noon
`` We 're liable to take up a collection all right , if we have to sleep here -- but it wo n't be money . '' That day was a terrible one for Mary V . The big car went lurching here and there over roads that never expected an automobile to travel them , and Mary V watched and hoped and would not give up when even her dad showed signs of yielding to heat and discouragement . Before noon they had met the sheriff and some of his men , and had compared notes and given what information they could . The sheriff , in a desert-scarred Ford loaded mostly with water and some emergency rations , had managed to scatter his men and yet keep in fairly close touch with them , and he seemed very sure that the search had been thorough as far as they had gone . Young Jewel , he asserted , had not so much as dropped a handkerchief on the ground they had covered , or his men would certainly have found it . This , while it served as a temporary relief from the dread of hearing the worst , merely postponed the full knowledge of a disaster which Mary V could not bear to contemplate .