
 had traversed half a dozen miles Sid began to 
 see how hopeless his idea looked. But he said 
 nothing, keeping eyes and ears open for every 
 unusual feature of the desolate landscape. 
 
 The road was by no means bad for a little 
 traveled desert trail, and wound around among 
 fantastic slopes covered with chaparral and 
 sparse sage. Here and there it crossed a wash 
 where the water of some cloudburst had cut its 
 way down. But it was, as Mr. Moulton said, 
 impossible to conceive of a car being swallowed 
 up. 
 
 "And anyway, the driver would climb out and 
 get to town," Sid told himself. 
 
 They reached Stoddard's Well and began the 
 long rounding of the lower slopes of Granite 
 Mountain. Still the car progressed over a coun- 
 try that seemed incapable of hiding a man, much 
 less a car. They reached Victorville and re- 
 turned to the ranch. 
 
88 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 That night Mr. Moulton glanced at Sid, and 
 said, "Well?" 
 
 The scout flushed. "I've been thinking that 
 that car was somewhere near where we passed, 
 sir. One can't get away from the facts. This 
 man Harris drove that car from Daggett on the 
 road to Victorville. He was seen heading for 
 Victorville. He never got there, and neither he 
 nor the car were ever seen anywhere else. They 
 are both there on that road, or near by." 
 
 Mr. Moulton nodded. "I never was specially 
 interested in the affair," he told Sid. "But I do 
 believe in not dropping a thing that promises a 
 hope. Your scheme sounds fantastic, but there's 
 no denying that it's sound at bottom. The car 
 couldn't be found. It's not on the surface. Be- 
 cause a superficial search didn't disclose it, and 
 because it seems impossible for a car to bury 
 itself, people simply gave the matter up. I have 
 nothing to do for the next week. If you like, 
 we'll take Bob Child and go at this problem on 
 the assumption that the lost automobile is buried 
 
The Vanished Car 89 
 
 somewhere along the Daggett Victorville road, 
 road. Is that fair?" 
 
 Sid nodded. The fairness of his uncle's atti- 
 tude struck him as admirable. He was proud of 
 him. 
 
 "Now there are several things to find out be- 
 fore we begin this search," Mr. Moulton went 
 on. "First, we want to know what the weather 
 was on the day Harris left Daggett. You know 
 this desert has all kinds of weather and it may 
 be a wild storm in one place while it's perfectly 
 clear ten miles away." 
 
 "I've found out that there was a sand storm," 
 Sid answered quietly. 
 
 His uncle rewarded him with a glance. "That 
 gives us some encouragement," he went on, "but 
 not much. Was there any cloud in the sky?" 
 
 "Nobody knows, sir." 
 
 "We'll find out," his uncle returned. 
 
 "Can you, after three years?" the scout asked 
 curiously. 
 
 Mr. Moulton related some of his own ex- 
 
90 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 periences, and how he had several times been 
 caught by a flood that seemed to come out of a 
 clear sky. "There is a cloudburst on some peak," 
 he explained, "that may be hidden from view. 
 The water rushes down the easiest channel in 
 great volume and you come around a corner to 
 plunge into a gully brimming over. It's possible 
 that Harris did this, though how an old-timer 
 like him could be caught that way beats my corn- 
 prehension." 
 
 On the basis of Sid's theory of compass-dip, 
 and his uncle's belief that the burying of the 
 car in a wash by a sudden flood was possible, 
 they set to work. Angel Child promptly agreed, 
 with his grandfather's consent, to make one of 
 the party, and they set out. 
 
 "Anyway, we only have to examine the road," 
 Angel remarked. "It's less than forty miles 
 long." 
 
 But a week later they had to confess that either 
 the compass needle had failed them, or the car 
 was buried nowhere along the road. They had 
 found many washes that appeared to, have car- 
 
The Vanished Car 91 
 
 ried flood waters, they dug up a couple of old 
 steel wagon gears and a crowbar, but no car. 
 
 "This proves that the magnetic needle does 
 dip visibly when iron is under it," Mr. Moulton 
 said, as they stopped for supper on the high hills 
 above Victorville. "That seems to point to the 
 fact that Harris's car never was buried along 
 the road." 
 
 Sid had been thoughtful all day. Now he 
 voiced his conclusions. "It must have been dark 
 by the time Harris passed Stoddard's Well, if 
 he did pass it. If he had had engine trouble it 
 would have been dark before he reached it. 
 There were several old tracks, almost obliter- 
 ated, that led off in either direction from the 
 real road. Couldn't he have taken one by mis- 
 take?" 
 
 Mr. Moulton pondered this and agreed to a 
 further expedition. Three days later they found 
 a road that had been disused for years, appar- 
 ently, which led off towards Granite Mountain. 
 It was a mere blurred trail of two ruts. 
 
 "Our last chance," said Sid's uncle. "We shall 
 
92 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 have to get more water and leave the car here> 
 and make it on foot." 
 
 With their canteens and water bags replen- 
 ished they returned to the turn-off, took their 
 light packs, and set out. It was a fine cool morn- 
 ing and everything was visible, clean to the dim, 
 azure wall of the Sierra Nevadas. The road 
 they were to try to trace was almost invisible. 
 Here and there it led over pebbly rises that car- 
 ried no mark of wheels. But each time the boys 
 recovered it and for a couple of hours they 
 plodded on, Sid using his magnetic needle con- 
 scientiously. Finally they came to the brink of 
 a steep barranca that offered a fissurelike open- 
 ing up the slope. The wheel tracks stopped 
 abruptly. The three of them stared down into 
 the rugged chasm. 
 
 "It was here," Sid murmured. 
 
 Mr. Moulton gazed thoughtfully up and 
 down the great gully and nodded. 
 
 "It's quite possible. Harris might have mis- 
 taken the road and driven up here and gone over 
 the crest. His car would simply slither down 
 
The Vanished Car 93 
 
 helplessly and if there was a flood in the wash 
 he would inevitably be be wrecked." 
 
 They slid down the bank of the barranca and 
 found that dry, fine sand had been blown in to 
 make a very thin covering for a mass of boul- 
 ders, jagged rocks, yucca branches, greasewood 
 roots, and the refuse of years of the desert's slow 
 disintegration. 
 
 Sid suspended the needle close to the ground. 
 It showed no movement. 
 
 "The car might have been carried down a 
 long ways," his uncle remarked. 
 
 They explored the gully for hours. Suddenly 
 Angel Child ran up the bank to a greasewood 
 and disentangled a bit of cloth, long since rotted 
 by the dry air into a kind of charred texture. He 
 brought his find down and Mr. Moulton ex- 
 amined it. 
 
 "It's the pocket from some overalls," he said, 
 and carefully pulled the material apart. A bit 
 of paper showed. He drew it slowly out and 
 opened its crackling folds. 
 
 From that dingy, brown bit of paper dim let- 
 
94 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 ters stared up at them, the ink turned to a kind of 
 purple bronze by the arid desert air. Mr. Moul- 
 ton read the words slowly: 
 
 H. Harris, 
 
 Vic lie . . 
 
 ornia. 
 
 "This is where Harris met his fate," he said 
 quietly. 
 
 "But where is he?" Angel demanded. 
 
 Mr. Moulton explained slowly. "He had 
 rolled his overalls, probably, and tucked them 
 somewhere in the back of his car. When the 
 flood washed the car away it swept the overalls 
 away and they naturally floated on the surface. 
 They got torn among the mass of roots and 
 bushes and finally one bit caught in that grease- 
 wood up there where you found it. The water 
 went down and this remained to tell the story." 
 
 "That bush is fifteen feet above the bottom of 
 the wash," Sid put in. 
 
 His uncle nodded. "The water was fifteen feet 
 deep where the car plunged in." 
 
The Vanished Car 95 
 
 Now that they knew that somewhere Harris 
 and his car lay buried in this gully, they set to 
 work eagerly. 
 
 "The overalls would float farther down stream 
 than the car would," Sid suggested. 
 
 "Certainly," Mr. Moulton agreed. "So we 
 work above the greasewood bush where Angel 
 found the paper." 
 
 As long as they live neither scout will ever 
 forget that night when they feverishly climbed 
 up the wash with the delicate needle poised 
 above the ground. A full moon shone down on 
 them. The wind rushed overhead with a wild 
 note. From the remote distance came the yip- 
 yip-yip of hunting coyotes or the cry of a wild 
 cat. Now and then an owl swished by, a mere 
 blub of soft darkness. And the rocks of the wash 
 glimmered underfoot and dead wood flamed 
 with feeble phosphorescence. 
 
 When they were thoroughly exhausted and 
 had sat down to rest and munch some bread and 
 butter, Mr. Moulton looked curiously at the 
 scouts' pale faces. 
 
96 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 "Hard work for that reward old Bill Ames 
 offered?" 
 
 Sid glanced away shyly. "It isn't the money, 
 sir," he murmured. 
 
 Angel Child nodded solemnly. "I never could 
 forgive old Ames for letting on Harris was 
 crooked," he remarked. 
 
 "I see," he said. "After all, this is merely a 
 way of saving Harris's good name. Well, I 
 kind of felt mad myself when Ames always sug- 
 gested that maybe Harris ran off with the money, 
 and the map. But we have pretty good proof 
 that Harris is dead and that he perished in this 
 wash while trying to get to Ames with the map 
 and the details of his treasure find." 
 
 They said no more of the subject uppermost 
 in their minds. Dawn found them still at work. 
 The sun came up and the desert leaped to life. 
 But Sid did not notice the change in the air. 
 He was kneeling on a small boulder with his 
 suspended needle held gently above the sand. 
 One end was dipping. He moved a trifle. The 
 little bar of magnetized steel resumed the hori- 
 
The Vanished Car 97 
 
 zontal. He moved the other way. It quivered, 
 dipped slightly. He moved a yard up the wash. 
 The needle suddenly and determinedly swung 
 into the perpendicular and stayed there, point- 
 ing downward to something hidden below the 
 surface, as if after years of oblivion something 
 under that rugged ground had wakened to some 
 inaudible call and answered it. The needle 
 shook. Mr. Moulton stooped over. Sid was 
 shaking with excitement; then he gulped. 
 
 "You have found Harris," Mr. Moulton said 
 in an odd tone. He thrust a whittled stick down 
 into the yielding sand at the spot the needle indi- 
 cated. Sid got up and put his apparatus away. 
 Angel brought a few stones and heaped them 
 about the thin wand that marked the prospector's 
 grave where he lay with his car. 
 
 "Now," said Mr. Moulton, "we'll go back 
 home, rest up, and come here with shovels and 
 ropes." 
 
 "Why not dig now, sir?" cried Angel Child. 
 
 "I think," said Mr. Moulton gravely, "that 
 
98 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 old Bill Ames ought to do some of the digging. 
 It will do him good." 
 
 Four days later, on a day when the sand swept 
 upward from the floor of the dry lakes to mingle 
 with the scurrying clouds, when the air was 
 filled with fine particles of mineral matter and 
 every gust chilled a man to the bone, Mr. Moul- 
 ton's car struggled along the old road to the 
 brink of the barranca. In it were Sid and his 
 uncle, Angel Child, and old Bill Ames. The 
 latter seemed to be there against his will. 
 
 They stopped, pulled out pickaxes and shovels 
 and several coils of rope. Then in silence they 
 went down the floor of the great barranca till 
 they came to the white stick that marked the 
 spot the magnetic needle had indicated. 
 
 "How do you know the car is here?" Mr. 
 Ames demanded, his eyes glancing furtively 
 around. "This all sounds fishy to me, Moulton." 
 
 "The magnetic needle doesn't lie," was the 
 terse answer. 
 
