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hard, veryhard, and as he waited for them to get very hard, it began to rain. It was only a drizzly rain, but enough to wash away the dragons footprints in the dusty road.
    "Drat it!" thundered Mr. Wagonwheel, looking out the window. "It's raining!"
    "I thought we needed rain, dear," said Mrs. Wagon- wheel.
    "We do, but why can’t it wait until I capture the Blue Demon? Now maybe I'll never find him."
    "Maybe it's just as well," said Mrs. Wagonwheel, carefully putting a spoonful of salt in her coffee.
    "Well, I can see you have no spirit of adventure," grumped Mr. Wagonwheel, peeling his at-last-ready very hard eggs.
    He picked up his rifle, a strong rope, and put on his raincoat and boots. "I'm off!" he yelled, and slammed the door.
    "He'll never come back," thought Mrs. Wagonwheel, and she quietly sat down to cry.

    Mr. Wagonwheel ran down the road, pouncing on bushes, peering behind trees, and examining roadside ditches, yelling all the while, "Coming, ready or not!” He made such a racket that the cows heard him in plenty of time. They huddled around the big culvert where the baby dragon was hiding and pretended to be busy drinking water. For they had found the sleeping dragon while Mr. Wagonwheel was eating his very hard eggs.
    "Wake up!" they had said, "and tell us what you are, and what you're doing in our culvert."
    The dragon woke up with a start, and then smiled at the friendly cows. "I'm a baby dragon," he explained,
    "and I'm on my way home to the great high mountains of Blueland."
    "But what are you doing in our culvert?" asked a cow.
    "I'm hiding. You see, most people think that there are no dragons left, and if I should be captured, I'd surely end up in a zoo or a circus, and never get home again."

    "Shh!" said another cow. "I think I hear Mr. Wagonwheel now. All through milking time he was muttering about catching a Blue Demon. He must have meant you."
    It was then that the cows huddled around the opening to the culvert, and the dragon crouched down on his stomach in the water.
    "The culvert!" yelled Mr. Wagonwheel, brandishing his rifle. "An excellent hiding place for the Blue Demon." And he started down the bank on the other side of the road.
    "It's all over now," thought the dragon, who could tell where the farmer was from the noise he was making. But just then Mr. Wagonwheel looked across the road at his peaceful cows and thought, "My cows would be in a panic if the Demon were hiding here!" He turned back up the bank and ran down the road,
    beating the bushes and peering behind trees.
    The cows grazed nearby all day long, talking to the dragon and telling him when it was safe to come out of the culvert. Toward evening they heard Mr. Wagon wheel stamping back along the road, yelling "Hoop-la! All of you, into the barn! " and as they wandered oil they quietly warned the dragon, "Leave just as soon as he goes to the barn. It's just like him to be out looking for you by flashlight after supper."
    And they were right. Long after the dragon had flown far beyond the yellow farmhouse and culvert, Mr. Wagonwheel was shooting into bushes. Mrs. Wagonwheel was in bed with a case of nerves.

 
     

    Chapter Three
    THE MEN ON THE SLOPE
    "It's a lovely night for flying," thought the dragon as he hurried toward the north, urged on by cool brisk winds. The rain had stopped long ago, and a crescent moon shone palely. Looking down, he could see the outline of Seaweed Bay, and then a point of landcalled Due East Lookout. At this point he must tin n and fly directly westward over Seaweed City, across Spiky Mountain Range, and over Awful Desert to reach the Blueland Mountains in the heart of the desert. Many people had tried to cross the desert and climb these mountains, but there was no water, and treacherous sandstorms raged all year round, making traveling almost impossible. So far, no man had succeeded.
    "It won’t be long now!" sang the baby dragon as he passed over Seaweed City, over the coastal Spiky Mountain Range,