"Have you ever been to La Paz?" asked Frank.
"I have never been beyond Date Creek in that direction," I replied.
"Is the Xuacaxélla really a desert?"
"Only in the rainless season. Grasses, cacti, and shrubbery not needing much moisture grow there. One of the geological surveys calls it Cactus Plain. It is one hundred miles long. There is water in a fissure of a mountain-spur on one side called the Cisternas Negras, or Black Tanks, but for the rest of the distance there was formerly no water except in depressions after a rainfall, a supply that quickly evaporated under a hot sun and in a dry atmosphere. A man named Tyson has lately sunk a well thirty miles this side of La Paz."
"It was at Black Tanks the expressman saw Texas Dick and Juan Brincos with our ponies," said Henry. "What a queer name that is!—Juan Brincos, John Jumper, or Jumping Jack, as nearly every one calls him."
"He is well named; he has been jumping stock for some years."
"I thought Western people always hanged horse-thieves?"
"Not when they steal from government. Western people are too apt to consider army mules and horses common property, and they suppose your ponies belong to Uncle Sam."
"Frank," said Henry, just before the boys fell asleep that night, "I felt almost sure we should recapture the ponies when I thought Vic was going, but now I'm afraid we never shall see them again."