uld hardly see Pete's face. It was
hot, too, with a heavy, suffocating sort of heat. The wind that drove
the myriads upon myriads of tiny sand grains now darkening the air, was
ardent as the blast from an opened oven-door.

"Get your saddles off, quick! Lie down, and put your heads under 'em,"
ordered the cow-puncher, briskly swinging himself out of his saddle as
he spoke.

The others hastened to follow his example. It was not a minute too
soon. Already their mouths were full of gritty particles, and their
eyes smarted as if they had been seared with hot irons. The ponies
could hardly be induced to stand up while the process of unsaddling was
gone through. As for the burros, those intelligent beasts had thrown
themselves down as soon as the halt was made. With their heads laid as
low as possible, and their hind quarters turned to the direction of the
hot blast, they were as well prepared to weather the sand storm as they
could be.

The instant the saddles were off the ponies, down they flopped, too, in
the same positions as their long-eared cousins. The bipeds of the
party made haste to follow their animals' example, only, in their case,
their heads were sheltered as snugly as if under a tent, by the big,
high-peaked, broad-flapped Mexican saddles.

It was well they had made haste, for, as Pete had said, the sand storm
was evidently going to get "a whole lot worse before it got better."
The air grew almost as black as night, and the wind fairly screamed as
it swept over them. Jack could feel little piles of sand drifting up
about them, just as driven snow forms in drifts when it strikes an
obstruction. How hot it was under the saddles! The boys' mouths felt
as if they would crack, so dry and feverish had they become.

"Oh, for a drink of water!" thought Jack, trying in vain to moisten his
mouth by moving his tongue about within it.

All at once, above the screaming of the wind, the lad caught another
sound--the galloping of hoofs coming toward them at a rapid rate. For
an instant the thought flashed across him that it was their own stock
that had stampeded. He stuck his head out to see, braving the furious
sweep of the stinging sand.

He withdrew it like a tortoise beneath its cover, with a cry that was
only half of pain. Through the driving sand he had distinctly seen
three enormous forms sweep by, seen like dim shadows in the gloom
around. What could they have been? In vain Jack cudgeled his b