“No cheese for yours truly, thank you,” said Raymond, “but I’ll take some meat and bread, if you please.”
“I guess it would be wise to let the cheese go by to-night,” agreed Sidney; “it’s a little too salty for a dry lunch.”
“There’s one thing sure, Sid; we’ve got to scare up something to carry water in. We may be caught like this often.”
“Meantime, we’ll have to stop where there is water, if we make only half a day.”
The roast rabbit was savory enough to assist the consumption of a little dry bread, and the lack of water did not prevent the boys from going to sleep almost as soon as they lay down. Early to bed, the old jingle truthfully says, is early to rise, and the boys were awake before the sun had touched the peaks around them, and while the cañons were still in dense shadow.
It required only a minute or two for the travelers to roll up their blankets and start on their hike down into the next ravine. At its bottom was a little stream that seemed, to the thirsty boys, to be flowing nectar.
In the afternoon of that day they observed a village, the first one, but as it was perched up on the side of the ravine, and they happened at that time to be in the bottom, they passed stealthily, and thought themselves fortunate to get by. An hour or two later, when they found that the trail was leaving the cañon to climb another mountain, they camped right there by the stream, determined not to be surprised by another dry camp.
CHAPTER XIV
LESGHIAN HOSPITALITY
The boys need not have been uneasy about water, for as they advanced to the main range every ravine was the bed of a foaming torrent, and there were no more dry camps. The trail crossed the streams by bridges of curious construction. Sometimes the bridge spanned a gorge high above the stream, and sometimes it was thrown across from banks that were near the water.