When the cowboys, with Hi Lang in the lead, reached the Overland girls, they discovered Grace Harlowe calmly sitting on the runaway bronco's head to hold him down.

"Get Miss Briggs out from between the pony's legs. She can't help herself. Drag the man out, too. The pony fell on him," urged Grace.

"Are you hurt, Mrs. Gray!" begged Hi anxiously.

"No."

"And Miss Briggs!"

"I think not. She was a little stunned when we fell with the bronco. Hold down his head so I can get to her."

Surrendering her seat on the bronco's head to a cowboy, Grace got up and insisted in removing Elfreda from her perilous position.

They stood Miss Briggs on her feet, Grace supporting her with an arm about her waist to give Elfreda opportunity to collect herself.

"How do you feel now!" asked Grace.

"All--all mussed up," was J. Elfreda's characteristic reply.

Both girls showed the effects of their experience. Their hair was hanging down their backs, their uniforms were covered with dust and their faces were grimy from the alkali dirt of the plain.

"Let me walk you about to see if all your joints function,"

suggested Grace.

"They never again will do so properly as long as I live,"

complained Miss Briggs. "Did the ponies run away? I mean our ponies."

"I have been too busy to notice. If you will sit down I will see what I can do for the poor fellow who was dragged."

Elfreda insisted on a.s.sisting, and a moment later both girls were kneeling beside the dazed, but conscious, cowboy whose clothing was in tatters and whose face was scarcely recognizable from the dust that was ground into it.

Grace moistened her handkerchief with water from her canteen and bathed the man's face, and Elfreda, producing a bottle of smelling salts, held it to his nostrils. The cowboy quickly came out of his daze. One arm was doubled up under his body, and this Elfreda Briggs carefully drew out. The cowboy groaned as she did so.

"Can you lift your arm!" she asked.

"No," gritted the cowboy, his face twisting with pain as he tried to raise the arm.

"His left arm is broken," announced Elfreda. "Men, you must get this poor fellow to town as quickly as possible. I will make a sling to support the arm until you can get him to a surgeon."

"Do you folks reckon you want to go back to Elk Run, too?"

questioned the guide.

"I was about to ask that question of you," replied Grace, turning to Elfreda.

"You should know better than to ask," returned Miss Briggs.

"We will go on, Mr. Lang. Perhaps it is as well that we have been broken in properly at the start. We shall be in better form to cope with real emergencies if such arise," declared Grace.

"Real! Huh!" grunted Hi Lang.

"Oh, you'll get used to having things happen," soothed Hippy Wingate. "Wherever this outfit goes there is trouble and then some more."

"Yes, but this is the worst," complained Emma Dean.

"Alors! Let's go," urged Elfreda Briggs as she got up after having arranged a sling to support the cowboy's injured arm.

Their ponies were led up by the cowboys and the girls mounted for a fresh start, Grace and Elfreda considerably rumpled and both very tired after their lively experience. The cowboys, having loaded their injured companion on a pony, now gave the Overland girls a rousing farewell whoop and trotted slowly homeward.

Hi Lang had uttered no comment on what had occurred, but he was keeping up a constant thinking, now and then scowling observingly at his charges. Of Grace and Elfreda he had no doubts, for, in his estimation, they had graduated from the tenderfoot cla.s.s. The others had yet to prove themselves.

The ride was hot and dusty, and, in order to make up for lost time, the party was riding fast, but the ponies, though already flecked with foam, appeared to be as fresh as at the start.

"What time do you think we will reach the mountains?" called Anne, who was suffering tortures from the heat and dust.

"Sundown," briefly answered the guide. "It will be worse than this after we reach the desert."

"Worse!" groaned Emma. "I shall expire, I know I shall."

The mountains, for which they were heading, were looming larger now, and looked cool and inviting compared to the heat of their present position.

"What is that smoke?" asked Grace Harlowe, as they neared the range, pointing to a thin spiral of vapor rising from the mountains.

"I reckon it's in our camp. Ping should have chow ready by the time we get there."

"You intend to go on this evening, do you not?" asked Grace.

"Yes. You said you were in a hurry to get to the desert."

"I shouldn't put it that way, Mr. Lang, but I am rather eager to get into the real phase of our journey, and eager to know what the desert is like. I have a feeling that I shall love it."

"Some do--some hate it," replied the guide thoughtfully.

"Do you hate it?" questioned the Overland Rider.

"I love it," murmured Hi Lang after a brief silence. "Little woman, I love the white sands, the burning heat of the day, the deadly, sweet silence of the night when all the stars come down so close you can almost reach out and touch them. I love the dead odor, and then--"

"Yes?" urged Grace.

"I hate it, I fight it--and I win," added the guide in a tone that was almost triumphant. "Yet, I'd rather be out there where the starving coyotes howl the night through, where the great, gaunt gray wolves loom up in the night seeking what they may kill and eat, or where a step in the dark may be your last should you tread on a desert rattler. I'd rather be there and face all of that, and the peril of dying from thirst, than be anywhere else in the world," he concluded, and then lapsed into silence.

"I understand, Mr. Lang. It is the lure of the desert that appeals to you, though none knows better than you the perils that lurk there for the unwary traveler. I hope and believe that I may feel as you do about it."

"You will, and so will Miss Briggs. I am not so certain about the others."

"When you get to know us better, Mr. Lang, you will find that, though some of us complain and fret, all are true blue."

"Humph! Beckon I know something about that myself. What I saw to- day shows me that I don't have to worry about you and Miss Briggs.

Did you know that Ike Fairweather wrote me a long letter about you folks!"

Grace looked her interest.