A distant voice called, “Yo!”

Jean’s eyebrows flew up. Her head snapped sideways and she squinted out at the desert.

Some fifty yards off, Pete’s head and shoulders rose out of the wasteland. “Hey, y’gotta see this!” he shouted, and waved for them to approach.

Jean glanced at Larry, rolled her eyes and sagged as if her air had been let out.

He grinned.

“I think I may kill them myself,” Jean said.

“I’ll go get the gun.”

“Break allthe windows, while you’re at it.” Her voice sounded shaky.

“Come on, let’s see what they found.”

“It better be good.”

They walked over the hard, baked earth, moving carefully as they stepped on broken rocks, avoided clumps of cactus and greasewood. Near the place where Pete waited was an old smoke tree. Larry guessed that Barbara had wandered farther and farther away from Holman’s, looking for a suitably large bush or rock cluster, and had finally decided upon the tree. Its trunk was thick enough to afford privacy, and there was shade beneath its drooping branches.

Pete was standing some distance from the tree. At his back the ground dropped away.

“What’d you find?” Larry asked. “The Grand Canyon?”

“Hey, glad you brought the suds.” He lifted the front of his knit shirt and wiped his face. “It’s nastyout here.”

Larry handed the full bottle to him.

The depression behind Pete was a dry creek bed some fifteen or twenty feet lower than the surrounding flatlands. Barbara, sitting on a rock at the bottom, looked up and waved.

“Did you forget about us?” Jean asked Pete.

He finished taking a swig of beer, then shook his head. “I was just on my way to get you. Figured you might want to see this.” He started down the steep embankment, and they followed.

“We were getting a little worried,” Larry said, watching his feet as he descended the rocky slope. “Thought you might’ve fallen victim to a roving band of desert marauders.”