 An hour later they uncovered a wheel, still 
 rimmed with cracked rubber. The boys labored 
 
The Vanished Car 99 
 
 strenuously. They slowly disclosed the old car, 
 which lay on one side ... at dusk they pulled 
 it upright with the ropes attached to Mr. Moul- 
 ton's car on the bank. To the creak of the cable 
 and the coughing of the toiling engine the bat- 
 tered structure left the bed it had lain in for 
 three years and lurched to its wheels. Sid took 
 off his cap and gazed down. White bones glim- 
 mered there, a skull looked up out of eyeless 
 sockets. 
 
 "Your old partner, Ames!" Mr. Moulton said 
 quietly. "The man you suspected of treachery. 
 There he is. He was on his way to make you 
 rich." 
 
 They lifted the bones out and laid them de- 
 cently in a blanket. Then Mr. Moulton turned 
 the lights of his car down on the wreck. 
 
 "The gas tank!" Mr. Ames croaked feverishly. 
 
 With a blow of the pickaxe Mr. Moulton 
 ripped the crumpled tank wide open. From its 
 dry interior rolled a small tin tube. Sid picked 
 it up and handed it to his uncle. 
 
 "That's yours, Ames," he remarked. 
 
100 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 Mr. Ames thrust it into his pocket. His 
 attitude was that of a man who was not going to 
 trust his secret with his companions. At the in- 
 sult Mr. Moulton laughed. 
 
 "Keep your map and your treasure," he said. 
 "It was Henry Harris we were after. You spent 
 thousands looking for the secret directions to find 
 a fortune. I speak for the boys when I say we 
 don't want any of the stuff. Keep your old map. 
 We have Harris. His sister will know that he 
 died an honest man, driving through a desert 
 storm to find you and share his wealth with you." 
 
 Old Bill Ames licked his dry lips as he stood 
 in the full glare of the lamps from the car on 
 the bank. He reached into his pocket and drew 
 out the tube with a shamefaced and trembling 
 gesture. 
 
 "I always aim to play fair," he faltered. "I'm 
 an honest man, Moulton. YouVe no call to 
 scold me this way before these boys. I'll re- 
 ward 'em well. How was I to know Henry 
 Harris had played square?" 
 
 "He was your friend," Mr. Moulton replied 
 
(The Vanished (Wr..;. !0iv 
 
 sternly. TKen he stopped and stared. Ames had 
 twisted the tin tube in his eager hands and it 
 had sprung open at the seam. Inside was a little 
 wisp of dried paper. It fell into fragments and 
 flitted away before the night gale. The secret the 
 tube had held and for which Henry Harris had 
 lost his life and old Bill Ames his honor was 
 lost forever. 
 
 But Sid and Angel thought they had won, 
 after all. They had restored Henry Harris to 
 an honorable place among those who knew him. 
 
THE MAGI OF THE MOJAVE 
 
 FOR a week Sid and Angel had been watch- 
 ing the weather. Christmas was coming, 
 the season that California celebrates in sunshine 
 with flowers. But the Mojave Desert has its 
 peculiarities. Its spring is often earlier than that 
 of the coast. Its summer is frequently cooler and 
 in winter it has been known to withdraw itself 
 from the rest of the semi-tropics and swirl with 
 snow and howl with wind and spread a blanket 
 of dazzling white from the San Bernardinos to 
 the Amargosas. Because the Morongo Indians 
 who are weather- and water-wise mumbled 
 that it would be a dry year with much cold, Sid's 
 uncle had spent sveral days accumulating an ex- 
 tra supply of firewood and openly stated that the 
 boys would see snow at Christmas. 
 
 "You see, every morning is clear," Sid ex- 
 plained to his brother scout, "but each noon the 
 clouds bank up above the San Bernardinos, then 
 
 102 
 
The Magi of the Mojave 103 
 
 over the Tehachipis, then over the Calicoes, and 
 pretty soon the sun is hidden and that horribly 
 cold wind begins to sing in the sage." 
 
 "It's odd weather for the desert," Child ad- 
 mitted. "And Sam Woods, who's been here 
 thirty years, told me the other day in Victorville 
 he saw four feet of snow on the level once, right 
 along the river. And that was a dry year else- 
 where, too, like this." 
 
 "Anyway, I'd like to see snow," Sid remarked. 
 
 Angel Child nodded, but gravely. "It makes 
 it hard for people who live in shacks out on 
 some of these roads, Sid. I heard a woman and 
 her two children were found several years ago 
 after they'd been dead several weeks; nobody 
 went that way." 
 
 "That's it," Sid agreed. "Nobody misses 'em. 
 The desert is full of folks nobody ever thinks of 
 unless they see them. Nobody knows where they 
 live, nor who they are. Some day, some one is 
 asked about a letter, and remembers them." 
 
 "I'd hate to spend Christmas alone like some 
 people I know," 
 
104 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 Sid grinned. "I guess we shan't spend it alone. 
 Uncle Joe has already invited a lot and I went 
 yesterday to Howard's and got two turkeys." 
 
 "Two?" Angel repeated slowly. 
 
 "Two. And the house is simply stacked with 
 desert holly and mistletoe, and Aunt Mary is all 
 the time going off to whisper to Uncle Joe and 
 Big Rich asked me whether the 32's fit or not." 
 
 "You people have no 32 rifle," Angel said 
 skeptically. 
 
 "We didn't;' Sid confessed, smiling. "But 
 why did Uncle Joe ask Rich to get him 32 
 cartridges?" 
 
 "Gee!" Angel responded frivolously. "If you 
 get a rifle, we'll go hunting for mountain sheep." 
 
 "I saw a fellow that saw a band of mountain 
 sheep week before last on the road from Old 
 Woman's Well to Le Conti Springs," Sid re- 
 plied. Then his face fell. "I forgot. He said 
 that woman whom we saw in the Victorville 
 post office had left the place she was living on 
 and nobody knew where she had gone. They 
 
The Magi of the Mojave 105 
 
 think she got sick and tried to get somewhere and 
 got lost in the desert." 
 
 "That girl who said her name was Mrs. Sparl- 
 ing?" Angel asked. "She looked sick, Sid." 
 
 "And she was kind of sad, too," the other re- 
 marked reflectively. "I don't think she really 
 belonged out here. I wonder if she ever got the 
 letter she came for?" 
 
 Both lads stared at each other. Angel slowly 
 assumed an expression of supreme indifference. 
 Sid hit him a sound thwack in the ribs. 
 
 "It's still five days to Christmas, Angel. I 
 don't see why it isn't up to us to find that poor 
 lady. We can see Miss Messick at the post office 
 and find out where she was supposed to live." 
 
 "Way out beyond Box S," Angel returned. 
 "How'll we get there?" 
 
 "Easy," Sid replied, and promptly went off to 
 see his uncle. He returned with the news that 
 Mr. Moulton could spare the car for the rest 
 of that day. "We'll have to pay for the gas and 
 oil ourselves, " he added. 
 
106 Scouts of the 'Desert 
 
 They scraped their pockets and figured that 
 they could buy five gallons, and this purchase 
 they made an hour later in Victorville. Then 
 they inquired at the post office about Mrs. 
 Sparling. 
 
 "There are two letters for her," the postmis- 
 tress reported. "She hasn't called for her mail 
 in a couple of months. She used to live near the 
 Black Hawk ranch." 
 
 "I know where that is," Angel told Sid. "Let's 
 
 go." 
 
 They left Victorville, crossed the river on 
 the bridge that spans the Mojave gorge where 
 it is narrowest, climbed the rocky road going 
 east, and were soon speeding along on the Bear 
 Valley highway. At Box S ranch, twenty-two 
 miles out, they stopped for talk with a Lucerne 
 Valley orchardist who warned them about a 
 coming storm. 
 
 "The fourth or fifth day of this kind of 
 weather," he told the boys, "it comes on to snow, 
 with a high wind. In an hour this desert is as 
 trackless as a table top. 
 
The Magi of the Mojave 107 
 
 "Seen Mrs. Sparling lately?" Sid asked. 
 
 "No. She was a most likely young woman, 
 too. What a shame her husband didn't support 
 her!" 
 
 "Didn't he?" Angel said sweetly. 
 
 The tone brought a flush to the honest ranch- 
 er's cheek. "You young rapscallions!" he re- 
 torted. "Who are you to disbelieve as fair a bit 
 of gossip as ever was tattled? To be sure, I never 
 heard the facts, nor anybody else, so far as I can 
 tell. But it's allowed by all concerned that her 
 husband does not support her if he is alive." 
 
 Sid grinned. "I guess she never told any one 
 her business. They say she's disappeared." 
 
 "Probably gone across the mountains for 
 Christmas," the man suggested. 
 
 The scouts rode on along a road that passed 
 several abandoned "dry ranches" houses 
 boarded up, fences drifted over with sand, 
 clearings dotted with sage, scanned the settle- 
 ment of Lucerne riding high on the northern 
 hills, and plunged on into the deeper sands of 
 the easterly desert. When they came to a wooden 
 
108 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 sign marked BLACK HAWK the vague ruts 
 showed that none had traveled that way for a 
 long time. 
 
 "That's the house she camped in, Angel," 
 Sid remarked, pointing to an almost invisible 
 cabin a couple of miles away. "I move we try 
 to get there. At any rate, we'll know she's not 
 there if she's not." 
 
 The car made some demur at having to travel 
 where no traffic had been, but Sid eased it along 
 and pretty soon they hit harder going and within 
 a quarter of an hour had arrived at the small 
 cabin where Mrs. Sparling had lived. The cur- 
 tains were drawn at the windows, the screen door 
 was covered with a single cracked board, sand 
 had sifted over the doorstep. About the house a 
 few tracks showed that coyotes only had visited 
 the spot. The scouts stared at each other and then 
 went around to the back and kicked in the door. 
 Once inside they peered around in the half-dark- 
 ness. A table spread with dusty dishes, a bed with 
 a bare mattress on its cheap springs, a chair, a 
 lamp with a cracked chimney, and a dried-out 
 
The Magi of the Mojavt* 109 
 
 water barrel completed the furniture. They in- 
 vestigated a closet and a small room. Nothing 
 showed trace of an inhabitant. 
 
 "She really left," Sid murmured, sneezing as 
 the dust rose underfoot. 
 
 Angel had raised a curtain and was staring 
 around him curiously. 
 
 "Look!" he whispered. "That table is set for 
 three people. Three plates, three cups, three 
 knives, three forks, and three spoons! I thought 
 they said that Mrs. Sparling lived by herself." 
 
 "She told us that," Sid corrected him, "that 
 day when we saw her in Victorville and she 
 asked us about the stage going to Berdoo." 
 
 "But everybody says that, too!" 
 
 "Anyway, the table was set for three," Sid 
 confessed. 
 
 "This was her house," Child pursued, point- 
 ing to a magazine cover pasted on the wall, with 
 its penciled inscription: Eugenia Sparling. 
 
 "But where did she go?" Sid insisted. "If 
 she'd gone out with anybody, the word would 
 have been passed around. But nobody's seen her. 
 
110 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 There's no way of leaving the desert except by 
 Bear Valley which is closed by snow in the 
 winter or by Hesperia or Victorville." 
 
 "And if she'd gone out, her people would 
 know it," Angel agreed. "And they're writing to 
 her at Victorville." 
 
 Sid nodded. "She's moved. Why, we don't 
 know. You remember, she looked sick and tired 
 that day, though she's young. And she was nerv- 
 ous, too. She wouldn't go to the post office her- 
 self for her mail, but told us to get it. And if 
 she's moved, she's left some word where." 
 
