: Harper's Round Table February 23 1897 by Various - Children's periodicals

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, with ever-increasing anxiety, the return of those who had thus left them. Then their leader and his companion rode wearily back into the valley. They were haggard, covered almost beyond recognition with the dust of desert sands, and utterly exhausted, while their steeds were ready to drop with thirst and fatigue.

Mortimer Chalmers's first words announced the failure of his search, for as he entered camp he asked, "Has the boy come back?" Upon being answered in the negative, a look of utter despair settled over the man's face, though he turned away to hide it from the pitying gaze of his men.

From his companion it was learned that when, on the preceding day, they had emerged from the ravine, they found themselves on a vast plain of shifting sands, void of vegetation and dotted with great fortresslike mesas or lofty bluffs of the most vivid and varied coloring. In the distance they had descried a rider whom they believed to be Todd, but though they fired their rifles and waved sombreros to attract his attention, he failed either to see them or took no notice of their signals, and a few seconds later disappeared behind a distant butte. Hastening to that point, they found and followed his trail until it was lost in the wind-blown sands. Even then they kept on in the same general direction, firing their rifles at short intervals, until darkness compelled a halt. During the long cheerless night, without fire or food, and comforted by only a few mouthfuls of water from their canteens, they still fired occasional shots, but without receiving any answer.

At daybreak they were again in the saddle and moving in a great sweeping arc that embraced many miles of the terrible desert, back toward the river. Until reaching it they had hoped against hope that the missing lad might in some way have been led back to the point from which he had started. Now, however, there was no doubt that he was indeed lost in that fearful wilderness of sand and towering rocks.

This was the opinion of the whole party; but though it was fully shared by Mortimer Chalmers, he was off again before daylight of the following morning, accompanied by five of his most experienced men. These were to explore the desert by twos in different directions, as far as their strength and that of their animals would allow them to penetrate, though on no account were they to remain from camp longer than two days.

This expedition was as fruitless as the first, and when on the second evening the six searchers returned to camp empty-handed there was no longer a doubt but that poor Todd, lost and bewildered, had wandered beyond recovery, and met his death amid the horrors of the Painted Desert.

Although there was no longer any hope that he would ever again be seen alive, the party remained encamped at that place another day before moving on, and scouts were kept constantly posted along the edge of the plateau, whence they could command a great sweep of the interior country in case any tidings of the lost one should be miraculously wafted in that direction.

Even when the sad little camp was finally broken and the expedition resumed its melancholy march down the valley of the muddy river, these same scouts followed the edge of the bluffs, though often being obliged to make long and fatiguing detours to head precipitous ca?ons.

In this manner the party had proceeded but a few miles when Mortimer Chalmers, who, alone with his grief and self-accusing reflections, rode in advance, was seen to suddenly clap spurs to his horse and dash off down the valley. He had discovered a riderless pony grazing on the coarse herbage of the bottom, and was filled with a momentary hope that by some means his dearly loved brother might after all have found his way back to the river.

When the others overtook him they at once recognized the animal which was cropping the tough grasses with starving avidity as the broncho that had borne Todd Chalmers from their sight six days before. Its belly was bloated with water, of which it had evidently drunk a prodigious quantity, but it was otherwise gaunt from hunger. It still wore a broken bridle, and the saddle was found at no great distance away. To this were still attached the rifle, now broken, the roll of blankets, soiled and torn, and the empty canteen, that had belonged to the poor lad, of whose fate they brought melancholy tidings. A fragment of picket-rope still remained attached to the pony's neck, but its frayed end, worn with long dragging through sand and over rocks, showed that the animal must have traversed many miles of desert since the time when last he bore his young master.

The broncho's trail was discovered and followed to the distant brow of the bluffs, but beyond that it had been obliterated by wind-swept sands, and offered no further clew.

As no one of the party would ever care to use that broken saddle, and as it was all that was left to them of the merry lad who was lost, they buried it where they found it, with all its accoutrements. When they turned silently from the little mound of earth that covered it, all felt with Mortimer Chalmers as though they were leaving the grave of his light-hearted, hot-headed, affectionate, and impetuous young brother.

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