“Did you see many more?” asked Ned.
“Nary one, my lad.”
“A bucket here,” said the doctor. “Let’s run out a pannikin from one keg for each of the mustangs.”
“Won’t want a bucket then, sir.”
“Nonsense, man! We can’t give the mustangs their drop out of a tin. I want it poured into the bottom of the bucket so that each can suck it up to the last drop.”
“I see, sir,” cried Griggs, and as the tompion-like stop was unscrewed from the bung-hole of a keg, a shallow iron bucket was cast loose from one of the mule’s loads, the noise in the darkness nearly driving the whole team frantic, connecting the rattle of the handle as they did with water.
But they were kept back while the mustangs each took their tiny portions, uttering a piteous remonstrance-like sigh as the bucket was withdrawn again from its muzzle; and this done, the mules had their turn, two of them proving outrageous after getting their taste of water, Skeeter, as Griggs called him, seizing the edge of the bucket with his teeth and holding on till a sharp crack on the flank made him let go.
“Poor brutes!” said Ned’s father. “It seems very hard upon them. Such a tiny drop each.”
“Yes,” replied the doctor, “but a score of these tiny drops make a hole in the contents of the keg. There, I don’t think we have been unmerciful to our beasts. They have had the first turn. It is ours now.”
The animals were driven back, and after the first keg had been as carefully closed up as if its contents were fine gold-dust, the second was opened, and a tin mug filled by the doctor, Wilton holding the little cask.