 They searched the cabin high and low and 
 finally found what appeared to be a brief mes- 
 sage on a card tucked in one side of an old- 
 fashioned, broken mirror. The boys stared at 
 the writing, which was the same as that on the 
 magazine cover on the wall. Its message was an 
 odd one: 
 
 You'll find me under your own vine and fig 
 tree. 
 
 They looked at the other side of the card. On 
 this was written : 
 
The Magi of the Mojave 111) 
 
 Billie boy/ 
 
 "Huh!" Sid sniffed. "I guess there' re no fig 
 trees in this desert." 
 
 Angel Child's eyes were bright. "Yes, there 
 are, Sid ! And right by the fig tree is a grape- 
 vine. But it's miles from here way beyond 
 Old Woman's Springs." 
 
 Both scout? were silent. Old Woman's 
 Springs lies forty miles east of Victorville and 
 civilization. The road to that desolate region 
 lay along the floor of the barren valley like a 
 narrow ribbon of white amid the universal gray. 
 
 "That would account for nobody seing her go 
 out," Sid said, wrinkling his forehead over the 
 problem. "It's a funny thing, any way you look 
 at it. Mrs. Sparling comes here from nobody 
 knows where, camps in this Heaven-forsaken 
 place for months without a soul seeming to care, 
 and then quietly vanishes. And she leaves this 
 message about going to live under somebody's 
 own fig tree." 
 
 "I know where that is, too." 
 
 "How do you know?" 
 
112 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 Child snorted. "Didn't I go out two years ago 
 to see the Yeagers round up some wild horses? 
 And I passed a house in the valley beyond Negro 
 Butte witft an old well on it and by the well a 
 fig tree. And a grapevine. Yeager said the 
 people had moved away ten years before that 
 other dry year we had. Yeager's been at Old 
 Woman's Springs for thirty years." 
 
 "Game?" Sid inquired. 
 
 "Sure. We can make it in an hour if the wash 
 isn't too bad." 
 
 They easily retraced their road to the main 
 highway and resumed their course eastward. 
 Presently the valley they were traveling in nar- 
 rowed and its floor began to be deeper sand and 
 sparser brush. But in due time they crossed the 
 heel of a low butte and caught sight of the leaf- 
 less limbs of some cottonwoods beside some 
 small, sun-shrunk buildings. 
 
 "Cottonwood Springs," Sid announced, pull- 
 ing up out of the rocky wash to smoother ground. 
 
 "See the fig tree?" Angel demanded eagerly. 
 "That's the first one. We take that road going to 
 the left to get to the other." 
 
The Magi of the Mojave 1 13 
 
 "Why not go on the rest of the two miles and 
 see if the people at Old Woman's Springs know 
 anything about Mrs. Sparling?" Sid suggested. 
 Angel vetoed this. "We've got only three hours 
 to get back to Victorville in," he said. 
 
 The car obediently swerved into a little trav- 
 eled track that led down the easy slope of the 
 valley towards a low range of barren hills. It 
 was smooth going and in twenty minutes the 
 boys had lost sight of all landmarks and were 
 speeding along towards a broad stretch of level 
 country without tree or rock to break the mo- 
 notony. Suddenly and most unexpectedly the 
 road dipped into a depression a mile wide and 
 going directly from one side of the valley to the 
 other. Set in this amongst gray sage was a low, 
 long cabin with three cottonwoods lifting gaunt 
 branches into the sunless air. 
 
 "Somebody's living there," Sid murmured. 
 
 Angel laughed. "See the fig tree behind the 
 house?" 
 
 "Sure enough." 
 
 "And there's a big grapevine the other side. 
 The well was dug ages ago by Spanish cattle- 
 
114 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 men. It's all bricked up with thin flat bricks like 
 the Spanish made and a pump that works from 
 an old-fashioned windmill." 
 
 "I see no windmill," Sid answered, turning 
 the car into a road leading to the cabin. 
 
 "It's gone, long ago. But one can draw water 
 in a bucket." 
 
 The car slithered to a stop in the flourlike 
 sand and the scouts climbed out and went to the 
 door. Their knock was promptly answered by a 
 call from within. They answered it and entered, 
 A woman lying on a bed turned her white face 
 to them. The scouts doffed caps respectfully. 
 
 "Mrs. Sparling, there's some letters for you 
 at the post office in Victorville," Sid said awk- 
 wardly. 
 
 The woman smiled faintly. They saw that she 
 was both feverish and weak. And somehow they 
 knew that their intrusion was not welcomed. 
 They backed out. Mrs. Sparling beckoned them. 
 
 "How did you know I was here, boys?" 
 
 Sid told her the truth. Mrs. Sparling closed 
 her eyes and thought a while. When she opened 
 
The Magi of the Mojave 115 
 
 them they saw that she felt more friendly. 
 
 "Listen!" she whispered. "You wanted to do 
 me a friendly act. I'm going to trust you still 
 more. There's nobody knows I'm here, nobody. 
 And nobody must know! Nobody at all. I'm 
 all right here. You won't tell a soul, will you?" 
 
 Sid grinned. "You're right that nobody knows 
 you're here. And we won't tell, Mrs. Sparling. 
 But are you sure the men up at Old Woman's 
 Springs don't know?" 
 
 "No!" she returned. "This is seven miles 
 from there, and nobody has been this way since 
 I came. Did you leave that card in the mirror 
 where you found it?" 
 
 "We did, ma'am." 
 
 "Then go back and keep my secret, boys." 
 Mrs. Sparling smiled weakly and closed her 
 eyes. 
 
 Back in the car both scouts looked at each 
 other. Silently they agreed to leave without 
 further parley. 
 
 At sundown, as they climbed the rocky road 
 to the Victorville bridge, Sid murmured, "I 
 
116 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 guess people Mrs. Sparling don't like are look- 
 ing for her." 
 
 Angel Child nodded. "Did you see the table 
 in that house where the fig tree is? It was set 
 for three" 
 
 Sid nodded. "And there were no fresh tracks 
 in the sand anywhere, nor any place where any 
 one could be," he remarked. "It's a mystery, 
 Angel!" 
 
 The scouts kept their own counsel. But the 
 morning before Christmas Sid went over and 
 visited Child. The two boys were fully agreed 
 on their plan and went to Mr. Moulton with a 
 request for the car. 
 
 "Good for you!" said Sid's uncle. "You go 
 ahead into Victorville and get the supplies and 
 save me the trip. It's going to be a cold day to- 
 morrow, and a snowy Christmas, unless I'm mis- 
 taken." 
 
 In Victorville the scouts went over their 
 scheme. It began to look dubious. They decided 
 at last it was not feasible. They would postpone 
 
The Magi of the Mojave 117 
 
 their trip to the house with the fig tree till later. 
 But at that moment destiny stepped in. Miss 
 Messick, postmistress, called Sid. 
 
 "You boys travel around the country a good 
 deal," she said. "Some men here want to know 
 where Mrs. Sparling lives." 
 
 Sid was saved from embarrassment by the ap- 
 pearance of a man who briefly introduced him- 
 self, after a glance at the scouts' uniform, as a 
 deputy sheriff from San Bernardino. Before he 
 could speak further two other men joined him. 
 
 Sid and Angel Child quietly scrutinized the 
 men. The deputy who had first spoken to them 
 was a middle-aged man with a tanned face and 
 clear blue eyes. The second man, evidently un- 
 used to roughing it, appeared ill at ease and 
 anxious; the third was an elderly man whom 
 both scouts set down as a prospector. They soon 
 learned that he was acting as guide. 
 
 The deputy soon put his questions. Sid, after 
 a single glance of understanding with his brother 
 scout, listened. 
 
118 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 "Have you heard of a young woman who calls 
 herself Mrs. Sparling?" 
 
 The boys nodded. 
 
 "When did you last see her?" 
 
 "Here in Victorville?" Angel asked inno- 
 cently. 
 
 "Yes," put in the second man eagerly. 
 
 "About two months ago, sir," 
 
 The prospector sighed resignedly. "Nobody's 
 seen or heard of her, I tell ye!" he croaked. 
 
 The deputy waved his hand. "Where did the 
 woman live?" he asked Sid directly. 
 
 As briefly as possible Sid explained the road 
 to the cabin on the Black Hawk road. 
 
 "That's the place for us," the second man put 
 in. "And the sooner the better!" 
 
 Ten minutes later Sid Moulton had hailed 
 the local constable, Ed Dolch, and got from him 
 the story of the three men. 
 
 "Wild-goose chase," the constable remarked. 
 "And I got better business on Christmas Eve 
 than chasing up some poor woman whose man 
 got in bad with the police." 
 
The Magi of the Mojave 119 
 
 Sid grinned. "They think her husband is with 
 her?" 
 
 Dolch smiled. "The deputy is an old-timer 
 and doesn't like his job. But that other young 
 fellow is a detective from the city and he wants 
 the worst way to lay hands on Mrs. Sparling's 
 husband. He goes under a dozen names, but he 
 was sent to Folsom six months ago for highway 
 robbery and a w r eek ago he escaped, with still 
 two months to serve, for he had conducted him- 
 self well and would have been up for probation 
 in sixty days. Anyway, out he climbs of Folsom 
 and disappears. Then three days ago there's a 
 robbery committed in Los Angeles on a bank 
 and they think this Ogilbie, or Sparling, as he 
 calls himself, had a hand in it." 
 
 "They aren't sure?" Angel Child asked. 
 
 "No!" Dolch replied disgustedly. "He's es- 
 caped from the pen and they just suspect him. 
 That city detective wants to nab him just on 
 general principles and he insists that the first 
 place Sparling would make for would be his 
 wife's house." 
 
120 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 Sid's eyes darkened. "I see. They think the 
 man would try to spend Christmas with his wife, 
 and so they're going to spend Christmas Eve 
 getting him?" 
 
 The constable cocked a sagacious eye on the 
 cloudy heights of the San Bernardinos. "That's 
 the way they reckon. They better hurry, I say. 
 By morning there'll be a foot of snow on the 
 Mojave and they'll have a sweet Christmas out 
 there where there isn't even a tree." 
 
 "And you're not going with them?" 
 
 "Who? Me?" the peace officer asked with a 
 great show of indignation. "Not I. Let old 
 Whitey Burns guide 'em. Unless I miss my 
 guess Whitey's no keener than the deputy is. 
 That city detective will wish he was home 
 before he's through." 
 
 "Who is the deputy from Berdoo?" Angel 
 asked. 
 
 Dolch stared. "You don't know him? That's 
 old Doc Harlow. He used to be the wickedest 
 son of a gun in San Diego County. Was a 
 doctor in the old days and then turned up as the 
 
The Magi of the Mojave 121 
 
 only wise deputy for the desert. He trails 'em 
 and he gets 'em, does old Doc. He never yet 
 went after a man that he didn't either bring him 
 in or his guns and his boots, just to show he 
 had met up with him. But he's not anxious 
 to go after Sparling. Ye can see that with half 
 an eye." 
 
 By themselves the scouts talked this over. 
 
 "There is one thing sure," Sid said earnestly. 
 "That is, we'll be to blame if they arrest Mrs. 
 Sparling's husband." 
 
 "We only told them where she used to live," 
 Angel objected. "They won't understand that 
 note in the mirror nor even see it." 
 
 "They'll see our car tracks right at the house, 
 and the broken back door and our foot tracks 
 outside. I'll bet anything it won't take that old 
 Doc Harlow ten minutes to settle in his mind 
 that if he follows our car tracks he'll arrive. 
 You know Uncle Joe has non-skids on the car 
 and they've made as good a track as anybody 
 needs right to the house beyond Old Woman's 
 Springs." 
 
