One morning Weezy ran over to Mr. Arnesten’s to play with homely little Olga and some fluffy young chickens; and the other children set off for Captain Bradstreet’s bee-ranch, three miles away.
“You see, it isn’t a road at all, Molly,” said Pauline, as they followed the path leading from the camp; “it is only the bottom of a brook.”
Molly turned up the sole of her left shoe, and carefully examined it, to Pauline’s great amusement.
“Oh, there’s no danger of wet feet, Miss Prudence. The path is dry all summer; but in the winter rains the floods come tearing down from the upper canyon where we are going.”
“Then how do the people get out of the canyon, Pauline?”
“There aren’t any people, Molly, besides the Wassons. Mr. and Mrs. Wasson don’t get out; they stay in.”
“All winter? Why, Polly Bradstreet, I should think they’d be lonesome enough to die.”
“Oh, the rains don’t last very long at a time, Molly,” said Paul, helping her over a fallen log; “and when the brook isn’t too high Mr. Wasson can drive along the bed of it with Punch and Judy.”
“Those mules are the knowingest little animals,” put in Pauline enthusiastically. “Mr. Wasson can do anything with them. Once he drove them out to Santa Luzia with a load of honey, when the water was up to their knees a part of the way.”
“What makes the Wassons stay in the canyon in the rainy season, Pauline?”