The Forbidden Trail

Roger flushed a deep red. "Dick rots for all I care until we find Felicia."

No one commented on this and shortly the desert was dotted with slow moving fingers of light. Roger, as he panted up and down the mountainside, knew that never would he forget the wistful melancholy of those thin calls that rose and fell all night, now in Gustav's, or Ernest's deep notes, now in the high treble tones of Elsa or Charlotte. "Felicia! Felicia! Felicia!" But Felicia did not answer.

With the dawn, the wind rose, and there began that perpetual shifting and sifting of the sand which in a few hours more, Roger knew, would obliterate the little girl's trail, although it was only a summer wind which would die down by mid-morning.

At sun up, a weary eyed, hoarse and hectic group gathered in the living room of the adobe.

"Now," said Roger, "you girls get three or four hours' sleep, then one of you go down to the Plant and one of you stay here. We three men will take a day's water and grub supply and keep to the general beats we had last night. I can't believe, unless Qui-tha got her, that she wandered very far."

"But I saw her after Qui-tha had gone. If a rattler struck her she--" Charley stopped.

"How long does a person live after a rattler bite?" asked Ernest, with stiff lips.

"A Mexican who worked for us three years ago lived twelve hours but he was unconscious most of the time," replied Charley.

"Now, you girls go cook a little breakfast," said Gustav, hastily, "and ve vill do the chores, eh?"

They ate a hasty meal in the kitchen a little later. No one talked. Charley patted Elsa's shoulder in a helpless way when Elsa now and again burst into tears. They had finished their preparation for the renewal of the search when Dick called from the bedroom. Charley went to him, closing the door after her. What she said the others did not know but there was silence in the bedroom for some moments after she came out. Then there was a confusion of sounds and Dick dragged himself on his hands and knees into the kitchen. He pulled himself up into the chair by the table. The others stood silently looking at him.

"O God!" he groaned. "O God in Heaven!"

Still no one spoke.

"Hurry!" he shouted. "What are you waiting for? She may be dead now! Hurry, you fools!"

"I'm going to stay here, Dick," said Elsa.

"You'll not! To hell with me!" Dick paused and lifted a shaking hand to his eyes for a moment. "Rog, you go along the foot of the range and search every canyon. Watch every spot of shade. I've warned her so often about desert sun."