122 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 "That's right," the other confessed. "But they 
 say Sparling held up a bank. Anyway, he broke 
 out of the pen." 
 
 "Maybe he did," Sid retorted. "But Mrs. 
 Sparling hasn't committed any crime, has she? 
 And when we tried to do her a favor, we only 
 fixed it so she'll have a sheriff and a detective 
 coming in Christmas Eve." 
 
 "Unless we warn her," Angel murmured. 
 
 "We can do that and be back home to-night," 
 Sid replied dubiously. 
 
 "And the sheriff will just follow us," Angel 
 retorted. 
 
 They debated this some time and ended by 
 writing a message which a neighbor promised 
 to deliver to Mr. Moulton that afternoon. Then 
 they quietly left town by the Daggett road. 
 Where it turned off across the bridge at the foot 
 of the grade a second car containing the deputy, 
 the detective, and the prospector hailed them. 
 
 "So you're going the Daggett road by Stod- 
 dard's Well?" Doc Harlow called out. "All 
 right. If you catch sight of that Mrs. Sparling, 
 
The Magi of the Mojave 123 
 
 leave word at the telegraph station somewhere 
 for me." 
 
 Sid speeded up down the river and then 
 thoughtfully turned north towards Stoddard's 
 Well. 
 
 "Just one o'clock, Sid," Angel said. 
 
 Sid nodded. "We'll make time to the Well, 
 then turn off on the road that goes around by 
 Ord Mountain and so back to Box S., If we 
 hurry we'll get there about half an hour after 
 the sheriff does. We can sneak along the upper 
 road from Lucerne and make Mrs. Sparling's 
 with an hour to spare." 
 
 "And what then?" 
 
 "Time enough then," Sid grunted, and de- 
 voted himself to his driving. 
 
 The car did nobly in spite of the cold wind 
 that chilled the engine, and at half past two the 
 boys came in sight of the little settlement at 
 Lucerne. They slithered down a side trail and 
 were quickly lost in the sage. 
 
 "Nobody recognized us," Angel said. 
 
 "They won't from now on," Sid returned, and 
 
124 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 stopped. They put the top down and wrapped 
 themselves as warmly as possible in a rug and 
 went on. 
 
 "With the top down you can't see a car a 
 mile," Sid remarked. 
 
 They passed the Black Hawk road and were 
 rewarded by catching a glimpse of an automo- 
 bile's top shining above the brush in the direc- 
 tion of the cabin Mrs. Sparling had formerly 
 inhabited. 
 
 "They're just tooling up to the house," Sid 
 laughed. "They'll spend an hour talking it 
 
 over." 
 
 Five miles further on both boys wrapped the 
 tell tale tires on the rear wheels with gunnysack- 
 ing and then continued. At Cottonwood Wells 
 they drove up around the springs and then down 
 to the Old Woman's Well road again. When 
 they reached the road stretching down into the 
 lower valley and towards their destination, Sid 
 stopped again and they tied two short pieces of 
 yucca palm behind the car so as to drag in the 
 rut and completely obscure all tell tale marks. 
 
The Magi of the Mojave 125 
 
 They drove the car boldly through the sand for 
 a hundred yards and so into the other road. 
 
 "It certainly doesn't look as if a car had made 
 that track," Angel acknowledged. 
 
 "No," Sid replied. "But it's going to get dark 
 very soon. Mrs. Sparling might light a light. 
 We must get there first." 
 
 But here hard luck befell the scouts. A tire 
 went soft and it took twenty minutes to fix 
 
 it. Within half a mile the same tire gave way 
 
 . 
 again. 
 
 "Cholla got into it," Sid grumbled. "We 
 could patch that tube a million times and every 
 time that little needle of cholla that's run 
 through the casing would let the air out. Got to 
 put on the spare." 
 
 They completed the job as hurriedly as pos- 
 sible and found themselves overtaken by dark- 
 ness. Both scouts peered anxiously into the dusk 
 towards Mrs. Sparling's house. No light ap- 
 peared. Sid drove on in the darkness carefully. 
 But a few chill flakes of snow roused him to the 
 fact that if he was going to do anything he must 
 hasten. 
 
126 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 "They'll see our tracks in the road where we 
 fixed the tire," Angel remarked. He pointed 
 back to a light flashing several miles behind 
 them. 
 
 "They'll go on to Old Woman's Springs," Sid 
 said confidently. "They'll spend another hour at 
 that I wish we dared use the lights of the car." 
 
 They went slowly on and ended in a wash 
 where the car stuck. Angel got out to explore 
 and they were soon back in the road. But Sid 
 noticed his fellow scout was curiously tense. 
 
 "What's the matter?" he demanded. 
 
 "There's fresh tracks of a man in the road," 
 Angel returned. 
 
 "Sure?" 
 
 "Get out and see for yourself!" 
 
 Sid stopped and did so. Unmistakably there 
 had been a man by that way within a very few 
 hours. 
 
 "He was hurrying, too/' Sid remarked. 
 
 Angel thought this over. "I know!" he said 
 presently. "He got up to Bear Valley from the 
 other side, came down from Pine Knot to Box S 
 
The Magi of the Mojave 127 
 
 and then this way. Likely he drove a car 
 down, or came in the stage. Then he cut across 
 the desert and struck this road. Whoever he is, 
 he's no stranger to this region." 
 
 Half an hour later Angel reported that no 
 lights were longer visible behind them. Sid 
 made what speed he could in the darkness, which 
 was now almost pitchy, owing to the low-hang- 
 ing clouds and the occasional flurries of snow. 
 
 "Got to light the lights, Angel," he said in 
 desperation, as the car dragged itself out of a 
 hillock of loose sand. He snapped them on. 
 Both scouts stared in front of them. Directly in 
 the path of the twin beams stood a man facing 
 them, with one arm outpointed and a revolver 
 gleaming in it. 
 
 "Hands up!" he cried huskily. 
 
 The boys promptly obeyed. The stranger 
 came slowly up to the car and peered in. 
 
 "Boys!" he gasped, in relief. Then his eye 
 caught the uniforms. "Boy scouts!" 
 
 Sid nodded. "Are you Mr. Sparling?" 
 
 "What of it?" came the harsh query. 
 
128 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 "Have you seen your wife?" Angel asked, try- 
 ing to hold his hands higher. 
 
 The man's white face grew whiter. "Not yet." 
 
 "She's sick." Sid stammered. "We were out 
 here a few days ago. She told us never to tell 
 any one where she was." 
 
 "Did you? 11 
 
 Sid let his arms down. "They ache too much," 
 he remarked. Angel followed suit and the man 
 nodded. 
 
 Then the scouts told him precisely what had 
 happened. The young man's haggard face 
 lightened. 
 
 "You came to warn me?" 
 
 "To warn her it's Christmas Eve." 
 
 Sparling opened the door and climbed in. "I 
 reckon you'll do me the favor to drive me the 
 next two miles," he said. "I'm pretty nearly 
 tu6kered out. You gave me an awful scare. I 
 knew they'd be after me." 
 
 Sid let in the clutch and they went on quickly. 
 
 "It's still two miles," Angel remarked. 
 
 "More than that," Sparling remarked. "I 
 
The Magi of the Mojave 129 
 
 was a Koy out here. Years ago. I was going to 
 bring my wife out here and raise horses when 
 the police got me for nothing." 
 
 "But you went to prison!" 
 
 Sparling nodded. "I wasn't guilty of that' 9 
 
 "They say you held up a bank in Los An- 
 geles," Angel went on. 
 
 l 'I did not! The only crime I ever committed 
 was something they never knew about. But I 
 went with the wrong crowd before I was mar- 
 ried and in spite of everything they arrested me 
 the week after I was married and railroaded 
 
 me." 
 
 Sid put on the brake suddenly and the car 
 stopped. From either side revolvers covered 
 them. 
 
 "You boys were pretty smooth." Doc Harlow 
 remarked. "But it didn't work." 
 
 The detective slipped handcuffs over Spar- 
 ling's wrists and thrust the captured revolver 
 into his own pocket. "You'll come pretty near 
 to swinging for that last job, Ogilbie," he jeered. 
 "Now for Berdoo." 
 
130 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 But the deputy sheriff had notions of his own. 
 "It's snowing right here," he said quietly. "That 
 means it's deep on Cajon and we'd probably be 
 all night getting to Victorville. We're going on 
 to see Mrs. Sparling." 
 
 The prisoner gulped. "I haven't seen her 
 since you sent me up six months ago," he said 
 in a whisper. "Don't let Her see me this way, 
 gentlemen 1" 
 
 "This way is good enough for a crook 1" said 
 the detective. 
 
 Doc Harlow displaced Sid at the wheel and 
 started to drive on. "I reckon we can fix it up 
 for to-night, Sparling," he remarked calmly. 
 "You can't get away from us out here. You 
 know me." 
 
 "You knew my dad," the prisoner remarked. 
 
 "I did. And I've seen that wife of yours a 
 couple of times." He looked over at the detec- 
 tive. "We've got your man, Beasley. To-night is 
 Christmas Eve and I reckon we can spare his 
 lady too hard a time." 
 
 The prospector appeared by the roadside and 
 
The Magi of the Mojave 131 
 
 Harlow stopped to say, "Just drive on after us, 
 Whitey. We're going on to the ranch." 
 
 The old man nodded. "Fig tree ranch, Doc?" 
 
 "The same." 
 
 Ten minutes later Sid saw the long, low cabin 
 appear like a shadow out of the starless night. 
 The beam of the car's lights swept across it and 
 were reflected glimmeringly from the window- 
 panes. The deputy sheriff stopped the motor 
 and climbed out. 
 
 "Unlock those cuffs, Beasley," he ordered. 
 
 Grumblingly the detective obeyed. Sparling 
 got out and stood helplessly staring at the house. 
 
 "Go on you first, young man," the deputy 
 said gruffly. 
 
 The scouts watched him go shambling with 
 weariness to the door. They saw him feel for the 
 latch and slowly open it. Then they saw the 
 man halt in the doorway and heard his low-toned 
 call: "Eugenia! Eugenia!" 
 
 The answer came in a moan. Sparling leaped 
 at that sound and vanished. 
 
 "He'll get away!" whispered Beasley, In 
 
132 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 alarm. But the deputy turned on him with a 
 snarl. 
 
 "You keep back'' he commanded. He 
 touched Sid on the shoulder. "Slip in and see 
 what's the matter with the lady, son." 
 
 The scout obeyed. He found himself in the 
 room, cold, fireless, lampless. And from some 
 invisible corner came the sound of sobs, of a 
 woman sobbing and a man murmuring gently. 
 Then Sparling suddenly called out, in a sharp 
 voice, "Oh, Doctor!" 
 
 "That," said the deputy calmly, "is what I sus- 
 pected." He turned to the detective. "Get 
 wood and water from the well." 
 
 The call came again: "Doctor!" 
 
 "That," Harlow replied cheerfully, "used to 
 be my business. I am still quite good at it." He 
 brushed past Sid and went into the darkness of 
 the other room. 
 
 Fifteen minutes later the stove was roaring,, 
 a kettle was on, and Sid and Angel Child were 
 busily engaged in preparing supper. Neither 
 Sparling nor Doc Harlow came out to enjoy it. 
 
The Magi of the Mojave 133 
 
 But Beasley and the prospector made a hearty 
 meal with the boys. Then Sid and Angel rolled 
 themselves in blankets, after draining the cars' 
 radiators and putting the curtains up, and went 
 to sleep. They felt that after all their errand 
 had not resulted in evil. 
 
 They were awakened by Doc Harlow shak- 
 ing them gently. Both roused smartly and saw 
 a smile on his face. 
 
