“Hi yah! Hi yah!” capered William New, ridiculously. “Hyar’s doings! This chile wants to dance. Hi yah!”
But he was only pretending, after the fashion of the place.
If anybody was not satisfied with a spring, all he had to do was to walk a few steps, and dig with his heel or with a stick, and he would open up a new spring—sometimes with a slightly different taste. Down stream about half a mile was the most remarkable spring of all: the Steamboat Spring. From a red crack in a rock right at the bank of the river, and beside the trail, spurted a jet of steamy water, rising and falling; a couple of yards from it, from a small round hole puffed jets of steamy air; and water and air together made a noise like the sighing “choo choo!” of a steamboat.
[XIII]
TO THE GREAT SALTY LAKE
“Now I wonder,” mused William New, “what that ’ere lieutenant’s planning next. S’pose you jest take a little walk over to t’other camp an’ see.”
“Why?” asked Oliver.
It was noon, and only a short distance from the camp at the Beer Springs, on the day before, the expedition had again halted.
“’Cause this air the jumping-off place. If we follow the trail, we go on northwest for Fort Hall, ’bout fifty miles down the Portneuf to the Snake. If we follow the B’ar, we turn sharp south, for the lake, which air more’n two hundred miles. An’ I ’xpect that’s what we do,” he exclaimed. “Yon goes that fellow Lee, lickity. Bet you he’s an express to Fort Hall, to tell Kit.”