"Eh, what's that, Juan?" said Curly—"Say, boys, he says we're about out of the sand hills. Prairie pretty soon now, he says."
"And will ye tell me, now," said Battersleigh, "how the haythen knows a bit more of it than we oursilves? He's never been here before. I'm thinkin' it's pure guess he's givin' us, me boy."
"No, sir," said Curly, positively. "If Juan says a thing like that, he knows. I don't know how he knows it, but he shore does, and I'll gamble on him every time. You see, he ain't hardly like folks, that feller. He's more like a critter. He knows a heap of things that you and me don't."
"That's curious," said Franklin. "How do you account for it?"
"Kin savvy," said Curly. "I don't try to account for it, me. I only know it's so. You see if it ain't."
And so it was. The wall of the sand hills was for a time apparently as endless and impervious as ever, and they still travelled on in silence, the Mexican making no further sign of interest. Yet presently the procession of the sand dunes began to show gaps and open places. The hills grew less tall and more regular of outline. Finally they shrank and fell away, giving place again to the long roll of the prairie, across which, and near at hand to the edge of the sand hills, there cut the open and flat bed of a water way, now apparently quite dry.
"We're all right for water now," said Sam. "See that little pile of rocks, 'bout as high as your head, off to the right down the creek? That's water there, sure."
"Yep," said Curly. "She's there, sure. Or you could git it by diggin' anywheres in here in the creek bed, inside of four or five feet at most."
Franklin again felt constrained to ask somewhat of the means by which these two felt so confident of their knowledge. "Well, now, Curly," he said, "it isn't instinct this time, surely, for Juan didn't say anything about it to you. I would like to know how you know there is water ahead."
"Why," said Curly, "that's the sign for water on the plains. If you ever see one of them little piles of stones standin' up, you can depend you can git water there. Sometimes it marks a place where you can git down through the breaks to the creek bed, and sometimes it means that if you dig in the bed there you can find water, 'lowin' the creek's dry."