 "Merry Christmas!" he said cheerfully. "And 
 come in and see the stranger!" 
 
 The scouts bashfully went into the little bed- 
 room. Mrs. Sparling lay smiling feebly at her 
 husband. Doc Harlow bustled over to her and 
 laid back the blanket from her shoulder. 
 
 "Young Mr. Sparling!" he announced. "He 
 wishes you all a Merry Christmas!" 
 
 "Merry Christmas!" Sid and Angel called 
 out. 
 
 Later they stared at the starry sky, clearing 
 before a brisk wind. The desert lay lightly 
 feathered with snow, trackless, unsoiled. Doc 
 Harlow joined them. 
 
134 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 "A fine morning for so early," he affirmed. 
 "Beasley and I wanted you boys to know that it 
 was all a mistake. The man Ogilbie whom I 
 should be glad to see hang is not Mrs. Spar- 
 ling's husband. The detective and I have figured 
 out that we were entirely wrong. Isn't that so, 
 Beasley?" 
 
 The detective grinned. "Ab-so-lu-tely! Mr. 
 Sparling is not our man at all. In fact, I think 
 we owe him an apology." 
 
 "Land save us!" boomed the deputy, "you re- 
 mind me! This is Christmas! And not a thing 
 in the house for dinner! Nor to put on the 
 tree!" 
 
 Out of the night Whitey appeared, stroking 
 his thin beard. 
 
 "I was thinkin' that myself, Doc," he re- 
 marked. "So I took a pasear up to Old Woman's 
 Springs, where the boys was havin' a kind of 
 mild celebration. They sent down a couple o' 
 ponies packed with didoes." 
 
 "Bring them in!" the deputy ordered. 
 
 Sid and Angel stared at the many articles that 
 
The Magi of the Mojave 135 
 
 were extracted from the pack saddles and placed 
 around the room. SparKng himself left the 
 inner room and gazed dumbly. 
 
 "Your young lady will be as right as rain in a 
 day," Harlow informed him, cocking his head 
 one side the better to enjoy the arrangement of 
 the gifts. "Bright and early in the day these 
 young scouts will take Beasley to Victorville and 
 Beasley will arrange to send out a nurse and the 
 needed grub and medicines." 
 
 "And me?" whispered Sparling. 
 
 "Land save us!" said the deputy in apparent 
 amazement. "You aren't holding that trick we 
 played on you against us? Funny, knowing your 
 father as well as I did, that I ever could connect 
 you with Ogilbie." 
 
 "A mistake," Beasley said firmly. 
 
 The young man trembled a little. "Will I 
 have to go back and serve my time?" he whis- 
 pered. 
 
 "The only time you'll have to serve that we 
 know of," the deputy remarked carelessly, "is 
 walking the floor o' nights with that youngster. 
 
136 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 And next Christmas you be home all day the day 
 before, and have a tree fixed up right, for I'm 
 going to be here and so's Beasley and so's old 
 Whitey Burns to see how this young Christmas 
 baby is growing. And see that it's a big tree, 
 for we're going to come in cars loaded with 
 stuff." 
 
 A faint voice from the bedroom stilled them. 
 Sparling responded swiftly. He came out and 
 beckoned the scouts. They followed him and 
 came to the bedside. 
 
 "You boys brought me this happiness," she 
 murmured smiling at them wonderfully. 
 "Billie would have had a battle with the men 
 otherwise and I'd have died here to-night." 
 
 "I'm glad, ma'am," the boys answered simply. 
 But as they tip-toed out a sleepy voice recalled 
 them. 
 
 "Oh, boys! Did you wonder why I set the 
 table always for three?" 
 
 "To let your husband know there would be 
 three of you," Sid answered bashfully. 
 
 Mrs. Sparling smiled drowsily. 'That was 
 
The Magi of the Mojave 137 
 
 what I thought. It was my secret way of telling 
 Billie-boy about us." 
 
 In the other room Sid saw the three men 
 seated about the fire, their hands filled with va- 
 rious presents, hastily prepared for the occasion. 
 And in their serene and pleasant faces he per- 
 ceived that Christmas is a living season, which 
 wise men always observe. 
 
 "I tell you, Beasley," the deputy was saying 
 in a mild tone, "you and I couldn't do better 
 than invest a little money with Sparling. I c'n 
 see he'll do well." 
 
 "I think you're more than right/' the detective 
 replied. "I'll do it." 
 
 Whitey Burns polished a heavy bit of mineral 
 on his palm. "That thar's a nugget I picked up 
 not thirty mile from here twelve year ago," he 
 remarked. "It's wuth sixty dollars and if I c'n 
 find that ledge again I'll sure stake that kid in 
 thar to half of it." 
 
 Doc Harlow beamed on the scouts. "And I 
 reckon we can trust these boys to keep us right 
 up to date on how the youngster grows and 
 
138 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 learns his letters," he said. "In fact, the more I 
 think of it, the more inclined I am to put the 
 kid in their charge." 
 
 Sparling appeared, tip-toeing from the sleep- 
 ing room. He shook hands with both boys. 
 
 "That goes with me," he said simply. 
 
 The first faint light of the dawn showed in the 
 window. The prospector pointed to the sky. 
 
 "Thar's the morning star," he mumbled. 
 "Right over the house." 
 
 "As it was nineteen hundred and twenty years 
 ago," said the deputy. 
 
TREASURE IN THE AIR 
 
 I'M going into my chalk mine back of Helen's 
 Station," the old packer told Sid when 
 he met him at the ford across the Mojave. 
 
 "I didn't know they mined chalk," Sid 
 remarked. 
 
 "They get everything mostly out of mines, 
 son," the other answered. "Gold, silver, plati- 
 num, diamonds, coal, tungsten, vanadium, gas, 
 oil, and paint. My mine is chalk, which goes 
 into paint." 
 
 The two of them discussed the uses of white 
 chalk that lies here and there in remote fastnesses 
 of the desert and the scout learned that the 
 material is quarried out, purified, sacked, and 
 shipped to paint factories for "filler." The old 
 man admitted that he worked his mine only a 
 
 139 
 
140 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 few weeks in each year and gained a bare live- 
 lihood. "Mostly I prospect for metals," he 
 went on. 
 
 Before he collected his burros and adjusted 
 their packs the old fellow dropped a few words 
 of gossip. 
 
 "Back there about twenty-eight miles" he 
 jerked his thumb over his shoulder to the south- 
 west "I found the widow of an old side-part- 
 ner of mine. We used to prospect together. He 
 took up a homestead back there in Four North 
 and Eight West. The old lady is having a hard 
 time. Mrs. Tomson, her name is. Ben Tomson 
 got blown up last year, or killed some way. He 
 was after a mine, you see." 
 
 "Was he using dynamite?" Sid asked. 
 
 The packer shook his tousled head. "Not he. 
 He didn't have a stick with him. Nobody knows 
 what happened something just naturally blew 
 him up while he was coming back from his 
 claim. They found him. Ben was a good man." 
 
 "Did he find a mine?" the scout went on. 
 
 "He did. But what kind of a mine it was 
 
Treasure in the Air 141 
 
 nobody knows to this day. He'd discovered it the 
 month before and come home to the ranch and 
 told his wife he'd found it. Then he went off to 
 work it and they found his dead body ten days 
 later on the trail back home. That's what makes 
 it hard for Mrs. Tomson: she knows Ben found 
 what he'd been prospecting for all these years 
 and then got killed some way before he could 
 tell her where it was." 
 
 The old man prepared to move on. "If you're 
 ever over in Town Four North, Eight West, you 
 might drop in on the old lady and cheer her 
 up." He stared at the russet hills ahead of him, 
 dun and bare and desolate. "She's pretty lone- 
 some since Ben's gone. And I haven't made my 
 stake yet and she's poor." He departed, his bur- 
 ros trotting demurely up the sandy slope from 
 the river. 
 
 For some reason this bit of desert history 
 stuck in Sid's mind and a few days later when 
 Angel Child came over, the two boys conferred 
 about it. 
 
 "Seems that this Ben Tomson discovered a 
 
142 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 mine and then got mysteriously killed before he 
 could let his wife know where it was," Sid con- 
 cluded. 
 
 "I know where Town Four North and Eight 
 West is," Angel put in. "I bet I know the old 
 woman, too. I was up there hunting last year 
 and stopped overnight at a shack built among the 
 junipers. If that's Mrs. Tomson she's poorer 
 than a desert rat. Has to haul water six miles." 
 
 "And she might be rich," Sid remarked. 
 
 They went carefully over the scanty informa- 
 tion the packer had let fall. Sid repeated what 
 the old man had said about the different kinds 
 of mines. "Tomson's might have been almost 
 any kind," he said. 
 
 "Old prospectors aren't easily fooled," Angel 
 suggested. "The reason he didn't say anything 
 about where it was shows he thought it was 
 worth a lot. Funny he'd get killed." 
 
 "Blown up," Sid interposed. 
 
 Angel shook his head. "How could he? You 
 say he was found on the trail out, How do men 
 get blown up walking along a trail? Especially 
 
Treasure in the Air 143 
 
 an old-timer who didn't have any dynamite 
 along?" 
 
 "Anyway, I kind of promised the old fellow 
 we'd have a look-see at Mrs. Tomson some day," 
 Sid answered. "Maybe she'd tell us more." 
 
 Sid's uncle heard in time of the boys' desire to 
 visit the widow of the old miner. To their sur- 
 prise he seemed both interested and helpful. 
 
 "I knew Ben," he told the scouts. "He was an 
 educated man and an excellent miner. The last 
 time I saw him he told me he thought he had 
 made his stake at last. He didn't tell me what 
 or where it was, but he was tremendously ex- 
 cited just the same. And so far as I could hear 
 his death was the queerest thing that has hap- 
 pened in this desert in my time." 
 
 "How was it queer, Uncle Joe?" Sid de- 
 manded. 
 
 His uncle shook his head. "Simply queer. 
 His body was found on a trail back of Victor- 
 ville. He had evidently been blown up in some 
 kind of an explosion. His clothes were burned 
 and his face scorched. Besides that his burro was 
 
144 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 found a hundred feet away and it had been 
 killed also, apparently by this same explosion." 
 
 "Instantly killed?" Angel inquired. 
 
 Mr. Moulton's eyes grew sharp. "Exactly the 
 question that I've asked myself a good many 
 times," he answered. "Personally, I believe the 
 explosion took place in another spot and that Ben 
 tried to get himself and his burro down to civi- 
 lization and they died on the way. Anyway, 
 there was absolutely no sign of any explosion 
 where they were found." 
 
 As this only whetted their curiosity, the scouts 
 asked permission to cross the valley and call on 
 Mrs. Tomson. Mr. Moulton gave them his 
 blessing and Mrs. Moulton packed them food 
 for a week. 
 
 "If Mrs. Tomson is as poor as I think she is," 
 Sid's Aunt Mary remarked, "you had better be 
 ready to provide your own grub. She even has 
 to haul the drinking water several miles." 
 
 It was a fine day early in January when the 
 two scouts set out. They had decided not to take 
 the long-about road, but to cut directly across 
 
Treasure in the Air 145 
 
 country, using the lofty, snow-clad peak of Old 
 Baldy as their landmark. Both had searched 
 their maps and fixed the location of Township 
 Four North and Eight West in their minds. 
 They had calculated its distance, in a straight 
 line, as thirty-five miles all through the tree- 
 less, waterless desert. 
 
