“I reckon it’s some dope in these hot springs,” decided Kit. “I feel top heavy myself, and won’t trouble him till I’ve rustled some grub and have something to offer. Well, Buntin’, we are all here but the daughter of the Glen,” he said, rescuing the grub sack, “and if she was a dream and you inveigled me here by your own diabolical powers, I’ve a hunch this is our graveyard; we’ll never see the world and its vanities again!”
A bit of the blue and scarlet on a bush above caught his eye. It was the belt of Tula, and he went upwards vaguely disturbed that he had drifted into ease without question of her welfare.
He found her emerging from a smaller rock basin, her one garment dripping a wet trail as she came towards him. There was no smile in her greeting, but a look of content, of achievement.
“My father,” she said, “he is–––”
“Sleeping beyond belief! good medicine sleep, I hope.”
She nodded her head comprehendingly, for she had done the impossible and had triumphed. She looked at the sack of food he held.
“There is one place for fire, and other water is there. Come, it is to you.”
She struck off across the sun-bathed little grass plot to a jumble of rock where a cool spring emerged, ran only a few rods, and sank again out of sight. The shattered rock was as a sponge, so completely was the water sucked downward again. Marks of burro’s hoofs were there.
“Baby Buntin’ been prospecting while we wallowed in the dope bath,” said Kit.
“Maybe so, maybe not,” uttered the Indian child, if such she could be called after the super-woman initiative of that forbidding trail. She was down on her knees peering at the tracks in the one little wet spot below the spring.