“Plenty of that,” said Pete, sententiously.
They looked about at the dry sand and rocks in the river bed and at the waving grass on either hand.
“You must have splendid eyesight,” laughed Ralph, “I don’t see a drop, unless it’s in those clouds ’way off there above the mountains.”
“I, too, must confess that I’m puzzled,” put in the professor. “A more arid spot I have rarely seen.”
“Wall, I’ll guarantee that if you dig down a few feet right hyar you’ll get all the water you want,” said Coyote Pete calmly.
“Soon proved,” cried Ralph, and aided by Walt he unpacked one of the burros and the two lads selected long-handled shovels.
How the dirt did fly then! Maybe it was an accident, and then again maybe it wasn’t, when the professor, deeply immersed in a book he carried in his pocket, found himself the center of a regular gravel storm. He hastily moved out of the radius of the energetic diggers. But presently a loud cry from them announced a discovery.
“Struck oil?” asked Jack.
“Better still,—water!”