 Mr. Moulton reassured himself as to their 
 preparations. He examined their compasses, 
 loaned Sid a pair of good binoculars, saw to their 
 having each a proper emergency dressing for 
 bites and wounds, and warned them against the 
 possibility of cold, wintry storms. Both prom- 
 ised that in the case of bad weather they would 
 strike for the nearest habitation and remain there 
 till travel became safe. 
 
 The first day they made eighteen miles and 
 camped under a yucca palm. 
 
 "Too cold for me!" Angel said, shivering next 
 morning while Sid pulled up greasewood roots 
 for the fire. "One blanket apiece is nothing at 
 all in this kind of air." 
 
 Sid agreed. "We'll make Mrs. Tomson's by 
 
146 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 to-night anyway. Now for the bacon and coffee." 
 
 With this they ate some bread and dripping 
 and were soon ready for the day. The sky was 
 slightly overcast and the crests of the San Ber- 
 nardinos were veiled with cloud. A bitter wind 
 blew from the westward and both scouts were 
 only too glad to hasten along without resting. 
 
 It was snowing slightly when they came to the 
 place where Mrs. Tomson's shanty should ap- 
 pear in sight. So far as they could see there was 
 no house to be seen. They had crossed no trav- 
 eled road. 
 
 "We're lost!" said Angel, flapping his arms 
 and blowing great clouds of steam into the air. 
 
 Sid nodded. "It looks that way. But we're 
 not lost more'n a mile. It'll be dark in half an 
 hour. If we're within five miles we'll see lights 
 Mrs. Tomson's lights.'* 
 
 "Maybe she's gone?" 
 
 "We'll see some kind of lights," Sid replied 
 cheerfully. "And when we do, we'll make for 
 them. You can't see a thing this time of day. 
 Everything's simply a kind of gray," 
 
Treasure in the Air 147 
 
 It was quite dark before both scouts gave a 
 yell and started forward. A small light ap- 
 peared quite close. They made the interval in 
 five minutes and came stamping and blowing 
 into a very small fenced plot of ground in the 
 middle of which stood a two-room shack built 
 of rough lumber. A moment later the door had 
 opened to their knock and an old lady was peer- 
 ing at them. 
 
 "Mrs. Tomson?" Sid asked, taking off his cap. 
 
 "Yes," she answered, and then exclaimed, 
 "Why, boys! Whatever are you doing out here 
 this kind of weather? Come right in!" 
 
 They entered and found themselves in a 
 neatly but sparsely furnished room which com- 
 bined sitting room, bedroom, and kitchen in one. 
 On the stove was, evidently, Mrs. Tomson's sup- 
 per. Glancing at it, Sid was glad he and Angel 
 had brought plenty for themselves. 
 
 Mrs. Tomson seemed relieved, though she said 
 little, when the scouts proclaimed their ability 
 to provide their own meal. She welcomed them, 
 and they saw that she was glad to have them with 
 
148 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 her. And after supper, while the rising wind 
 shrieked about the flimsy cabin, they drew her 
 story from her. 
 
 The gist of it was that Ben Tomson had 
 worked half the year in San Bernardino to earn 
 sufficient money to support himself and his wife 
 for six months on the desert. Part of this time 
 he spent in working at improvements on the 
 homestead; part he devoted to prospecting. 
 
 "He always found enough to make it worth 
 while," his widow said, over her knitting. "And 
 at last he thought he'd made a rich strike. I'll 
 never forget how excited he was when he burst 
 in that afternoon eighteen months ago. 
 
 "'Mother!' he cried, 'I've found a fortune!' 
 Those were his words." 
 
 The scouts nodded politely. Mrs. Thomson 
 allowed her knitting to drop while she let mem- 
 ory of that blissful moment erase the dismal 
 present. She took up the thread of her story 
 with a sigh. 
 
 "The next day he went to Berdoo" Sid rec- 
 ognized the local abbreviation of San Bernar- 
 dino "and came back with fresh supplies. He 
 
Treasure in the Air 149 
 
 told me he was going in to locate his find and 
 make certain of it. He left at daylight one morn- 
 ing. I knew it was going to storm, and told him 
 so. He didn't seem to care. He was off to find 
 his fortune." 
 
 "And then, Ma'am?" Angel inquired. 
 
 "They came here ten days later and told me 
 he was dead," Mrs. Tomson whispered. "He'd 
 been blown up in some way, he and his pack 
 burro. I I always thought he got hurt long 
 before and was trying to get home to be nursed. 
 I'm a good nurse. He always said so." 
 
 Later Sid asked, "And you never found out 
 where the mine was, ma'am?" 
 
 Mrs. Tomson shook her head. "For a long 
 time I didn't think about it," she murmured. 
 "Then, when I did try to think about it, I found 
 there wasn't any way of finding out just where 
 he'd been." 
 
 "What kind of a mine was it?" Angel asked. 
 
 The widow sighed. "He never said. He was 
 hunting mostly for gold. But latterly he used to 
 talk about finding silver or copper." 
 
ISO Scouts of the Desert 
 
 "Didn't he say anything about this place he'd 
 found?" Sid persisted. 
 
 Mrs. Tomson knit on. "Maybe I misunder- 
 stood him," she remarked slowly, "we were so 
 excited. But it seems to me, he claimed that 
 there was something in the air that affected 
 him." 
 
 "Something in the air!" Sid repeated. 
 
 Mrs. Tomson nodded. "Sounds funny, doesn't 
 it? Maybe he meant the altitude made him 
 dizzy he used to say he liked high places be- 
 cause they made him feel queer and good. But 
 then again I don't remember that he referred to 
 altitudes I think he meant something mysteri- 
 ous. All the more so because his death was so 
 mysterious. Who ever heard of a man and a 
 burro being just blown up with no powder 
 around?" 
 
 With this scanty addition to their knowledge 
 the scouts made up their bed in front of the stove 
 and went to sleep. Sid was first up in the morn- 
 ing and fetched water from the two barrels out- 
 side, wood from the pile of carbonized yucca, 
 
Treasure in the Air 151 
 
 and started the fire. When Mrs. Thomson ap- 
 peared the kettle was boiling and Sid had quietly 
 added some of his own store to her slender 
 provision for breakfast. After the meal he drew 
 Angel outside. 
 
 "It's up to us to catch her burros and haul her 
 some water," he announced. 
 
 "Sure." 
 
 "She goes clear to Tilghman's for water." 
 
 "It'll take us all day." 
 
 Sid nodded. "It's bitterly cold and she's 
 nearly out of w r ater." 
 
 So they spent the day going with the light 
 wagon and the burros seven miles to a well and 
 filling the barrels. They got back at dusk. Mrs. 
 Tomson welcomed them joyfully. 
 
 "You don't know what a blessing you boys 
 have been!" she told them. 
 
 After supper the Widow confided that she 
 thought often of making a search for the lost 
 mine. 
 
 "When my husband died he left it to me in a 
 will," she informed them. "He was very careful 
 that way. But of course as nobody knows where 
 
152 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 it is it doesn't help me any. But I kind of feel 
 Ben wanted me to have it, and I've hankered 
 lately to traipse off by myself and try to see 
 where it could be." 
 
 Sid found courage to unfold his long-thought- 
 out plan. "If we had anything to go on, we'd 
 help, ma'am." 
 
 Mrs. Tomson nodded. "If you would, it u'd 
 help me a lot. You see, I can't very well leave 
 home for long. And the burros are slow and I'm 
 not very strong. Anyway, it's a very long dis- 
 
 tance." 
 
 "How far?" Sid inquired. 
 
 Mrs. Tomson only knew that her husband had 
 gone by way of Victorville twenty-four miles 
 and thence north for an unknown distance. 
 
 The scouts discussed this in low tones. Mrs. 
 Tomson knitted comfortably, dreaming of the 
 lost wealth. 
 
 Presently Sid said: "If you had any clues at 
 all for us to go on, ma'am. We both live over 
 on the river and we have lots of time to go 
 exploring." 
 
Treasure In the Air 153 
 
 The widow looked up. "I'll just show you 
 what I have," she remarked. "I never showed it 
 to anybody, for maybe it's nothing at all. Peo- 
 ple mightn't understand, or think that my hus- 
 band was foolish." 
 
 She went into the other room and brought out 
 a worn notebook. "This was the book he al- 
 ways carried," she remarked. "It was found on 
 him when they picked him up." 
 
 Eagerly the two boys scanned the little vol- 
 ume. They quickly saw that it consisted mostly 
 of memoranda about feed, various weeks' earn- 
 ings in San Bernardino, grocery lists, and so on. 
 But on the very last page were set down a few 
 figures, scrawled across the page. 
 
 The boys bent over this intently. 
 
 "Looks like it was written in a hurry, Angel!" 
 
 "Shaky!" Child replied. 
 
 "Just figures!" Sid added disappointedly, and 
 turned to Mrs. Tomson. 
 
 "Do you know what these figures are about, 
 ma'am?" 
 
 Mrs. Tomson took the book and studied the 
 
154 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 page curiously. "I wish I knew!" she sighed. 
 "Looks to me like it was written at the last a 
 kind of message he wanted me to get, and didn't 
 want other people to read. But I never could 
 make it out." 
 
 Sid copied the figures carefully, just as they 
 were set down, and studied them with his head 
 cocked on one side. 
 
 NE^E 25.32 25.10 24.90 24.98 24.65- 
 18-1-18. 
 
 "Whatever they mean, they're not plain," he 
 murmured. 
 
 Mrs. Tomson came and bent over the boys' 
 shoulders. 
 
 "I've fussed over those numbers till I'm 
 dizzy," she confessed. "It's just like Ben to put 
 down things like that and expect me to under- 
 stand them." 
 
 "You think he wrote this down for informa- 
 tion as to where the mine was?" Angel inquired 
 doubtfully. 
 
 "It's the last thing he wrote in that book," 
 
Treasure in the Air 155 
 
 Mrs. Tomson said, and her logic appealed to 
 both scouts. 
 
 Sid ventured further. "Did Mr. Tomson have 
 anything that might tell about this?" he asked 
 slowly. "Was anything else found by his side?" 
 
 The widow walked to the other room with a 
 mild "I'll just let you see all there was." 
 
 She came back with a tattered buckskin 
 "poke" tied with a thong of leather. She emptied 
 its contents on the table and both scouts examined 
 the little array of trifles curiously. There was 
 a good-knife, a smashed cheap watch, a whistle, a 
 bent and broken brass case, like half of a watch 
 case, and several stray springs, screws, and so on. 
 Mrs. Thomson peered at these articles and said 
 quietly, "They got broken up, I reckon." 
 
 Sid touched the brass case with the tip of his 
 finger. "What was this?" 
 
 Mrs. Tomson replied that it was what was left 
 of his compass. "He always carried one." 
 
 Sid nodded. "But compasses don't have 
 springs and screws, ma'am. Did he have another 
 watch?" 
 
156 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 Mrs. Tomson again looked down at the little 
 pattern these things made on the table. 
 
 "Now I declare!" she remarked. "I almost 
 forgot! I told Ben that morning he left that I 
 was sure it was going to storm, and he cried back 
 that he had taken his pocket barometer. Prob- 
 ably that was smashed, too." 
 
 Further questions elicited the fact that the 
 prospector's body had been discovered five miles 
 from Stoddard's Well, and on a trail leading 
 into the valley west of Rodman Mountain a 
 drear and desolate part of the Mojave. 
 
 The scouts had to be satisfied with this in- 
 formation, and the next morning, after cutting 
 enough wood to last Mrs. Tomson for a couple 
 of weeks, they went to Victorville and so home, 
 getting a lift for the last twenty miles on a pass- 
 ing bee man's car. On their return home they 
 reported with some chagrin the result of their 
 queries. 
 
