CHAPTER VIII
NEARLY DROWNED IN AN ALKALI SINK
Tad rapidly drew up on the guide.
"What has happened?" Butler cried as the two now raced along side by side.
"As I said before, the pony went through a thin crust——"
"Yes, but Chunky—what happened to him?" asked Tad.
"He went through when he struck the ground."
"I don't understand it at all."
"You will when you get there."
Tad was mystified. The solution of the mystery was beyond him.
"If he isn't drowned, he's in luck," snapped Parry.
"Drowned?" wondered his companion.
They cleared the intervening space that lay between them and the fat boy's pony in a series of convulsive leaps that the bronchos took under the urgent pressure of the rowels of their riders' spurs.
As they neared the scene Tad espied a hole in the desert, and began to understand. Stacy also had struck a thin crust and had broken through. Yet what had happened to him after that, Tad did not know.
Both would-be rescuers leaped from their ponies and ran to the spot.
With his body submerged, his head barely protruding above the water, sat Stacy, vigorously rubbing his eyes to get the brown alkali water out of them sufficiently to enable him to look about and determine what had happened to him.
The rest of the party dashed up with loud shouts of alarm, hurling a series of rapid-fire questions at the guide.
Parry and Tad grasped Stacy by the arms and hauled him, dripping, from the alkali sink into which he had plunged.
They shouted with laughter when they saw that he was not hurt seriously.
"Well, of all the blundering idiots——" began Ned.
"That will do," warned the Professor, hurrying to Stacy's side. "Hurt you much, lad?"
"I—I fell in," stammered Chunky.
"I should say you did. How in the world did it happen?"
The guide explained, that frequently these thin crusts were found on the desert, covering alkali sinks, some being dry, others having water in them.
"And of course Chunky had to find one. He's the original hoodoo," laughed Ned.
"Oh, I don't know," replied the guide. "He has done us a real service by falling in."
"How's that!" questioned Tad.
"Master Stacy has found a water hole, just what we need at this particular moment. The stock needs water, and especially the ponies that have been racing for the last half hour."
"You don't mean that we are to drink that stuff, do you?" demanded Walter.
"Not now. We still have some fairly good water in the water bags. Later on you may be glad to drink alkali water. Run up and down if you feel able. You'll dry off in a few minutes," suggested Parry, turning to Chunky.
"I—I don't want to. Feels nice and cool after my bath. Jump in and take a swim, fellows."
"No, thank you—not in that dirty water," objected Ned.
"I'll tell you what, boys," suggested Tad. "After the stock has had a drink we'll take off our shoes and put our feet in. Guess we can stand that much."
"That's a good idea," agreed Walter. "We'll all take a cold foot bath."
In the meantime, the guide had been busily engaged in breaking the crust around the sink, so that the stock might more easily get at the water within it. The animals were impatiently pawing and whinnying, anxious to get the water. They were now willing to drink any kind of water after their half day's journey across the burning alkali.
"You might unpack and get a cold lunch together, if you will," suggested Parry.
The boys soon had one of the tents erected, over which they stretched the fly, that the interior might be cooler.
Ned opened a can of pickled pigs' feet, which, with some hard rolls were spread out on a folding table under the tent. Tad, not to be out-done, dug some lemons from his saddle bag, with which he proceeded to make a pail of lemonade.
It was the first time they had had any such beverage since they began their summer trips. Tad had purchased the lemons back in Eureka. The lemonade made, it lacked only sweetening now.
"Where's the sugar?" he called.
"Where's the sugar?" echoed Chunky.
"We don't know," answered Ned and Walter in the same breath.
"Get busy and find it, then. If you don't want this lemonade I'll drink it myself. I don't care whether it is sweetened or not."
That threat was effective. The other three boys made a dive for the burros. An examination of the first pack failed to reveal the sweetening. The same was the case with the next, and before they had finished, their entire outfit was spread over the ground, tents, canned goods, cooking utensils, thrown helter-skelter over several rods of ground.
"Here, boys, boys!" chided the Professor. "This will never do. We can't afford to use our provisions in that way. Soon we'll have nothing."
"Regular rough house. Ought to be ashamed of yourselves," agreed Stacy, surveying the scattered outfit, while he secretly slipped two lumps of sugar into his mouth. "Here, cook, pick up your kitchen," to Ned.
"What you got in your mouth?" demanded Ned suspiciously.
"He's eating the sugar," spoke up Walter Perkins.
"Drop 'em!" roared Ned.
Stacy started to run, whereupon the boys fell upon him, and the next second he was at the bottom of the heap. The boys were rubbing his face in the sand in an effort to make him give up the sugar.
The Professor took a hand—two hands in fact—about this time. He made short work of the "goose pile," tossing the boys from the very much ruffled Stacy, whom he also jerked to his feet.
"What's all this disturbance about?" demanded Professor Zepplin. "First you strew the outfit all over the desert, then you get to pummeling each other."
"Chunky's been stealing sugar," volunteered Ned.
"Give back that sugar, instantly!" commanded the Professor.
The fat boy shook his head and grinned.
"Can't," he answered.
"And, why not?"
"'Cause they're inside of me."
"Now, now, now!" warned Ned. "You haven't chewed that hard sugar down this quick. I know better than that."
"No, I swallowed the lumps whole when you fellows jumped on me. Nearly choked me to death, 'cause one of 'em got stuck in my throat," Chunky explained.
Tad, in the meantime, had been busy gathering up the scattered provisions.
"Get to work, young gentlemen. Straighten up the camp," commanded the Professor.
"Don't we get any lunch?" begged Stacy.
"You're full of sugar. You don't need anything else," replied Walter.
"When you have set the outfit to rights, we'll all sit down and eat like civilized beings," asserted the Professor, with emphasis.
