"What are we turning aside for, Ned?" and as Jimmy asked this question he laid a hand on the arm of the scout master, having pushed up from behind, leading the pack animal that had been given over to his charge after his own was lost. "Why," replied Ned, readily enough, "you see, Amos lives over among those trees, where there's a little stream, and he hinted pretty broadly that, while we were passing, he'd like us to meet up with his mother." "Oh! that's all right," Jimmy asserted. "I've taken quite a liking for the kid and a little rest will do the bunch good, anyway. One thing I've made up my mind about, Ned, and I don't care who hears me say it." "All right, pitch in, and let's get the glad news, Jimmy," remarked Jack, from a point near by. "Never again for me to start our on a trip afoot while I'm here in this hot country!" Jimmy declared solemnly, holding up his hand, as though he were in the witness box. "What sillies we were not to have thought of that instead of putting our good cash into that bunco automobile that played out before it even got decently started." "It seems that we've all learned our little lesson," Ned admitted, "and after this we ride, if we go at all. Cars may do very well, where there are half-way decent roads; but out on the sandy desert and on the plains give me a broncho every time. "But say, are you fellows noticing how jolly this scenery is around here?" Harry wanted to know just then, from the rear. "Look at that sage brush on the slope of that low hill over to the right. It must be breast high to a horse, and seems like I could smell its fragrance away off here. How gray it looks, except where the wind waves it and then it seems nearly purple." "Yes," added Ned, "and this must be what they call rattlesnake weed, though I don't know what it's got to do with the crawlers. You can see the grasshoppers jumping in that lush stuff where the ground's moist. And there's a king bird sitting on that high weed yonder." "Listen to the gophers whistling a warning to their kind, when they see us coming," remarked Jack. "Yes, Harry, you're right, this is worth looking at. Why, I wouldn't be surprised now, if at night-time, you could hear the drowsy chirp of the crickets and the shrill rattle of katydids around here. A bigger contrast to what we went through in that desert you couldn't imagine." "It's sure all to the good," asserted Jimmy, "and I don't blame that mother of Amos for pitching her dugout in this particular region. But mebbe she'll be sorry the boy didn't fetch any game home with him." "Oh! Amos says he means to start out again in a different direction and knows where he's pretty sure to get an antelope, anyhow," Jack remarked. They were now approaching the trees in which some sort of human habitation evidently had been constructed, for smoke was seen curling lazily upward.