 "It simply adds to the mystery," Mr. Moul- 
 ton said. "But there is one thing I'd take as 
 sure, and that is that old Ben Tomson didn't 
 
Treasure In the Air 157 
 
 write those figures down simply as pastime. He 
 meant them to tell something. You say there 
 were no other figures like them in the book, and 
 that these were on the last page he ever wrote 
 on? All right. I argue that they were his last 
 words. He evidently thought his wife would 
 understand them." 
 
 Sid pondered this several days, and at the 
 end of that time went to Angel's home and 
 brought the matter up again. 
 
 "That NEV2E is simple enough," he re- 
 marked. "It's a compass direction." 
 
 "From where?" Child asked promptly. 
 
 Sid scowled at the figures he had copied. 
 "That's a puzzle." 
 
 "Suppose we found out where he started 
 from what do the other figures stand for?" 
 
 Moulton was not to be stumped. "I say we go 
 to where they found the body and have a look- 
 see. We can scout around there and maybe 
 find out something." 
 
 This trip was made in good weather. Spring 
 was beginning to soften the air. The desert was 
 
158 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 slowly but surely turning to a faint green where 
 the innumerable plants .and grasses began to 
 sprout again for their brief period. The moun- 
 tains were tinged with verdure also, and the 
 Mojave River valley was almost verdant. The 
 scouts made the trip to Stoddard's Well without 
 incident, found the rough, untraveled road that 
 led towards Rodman Mountain, and carefully 
 traversed the five miles they had been told in- 
 tervened between the Well a little spring run- 
 ning into a tank and the spot they sought. 
 
 They knew it instantly by the whitening bones 
 of the burro. Vulture, buzzard, and coyote had 
 done their work well. Nothing remained but the 
 skeleton. 
 
 "It's going to be pretty hard to pick up the 
 man's trail after a year," Angel remarked 
 dubiously. 
 
 "It is, but I think we can make a try at it," 
 Sid answered. "In the first place, I am going 
 on the guess that Ben Tomson wrote those fig- 
 ures while he was going in. What they stand 
 
Treasure in the Air 159 
 
 for, I'm not sure yet. But I have a kind of sus- 
 picion. You know he had a barometer. The 
 pieces were in that poke. That means the 
 barometer was smashed in the explosion, what- 
 ever it was. But he used it. He took it with him 
 for some purpose. Let's scout around carefully." 
 
 They spent half the remaining hours of the 
 day and found nothing, except that the road 
 seemed to go on indefinitely in a noitheasterly 
 direction, as they assured themselves with their 
 compasses. That night they made camp by the 
 tank and slept soundly. 
 
 Early in the morning Sid suggested that they 
 follow the road carefully towards the mountain. 
 They consulted their map and decided to try to 
 reach Le Conti Springs, as marked down. 
 
 They traversed several miles when Sid picked 
 up a bit of paper. It was almost too torn to han- 
 dle, but one edge of it was unmistakably burnt. 
 They studied it and saw that it had been writ- 
 ten on. What the writing was none could ever 
 say now, for it was blurred beyond making out. 
 
160 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 "We'll take it as a hint that we're on the right 
 trail," Angel agreed. "It might have been 
 scorched in that explosion they tell about." 
 
 At what they figured was ten miles, in a deep 
 barranca, they found a miner's rusted pan, a 
 bursted canteen, and a leather strap. They gath- 
 ered these up and went on. They found nothing 
 more, except that at thirteen miles the road 
 ceased to run northeast and turned directly east. 
 Here they camped, drinking out of their full 
 canteens and eating cold bread and butter. 
 
 The next morning Sid seemed much excited. 
 He had evidently reached a conclusion. Angel 
 asked him many questions but got unsatisfactory 
 answers. 
 
 "I'm scared in my own mind that it isn't pos- 
 sible, Angel," Sid told him after a while. 
 "We've got to go back to Victorville to find out. 
 The only thing sure in my mind is that those 
 figures are barometer figures." 
 
 "Huh! I know what a barometer's like," An- 
 gel Child replied scornfully. "And no barome- 
 ter I ever saw would change a lot in one day." 
 
Treasure in the Air 161 
 
 Sid grinned. "I studied barometers last year 
 when I was on the Oregon coast," he responded. 
 "They do change, and people use 'em for other 
 things than to find out what the weather will 
 be." 
 
 He would say nothing more. They went back 
 to Victorville and Sid began a series of visits 
 which resulted in his confiding to his brother 
 scout that he now had the information he was 
 after. They went down the river half a mile 
 and camped under the cottonwoods. After sup- 
 per Sid brought out his figures and they studied 
 them by the light of the fire. 
 
 NE%E 25.3225.1024.9024.98 24.65 
 18-1-18 Sid wrote down carefully. 
 
 "NE%E is the compass direction where the 
 road turns to the east. It means that right at 
 that turn we go on northeast a half east, as 
 railors say." 
 
 "That's right up a hill," Angel interposed. 
 
 Sid nodded. "I went to the cement plant and 
 asked Mr. Taylor about a barometer. They use 
 them in the plant. He told me a barometer 
 
162 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 registers differently the higher above the sea one 
 gets. He gave me a table." 
 
 The scout brought out a bit of paper written 
 over with carefully made figures. Angel stared 
 at it and began to understand. This is what he 
 read : 
 
 "When the barometer at sea-level marks 30 
 inches, it marks: 
 
 29.92 inches at 68.9 feet elevation above sea level 
 
 29.52 at 416.7 feet 
 
 29. 13 at 767.7 feet 
 
 28.74 at 1122.1 feet 
 
 28.35 at 1486.2 feet 
 
 27.95 at 1850.4 feet 
 
 27.55 at 2224.5 feet 
 
 27. 16 at 2599.7 feet 
 
 26.77 at 2962.1 feet 
 
 26.38 at 3369.5 feet 
 
 25.98 at 3763.2 feet 
 
 25.59 at 4163.3 feet 
 
 25. 19 at 4568.3 feet 
 
 24.80 at 4983.1 feet 
 
 24.41 at 5403.2 feet. 
 
 "So you see when Ben Tomson marked down 
 barometer heights, he marked down elevations, 
 as well," Sid went on excitedly. "That means, 
 he wanted us to go northeast a half east first till 
 
Treasure in the Air 163 
 
 we reached where the barometer said 25.10, then 
 to where it said 24.90, and so on. We're to stop 
 when we get to where the barometer marks 
 24.65." 
 
 Angel nodded and took the pencil and looked 
 at the table. "There's no 24.65 on that table," he 
 said suddenly. 
 
 Sid laughed. "You calculate how much it 
 goes down for every hundred feet and figure 
 that way. The difference between 4983 and 5403 
 is 420 feet, so the final spot, where the barome- 
 ter registers 24.65, would be about 161 feet 
 higher than at 24.80, or 5145 feet." 
 
 "That's higher than Rodman Mountain is, or 
 any other in sight that way," Angel objected. 
 
 "So it is. That stumped me at first, specially 
 remembering what Mrs. Tomson said about her 
 husband's remarking that 'It was in the air.' 
 That height would be two hundred feet in the 
 air, wouldn't it?" 
 
 Both scouts laughed. But Angel became seri- 
 ous again. "It kind of throws your barometer 
 figures out of the question," he said. "You went 
 
164 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 off on a false scent and we're no nearer to find- 
 ing the old lady's fortune than we were before." 
 
 Sid nodded. "I thought so, too. But old Ben 
 Tomson was careful. You remember what his 
 widow said about it's being stormy that week? 
 Well, they found his body on the twenty-fifth of 
 January, 1918. See those last figures he wrote 
 down?" 
 
 Sid laid his fingers on them: 
 
 18-1-18. 
 
 "Eighteenth of January, 1918!" Angel cried 
 admiringly. 
 
 Sid laughed. "Easy, isn't it? Well, we both 
 know that the barometer rises and falls accord- 
 ing to the weather, don't we? I went to Mr. 
 Marshall, the weather observer in Victorville, 
 and got the barometer reading for the 18th of 
 January, 1918." Sid flourished the paper trium- 
 phantly in the firelight. 
 
 "The barometer that day registered 29.64." 
 
 "Victorville is twenty-eight hundred feet 
 above sea level," Angel responded scornfully. 
 "How could the barometer mark that high?" 
 
Treasure in the Air 165 
 
 "The government reduces all its marks to sea 
 level," Sid went on. "In other words, the day 
 Ben Tomson made these figures, the weather was 
 bad and the barometer registered thirty-six hun- 
 dredths below. We add thirty-six hundredths 
 to Tomson's figures and we get the right ones.'* 
 
 "I see," Angel replied quietly and set to figur- 
 ing again. The result of his reckonings was this : 
 
 25. 10 equals 25.46 
 
 24.90 equals 25.26 
 
 24.98 equals 25.34 
 
 24.65 equals 25.01 
 
 Taking these Sid followed them out, and 
 wrote down the following elevations : 
 
 25.46 is 4295 feet high 
 
 25.26 is 4496 feet high 
 
 25.34 is 4418 feet high 
 
 25.01 is 4748 feet high 
 
 "The mountain is 4825 feet high, according to 
 the maps," Sid remarked. "You see? We turn 
 northeast a half east where the road bends, go 
 in that direction till we get 4295 feet high, then 
 to a point two hundred feet higher, then down 
 seventy feet, then to that last point." 
 
 "That looks all right," Angel remarked. "But 
 
166 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 how are we to know when we get to those 
 heights?" 
 
 Sid pulled out a leather case and showed a 
 neat barometer. "I borrowed that. In the morn- 
 ing we get Mr. Marshall's weather reading. 
 Then we know what to add or subtract and we'll 
 use the barometer. It's like a compass for up 
 and down, isn't it?" 
 
 They went over their calculations again be- 
 fore going to sleep and bright dawn found them 
 ready for their start. They got their barometric 
 correction, which was, the observer told them, 
 practically nothing on that day, and started out. 
 At noon they reached Stoddard's Well and 
 turned off on the Rodman Mountain road. At 
 dusk they reached the point where they 
 had decided Ben Tomson had left this road. 
 There they camped. 
 
 The next morning they duly passed the burro's 
 skeleton and began their ascent of the rugged 
 peak that rose into the blue without tree or vege- 
 tation. At noon they reached the point where 
 their barometer marked 25.46. It was a granite 
 
Treasure in the Air 167 
 
 spur. A few feet further up Sid stooped and 
 picked up a bit of glass. 
 
 "He came this way," he remarked. 
 
 A half hour more brought them upon a ledge 
 where the barometer marked 25.26 inches. 
 Here they paused. Ahead of them the moun- 
 tains rose steeply. 
 
 "That stops us," Angel said. "Not even a 
 burro could climb that." 
 
 Sid nodded, "Ben Tomson's direction read to 
 go downward seventy feet." 
 
 "That's backwards," Child remonstrated. 
 
 "That's so," Sid said, consulting his figures 
 again. There was no help there. The two scouts 
 stared around curiously. Behind them was the 
 hot, waterless declivity they had so painfully 
 come up. Before them was the almost impass- 
 able face of the peak. Hut presently both turned 
 and grinned at each other. 
 
 "To the right, Sid?" 
 
 "We'll try that first," was the reply. 
 
 They made their way along the little ledge on 
 which they stood for a hundred yards. Here a 
 
168 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 deep cleft in the side of the mountain led 
 downward for a distance. It was by no means 
 easy going, but they managed it and came to a 
 stand in the hot, breathless air of the crevasse. 
 Sid consulted his barometer. 
 
 "Exactly 25.34." 
 
 "Now to go up three hundred and thirty feet," 
 Angel replied. 
 