"Civilized beings making a meal on pigs' feet! Huh!" grumbled Chunky, picking up a can of tomatoes, then throwing it down again. After this, he slipped around to the opposite side of the tent. Crawling in under the fly he promptly went to sleep, the others being so busy that they had not observed his act.
The next Stacy knew was when he awakened to find himself being hauled out by one leg.
"Here, what are you doing? Leggo my foot."
"Lunch is ready. You ought to thank us, instead of finding fault because we woke you up. You might have slept right through the meal; then you wouldn't have had anything to eat," explained Walter.
Stacy shook his head.
"No danger. I wasn't afraid of that!"
"Not afraid of that? Why not?" demanded Ned.
"'Cause I knew you'd haul me out. Left my feet sticking out so you would."
Everybody roared. There was no resisting Stacy Brown's droll humor.
"Hopeless," averred the Professor, shrugging his shoulders.
"He's a wise one," differed the guide.
"Another name for laziness," nodded Ned.
"What's that disease they have down south?" asked Walter. "I heard the Professor and the postmaster talking about it back in Eureka."
"You mean the—the hook-worm disease?" grinned the guide.
"That's it. That's what Chunky's got. When a fellow is too lazy to do anything but eat, they say he's got the—the——"
"The hook——" finished the guide.
"That's what he ought to get," agreed Ned.
"Gentlemen, gentlemen!" corrected the Professor. "This is not a seemly topic for table discussion."
"But we eat pigs' feet," suggested Stacy in wide-eyed innocence.
The meal finished, amid laughter and jest, the party stowed their belongings, and after a brief rest, pushed on, having decided that they would feel the heat less in the saddle.
At sundown the travelers were still some distance from the water hole for which the guide was making.
"We'll have to go on," he said. "We may have to ride some time after dark."
"Will that be advisable?" questioned the Professor.
"Not advisable, but necessary. The stock must have their water you know."
So the party pushed on. The moon came up late in the evening, and the guide looking about him, discovered that they had borne too far to the east, which necessitated their covering some four miles more of alkali than would have been the case had they kept more closely to their course.
"It can't be helped," he laughed good-naturedly. "I guess the pigs' feet will last you until we make camp."
"How long will that be, Mr. Parry?" questioned Chunky anxiously.
"All of an hour and a half."
Stacy humorously took up his belt three holes.
"Got two more holes left to take in," he decided after examining the belt critically.
"That's a new way to measure distance and time, isn't it!" laughed the guide.
"How?" wondered Stacy.
"By the holes in your belt."
At eleven o'clock that night Tom Parry announced that they had arrived at the end of their day's journey.
"Where's the water? I don't see any water?" said Walter.
"After supper we'll look for it. I presume want something to eat first, don't you?" questioned the guide.
"Yes," shouted the lads in chorus. "We're nearly starved."
Bacon and coffee constituted the bill of fare for their late meal, which they ate out in the bright moonlight with the crackling camp-fire near by.
"This is fine," announced Tad, with which sentiment all the boys agreed. "Wish we could do this every night."
"Your supper would be breakfast after a few days," replied Parry.
"How's that!" questioned Ned.
"If you waited for moonlight, I mean. The moon comes up later every night, you know."
"That's so."
"We'd get hungry, wouldn't we?" chuckled Stacy.
"You wouldn't get. You always are," retorted Ned.
"Now, I'll show you how I know there is a water hole near here," said Parry after they had finished their late meal. "When I locate it, you boys may help me take the stock to it."
They walked back some twenty rods from where they had pitched the camp, Parry meanwhile hunting about as if in search of something that he had dropped.
"Nope. No water here," decided Stacy.
"You don't know. Ah! Here is what I am looking for."
The guide pointed to a heap of stones that rose some twelve inches above the ground. On the west side of the heap several stones had been placed in a row, thus forming an arm that extended or pointed almost due west.
"Know what that is?" asked Parry.
The lads shook their heads.
"That's a water marker. When a traveler across the desert finds a sink he indicates it either by a heap of stones, which he sticks in the ground, or by any other means at his command. For instance, this pile of stones tells me there is a water hole somewhere near by, and the arm points the way to it."
"Where is it, then?" wondered Walter. "I don't see any signs of water."
"Nor do I. We'll follow the direction indicated by the arm and see if we don't come up with a water tank somewhere close by," replied Parry.
With the guide leading the way, the others following in single file, they trailed away to the westward until, finally, they came to a slight depression in the ground.
"It should be near here," the guide informed them. "There it is. See that dark hole?"
The boys bounded forward, dropping on their knees by the opening into which they peered inquiringly.
Suddenly they uttered a yell, and, springing up, ran back as fast as their legs would carry them. As they did so, some dark object bounded from the water tank and leaped away into the sage brush.
"Goodness me, what was that?" cried Walter, after the boys had pulled up and faced about.
"Come back, come back. That was only a badger," laughed the guide.
"In the water?" asked Tad, who had stood his ground.
"No; so much the worse for us! There is no water there. No need to look. The tank is empty. Some wandering prospector has emptied it to save his burros and fill his canteen," announced the guide.
"What are we going to do, then!" queried Ned.
"Do without it. We shall have to give the stock a very little of our fresh supply, saving only enough out of it for our own breakfast and a canteen full apiece to take with us on the morrow. I think I shall be able to find a river about ten miles below here, providing it has not changed its course or gone dry. The water here in this country is as fickle as the desert itself."
"What if we should fail to find any?" breathed Tad.
"Well, you know, neither man nor beast can travel far on the desert without it. But we'll find some to-morrow. Don't worry," soothed the guide, though in his innermost heart he was troubled. That this water hole should prove to be dry did not promise well for those that were to follow.