“My idea is to lose no time in striking out for a town or village where we can get some clothes, even if they are only Mexican garments,” announced Jack.
“And food, too,” put in Walt Phelps, who liked to get his three meals a day, “we’ll be on starvation diet if we don’t stock up on that.”
After more discussion it was agreed to follow up the dry bed of the river, as the professor’s map showed a small village some distance up a stream which, though unnamed on the map, seemed to be the one on whose banks they now were. This decision reached, no time was lost in mounting. There was no saddling to be done, for the saddles had been swept off with most of the rest of their outfit.
“If you ever catch me camping in the dry bed of a river again you are welcome to hang me to a sour apple tree,” grumbled Walt Phelps, as he mounted.
“I reckon I’m ter blame fer it all,” volunteered Coyote Pete, “but I never thought as how that far-off storm would affect us in the plains. That must have bin a jim-dandy of a cloudburst.”
“I’d hate to have been any closer to it than we were,” laughed Jack. “If we had been, we’d have been going yet, I imagine.”
“I heard of a cloudburst once that did some good, though,” struck in Pete; “ther thing happened to a friend of mine in Californy. He wuz a miner, Jefferson Blunt by name.
“Wall, sir, Jeff had struck such all-fired bad luck up on the Stanislaus River that he’d about concluded to pull out for other regions when, all of a sudden, one night up came a storm, and in the middle of it there come the all-firedest cloudburst that Jeff had ever heard of. It picked up his cabin and floated Jeff off down the river, a-going like a blue streak. He thought every minute that he’d hear Gabriel’s trumpet and see ther golden stairs, but that little old cabin was well built and watertight, and it floated like a boat.
“It must hev been hours, Jeff says, afore he felt ther thing give a bump and stop. As soon as he dared he opened ther door and peeked out. He wuz in a part uv ther country he’d never seen. It was all cliffs and big trees and very imposing, and ther like of that,—that ‘imposing’ is Jeff’s word.
“Wall, Jeff he steps out of his sea-going shack and looks about him, and ther first thing he sees is a big streak of ore just a-glitter with gold and stuck, like a band of yaller ribbon along ther cliff face above his head.