Chapter 4 PING WING MAKES A DISCOVERY

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 assisting, 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 class. 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.

"Yes. Ike said I'd have my hands full, and that you folks would trot a pace that would make my legs weary trying to keep up with you. Said you weren't afraid of anything that walked, crept or crawled."

Grace laughed merrily.

"Mr. Fairweather is mistaken. I am terribly shy of snakes and- and-well, I don't know what else" she added lamely.

Hi Lang chuckled under his breath.

"Yes, that's our camp where you see the smoke. I just caught a glimpse of Ping. I reckon when we get closer we'll hear his voice."

"We are almost there, girls," Grace called back to her companions.

"That is Ping's smoke you see yonder."

"Is Ping on fire?" answered Emma so innocently that the Overlanders shouted with laughter, and Hi indulged in the hearty, soundless laugh that they had already discovered was characteristic of him.

A few moments later a cooling breeze from the range was wafted down to them, heavy with, odors of mountain and foliage and suggestive of cooling mountain water as well.

"What's that screeching?" demanded Hippy Wingate, as they fell into single file and began climbing a narrow mountain trail.

"Screeching?" answered Anne Nesbit. "Why, that's our Celestial being singing a lullaby to the coyotes lurking in their dens."

As they drew nearer those in advance could make out some of the words of the song. The guide pointed to a rock, behind which Ping was cooking supper, and held up a hand to indicate that the party was to stop and listen.

"What on earth, is he saying?" wondered Nora Wingate.

"I should call it a heathen version of 'Little Jack Horner,'" suggested Miss Briggs.

Hi nodded.

"Listen!" urged Grace. "I want to hear it. Perhaps he will sing it again."

The guide said that when Ping got started on a song he ordinarily kept it up for some time unless interrupted.

"Sh-h-h!" warned Grace as Emma began to laugh. "He is singing again."

Ping, in a high falsetto voice that was almost a screech, sang:

"Littee Jack Horner Makee sit inside corner, Chow-chow he Clismas pie; He put inside t'um, Hab catchee one plum, Hai yah! what one good chilo (child) my!"

The Overland girls, unable longer to contain their laughter, burst into a shout of merriment. The song ceased instantly, and a moment later Ping appeared at the top of the rock, clad in a white linen suit, the blouse, with its wide-flowing sleeves, being cut in native Chinese fashion The queue, which Ping had declined to part was tucked into a side pocket, being all braided up and shiny, like a snake.

The Chinaman, in greeting, bowed and scraped and smiled and shook hands with himself cordially.

"Hulloa, Ping Pong! Is supper ready?" called Hippy jovially.

"Him come along, top-side piecee Heaven pidgin man," answered the Chinaman without an instant's hesitation, which, being freely translated, meant, "Supper is ready, high Heaven-born man." The retort brought a peal of laughter from the girls and a flush to the face of Hippy.

"All right, old top. You win," was the way Hippy confessed his defeat.

It was a happy, laughing group that rode around the rock and into the camp where odors of cooking food, and the smiling face of Ping Wing, met them. Horses were quickly unsaddled and tethered, then the guide introduced his charges. Ping shook hands with himself at each introduction, and smiled and bowed with a profound grace that would have done credit at a king's reception.

"You belongee plenty smart inside," was his greeting to Grace Harlowe, which she interpreted correctly, Ping having meant to convey that, in his opinion, she was an intelligent woman.

"Thank you. Is mess ready?"

"Les. You belongee one time Flance!" he questioned, touching the sleeve of her Red Cross uniform.

"Yes, we all were in France. I drove an ambulance there; Mr. Wingate was an aviator, and the other young ladies worked in hospitals and canteens. How do you know about France?"

"Me cook-man in Melican army. No likee war. Belongee too muchee number one blam, blam!"

"You mean the shooting? You mean you did not like to have the big

German shells come over?" smiled the Overland girl.

"No likee."

Hippy's appetite was getting the better him and at this juncture he voiced his desire for food.

"Come, come, Ping. We are hungry. Rustle some grub for us, for we may wish to on our way," urged Hi Lang.

Ping, thus reminded of his duty, hurriedly gathered the mess kits of the party and soon produced a really fine supper, which the Overlanders ate sitting on the ground.

"Are you people pretty tired?" questioned Grace.

A chorus of yeses answered her. Elfreda Briggs said she was so lame that she would be glad never to look at a saddle again, and Emma Dean declared that her body felt as if it had been sandpapered.

"I have been thinking that perhaps we had better make camp right here and go on to the desert some time to-morrow. Will that interfere with your plans Mr. Lang?" asked Grace.

The guide said it would not, and the girls of the party eagerly urged that they be permitted to stay where they were and have a good night's rest, so it was decided to pitch their little tents on the spot and lay up for the night.

"Ping tells me that a man visited this camp late in the afternoon and asked a great many questions," Hi Lang then informed them. "The caller, according to Ping, showed a heap of interest in what we were here for, where we were going and what we proposed to do, and said that the best thing for you ladies to do would be to turn about and go back to Elk Run. Do you know of any one who might be interested in heading off your journey over the desert, Mrs. Gray?" he asked, bending a searching look on Grace.

"I do not, Mr. Lang. If I did it would make no difference in our plans. Ping may be mistaken about the man's motive."

The guide shook his head.

"Ping Wing is not easily deceived. He the caller was a 'number one blad man,' only he expressed it with some further words to emphasize his point. There's something about this business that I don't like. I'll keep my eyes peeled."

"Don't worry, Hi," soothed Hippy. "This outfit can take care of any bad characters that get in its way. I-"

"Merciful Heaven! What's that!" cried Emma Dean.

"Ping is in trouble!" cried Elfreda.

A shrill screeching, accompanied by the clatter of tinware, a struggle, then two quick shots brought the Overlanders to their feet. There was a quick rush toward the scene of the disturbance, the guide, Grace and Hippy in the lead as they ran stumbling over the rough ground in the darkness.