 They looked ahead and saw that the cleft in 
 the mountainside began to ascend again. Pos- 
 sibly a quarter of a mile away it ended in a kind 
 of box canyon above which the peak went sheer 
 up. 
 
 They made the trip and tested the elevation 
 again. 
 
 "We've arrived," Sid remarked grimly. "This 
 is where Ben Tomson found his mine." 
 
 "Let's look around carefully," Angel an- 
 swered, and began to examine the rather level 
 floor of the little canyon. Presently he stooped 
 and cried out, "Here's somebody's hat all 
 scorched and burnt." There was no answer. He 
 looked around for Sid. That scout was standing 
 
Treasure in the Air 169 
 
 in the shadow of the rock, staring upward and 
 heedless of his companion's cry. 
 
 Child repeated his call and his discovery. 
 Still no response came from Sid Moulton. An- 
 gel, the old hat in hand, retraced his steps and 
 joined his brother scout. He, too, lifted his 
 eyes to the great rocky wall that towered above 
 them. 
 
 "What is it?" he whispered. 
 
 Sid kept his eyes focused on something invis- 
 ible above them. "You remember what Mrs. 
 Tomson said her husband had told her about 
 their fortune 'being in the air'? It's true." 
 
 "But I don't see anything!" the other retorted. 
 Then he drew closer to Sid. "Yes, I do, too." 
 His voice fell to a mere gasp, "What is it, Sid?" 
 
 The scout shook a little, breathing fast. "It's 
 it's what killed Ben Tomson," he muttered. 
 
 The air above them seemed to whirl and bub- 
 ble against the intense blue of the speckless sky, 
 to pour upward in a dizzy whirl of thin, almost 
 invisible vapor. Now and again this vapor 
 
170 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 seemed to assume for an instant a shape, porten- 
 tous and malign. Again it dissolved and became 
 invisible. The sweat stood out on the scouts' 
 faces. Their listening ears caught an almost im- 
 perceptible sound, a wavering whisper, coming 
 from some profound and suffering throat. The 
 canyon was filled with a long-drawn sigh. 
 
 Backwards, step by step, the two boys with- 
 drew, sliding their feet along the sandy surface, 
 feeling behind them with outstretched arms. 
 They came to the brink and knelt, their eyes still 
 fixed on the mysterious wavering shadow that 
 filled the hollow well of the great fissure. Then 
 they slipped down and out of the place. They 
 raced down the declivity and only paused when 
 they reached the elevation on the western side. 
 There they stood and peered back into the 
 chasm. They saw nothing. 
 
 With a gulp Child held up the old, charred 
 felt hat. 
 
 "It got him!' 
 
 Sid nodded. In silence they retraced their way 
 to the foot of the mountain and made camp. 
 
Treasure in the Air [17JO 
 
 They found that they were building their fire on 
 a spot where another fire had been built long 
 before. 
 
 Grimly they stared at each other. 
 
 Sid laughed. "It got our goats, all right. 
 What did Tomson mean when he told his wife 
 there was 'a fortune in the air'?" 
 
 Angel shook his head. "I don't know. Do 
 you?" 
 
 "No. But it's up to us to stick this out. We've 
 come so far we can't turn back now" 
 
 From up the crevasse came a faint whispering 
 cigh, echoing lightly in the dusk. A hot breath 
 eddied about them. They sniffed it and picked 
 up their kits and kicked the fire out, to the last 
 spark. 
 
 "By Jiminy, so that's it!" Sid muttered. 
 
 "Who'd have guessed?" Angel Child re- 
 turned. "Lucky we found out in time. We'd 
 have gone the way old Ben Tomson did." 
 
 "We'll make camp away below," Sid agreed. 
 
 After supper, seated at the foot of the moun- 
 tain, the scouts went over the day's experiences. 
 
172 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 .They felt that they had solved the mystery 
 of the figures which the old prospector had en- 
 tered in his notebook before he met his death. 
 Every barometric reckoning had been verified, 
 as well as the compass course. And what seemed 
 to add the convincing proof to their solution was 
 the undebatable fact that none of these calcu- 
 lations would have come out unless they had had 
 the key figures 18-1-18, the date that Tomson 
 had made his final observations. 
 
 But the fortune which the miner had boasted 
 to have discovered was another matter. They 
 had found that his words to his wife about it 
 "being in the air" had a very real meaning and 
 a sinister one. 
 
 "He came up here and saw what we saw and 
 examined it in safety," Sid argued. "He evi- 
 dently heard what we heard and saw more than 
 we saw. For some reason he got away safely. 
 He knew where it was. He wasn't so sure as he 
 might have been, of course. But he was mighty 
 certain he knew what that thing was. He went 
 home and got more grub and supplies and came 
 back here secretly." 
 
Treasure in the Air 173 
 
 "His making those figures to tell his road and 
 its location shows he was afraid somebody else 
 might run on to it," Angel Child put in. 
 
 "Sure. He wrote it down in a way he thought 
 no one would puzzle it out or think anything 
 about it. But he must have thought Mrs. Tom- 
 son would know." 
 
 "I don't believe he wrote that for her benefit," 
 Child responded. "It was merely by chance that 
 the book was on him when he got killed." 
 
 "That sounds reasonable," Sid admitted. "But 
 just the same he got here safely on his second 
 trip, and spent some time here before it it got 
 him." 
 
 The other scout peered at his comrade through 
 the dim light given by their little fire. 
 
 "Have you a name for 'It'?" 
 
 "You smelt it?" Sid demanded. 
 
 "I smelt something queer." 
 
 "So did I," Sid confessed. "Something awful. 
 Kind of hot and dizzying, wasn't it?" 
 
 "And sickening," Child added. "Poisonous." 
 
 "That's the way it struck me," Sid went on. 
 
174 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 "But we've got to remember that Ben Tomson 
 wasn't poisoned. He was blown up." 
 
 "Yes, of course. But he knew there was some- 
 thing in the air, and had an idea what it was," 
 Child insisted, turning on his back and staring 
 at the stars. "Then it got him. It's funny." 
 
 "It's worse than funny," Sid said seriously. 
 "And we've got to solve it. We've got to finish 
 this job. If there's treasure here, it belongs to 
 Mrs. Tomson, and we must tell her." 
 
 "We'd better get some sleep, Sid," Angel re- 
 marked, yawning. 
 
 But an hour later both confessed that sleep 
 was impossible. The moon was rising and flood- 
 ing the desert below them with silver liquid 
 light. It lay in great pools here and there, with 
 the greasewood and an occasional yucca palm 
 standing out as if from a lake. 
 
 "I say we go back there and scout around," 
 Sid suggested. 
 
 "All right," said the other. "We don't need 
 any light." 
 
 They went back the hard road they had found, 
 slipped into the gash, went down its slope and 
 
Treasure in the Air 175 
 
 then up again to the main fissure. But the 
 moment they entered it both boys drew back 
 hurriedly. 
 
 "Gas!" Sid shouted. 
 
 When they were safely out of it they tried for 
 some other way to get near the fissure. At last, 
 by scaling the precipitous wall of the mountain 
 they managed to crawl up where they could 
 make it over the rocks to the edge of the cavern 
 and look down. They saw nothing. There was 
 no odor, except a faint one which they could 
 not identify. 
 
 But presently Sid laughed and poked Child in 
 the rib. "Feel this low brush?" he asked. "It's 
 all charred. That's the smell here." 
 
 "What we smelled down below was gas," 
 Angel retorted. 
 
 "You're right." 
 
 "And gas isn't a fortune, Sid." 
 
 "It explodes if one strikes a match in it," was 
 the reply. "Suppose that's what Ben Tomson 
 did?" 
 
 "Of course!" Child responded eagerly. "Gas 
 mixed with air will explode. It blew him and 
 
176 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 his burro pretty much up ; but they were able to 
 travel down as far as they got where they found 
 them." 
 
 "An explosion like that would probably blind 
 Tomson." 
 
 "Suppose he got hold of the burro and it 
 guided him down so far, and then died, and left 
 him to wander in a circle?" 
 
 Sid thought this over. "Could be, but we 
 don't know. Anyway, we've found gas. Bu)t 
 where's the fortune?" 
 
 "Let's go down and get some sleep, Sid." 
 
 They returned to camp much relieved and 
 slept soundly. In the morning they cautiously 
 revisited the chasm. Both boys saw the truth, 
 that the hot sun evaporated the heavy gas so that 
 it poured upward like a kind of half-visible 
 vapor, or steam. During the night the cold gas 
 settled in the cavern. 
 
 "Now the thing to do is to find out where the 
 gas comes from," Sid remarked. "It doesn't 
 come from the bottom, or we'd be smothered in 
 it. It must issue from the rock part way up." 
 
 Both lads stared curiously at the rugged rock 
 
Treasure in the Air 177 
 
 wall and finally agreed that the gas must come 
 out of a small slit in the mountain about ten feet 
 above them, where a shelf offered foothold. 
 
 "One of us must get up and make sure," Sid 
 said. "And it's not safe, either. If one got a 
 good whiff of that stuff he'd fall, sure." 
 
 They figured on this a while and then with 
 their scout axes began to make steps in the shelf. 
 An hour's work in the cracked, crumbling rock 
 finished this job and Sid went up and lifted his 
 head above the shelf. He stayed some moments, 
 then came down. 
 
 "It's there, all right," he told his companion. 
 "But what it is, stumps me." 
 
 Angel Child made the trip and returned with 
 no helpful suggestion except that there was a 
 kind of tarry pool there. "Maybe it's some kind 
 of liquid that is valuable," he said. "We could 
 fill an old tin can with it and take it home for a 
 specimen." 
 
 They decided on this, filled a tin, and carefully 
 packed it away. 
 
 "Now for home," Sid remarked. "We can do 
 
178 Scouts of the Desert 
 
 nothing more till we know what this stuff is." 
 
 They reached Helen's Station the next eve- 
 ning and parted cheerfully. 
 
 "I'll have Uncle Joe get it analyzed," Sid said. 
 "If it's worth while I'll let you know and we'll 
 go back to Town Eight West and Four North 
 and notify Mrs. Tomson that her husband left 
 her some fortune, anyway." 
 
 Mr. Moulton received Sid's story quietly and 
 when it was ended asked to see the sample. Sid 
 produced it. His uncle smelt it, tasted it, and 
 then laughed heartily. 
 
 "Did I were we foolish?" Sid stammered. 
 
 Mr. Moulton grew serious instantly. "I 
 should say not," he remarked. "You solved the 
 riddle Ben Tomson set us all, and you did more 
 than that you've laid the foundations of his 
 widow's fortune. It may mean an immense 
 amount of wealth to all of us. You've discov- 
 ered what thousands are spending hundreds of 
 thousands of dollars to find oil." 
 
 "Oil!" Sid said, with shining eyes. 
 
 "Oil," his uncle replied. "You have repeated 
 Ben Tomson's discovery: first natural gas 
 
Treasure in the Air 179 
 
 (which caused his death when he struck a match 
 in it) and then an oil seepage. That means that 
 some company will buy Mrs. Tomson's right to 
 it for a huge sum. But, first, we must say noth- 
 ing to anybody, for the law gives first right to the 
 first one who files. We'll take the car to-night, 
 get Angel Child, and see the widow. To-morrow 
 I'll take her to San Bernardino and get the 
 papers properly made out. Meanwhile, not a 
 word!" 
 
 When all was done and Victorville was in a 
 tumult over the new oil strike, Sid and his 
 brother scout found themselves the proud pos- 
 sessors of new and improved barometers, pre- 
 sented to them by the grateful widow of the 
 miner whose secret they had unraveled. 
 

 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY