The girls, while Ping was preparing a light supper for them, set to work to pitch the tents. Carrying canvas buckets, Hippy and the guide then hurried to the water hole.
"It won't do to wait for the water, for it has a habit, in this country, of suddenly disappearing while you wait," explained Hi.
"Yes, but where's the water?" wondered Lieutenant Wingate, as Hi got down in a hole that he had opened by breaking down the crust with his boots.
"Give me that blanket and I'll show you," he said, reaching for a canvas square, which he spread out in the opening and pressed down with his hands.
In a few moments water began seeping up through the blanket, which was so placed that it was lower in the middle than at the sides.
"That beats me," marveled Hippy. "How did you know there was water here?"
"I didn't. I knew where I found it the last time I was this way, but that didn't mean it would be here this time. These desert underground streams shift their courses almost as often as the wind does. Hand me a bucket."
Two buckets were finally filled and passed up to Hippy.
"Water the ponies first. Give them only a little at first. They're too warm to drink their fill. When you come back bring the red buckets for water for us to drink," directed the guide.
Hippy, marveling at the ways of the desert, took the buckets and began watering the ponies. The two bucketfuls answered for four of them, and by the time he returned to the water hole Hi had two more bucketfuls ready for him. In this way all the ponies and the burros were supplied with water, and Hi, working as fast as he could, filled all the buckets for the night's use of man and beast, then scrambled out of the water hole.