close alongside Billie, as though bent on restraining the other.
They quickly reached the palms that waved above the spring. Everyone could see that it was a perfectly lovely resting spot. The afternoon sun was quite hot down in the valley there, and the shade under those palms, with their wide crowns of handsome leaves, seemed particularly inviting.
But best of all was the gleam of the water that nestled in a fair sized cup under the trees. Billie had eyes only for this.
“Oh! don’t it look great, though?” he was saying enthusiastically, as he hastened his pace, while the others kept alongside persistently. “Plenty for all of us, and the ponies in the bargain. We might fill up the canteens again with fresh stuff because there’s no tellin’ whether we’ll run across another spring as fine as this one seems to be.”
“Yes, seems to be,” repeated Donald; but Billie was too anxious to get to drinking to pay any heed to the word.
He led the procession, and reached the border of the pool. It certainly did present a most inviting aspect to those hot and tired boys, and small blame to Billie that he should immediately proceed to throw himself down alongside the spring, as though bent on carrying out his threat to lower it more or less.
To his astonishment he felt someone grip him
by the shoulder, before he could even wet his lips; and looking up in wonder, he saw it was Donald who held him.
“Didn’t I tell you to go slow, Billie?” said the other, seriously; “and here you are, rushing headlong into trouble, without even bothering looking around. Just turn you head, and take a peep at what you see there.”
Billie, his eyes as round as saucers with surprise, did so; and in another second he found himself staring at a piece of paper that was stuck in the cleft of a stick close to the water’s rim, and which had in large letters the one word “WARNING.”