"For Balaam's sake! what you trying to do up——" I brayed loudly, but scarcely finished when I came within an ace of "passing in my chips," as a gigantic pebble of the first water whizzed between our heads. Pod called back, "I'm lifting the bottom of the pool so you two can crawl out." I was astonished at such inventive faculty. A wonder we donks survived to tell it. Rolling stones may gather no moss, but they need a lot of looking after.
It seemed hours before Coonskin returned. By this time I had found a footing so I could rest with my head out of water.
"Why were you gone so long?" Pod asked, as he sat himself on a rail to rest his windpipe.
"Well," said the winded man, adjusting a lariat, "I hunted all over Manitou before I found the superintendent of the waterworks."
"But what on earth did you want of him?"
"I told him of the fix of our donks, and asked him to change the course of the stream till we could get them out of the pool."
"You idiot! And what did he say?"
"Oh, he was civil enough; said he, 'If you would like to have the mountain moved a little to one side I will have it put on jackscrews without delay."
Now it nettled me to listen to such nonsense while Damfino and I were refrigerating in ice water, and I brayed to the jester above: "Say there, you old fool, if you had only thought to have him pump the water out of the canyon above us you might have furnished a little dry humor that we would have appreciated."
The lariat was found to be of little service, but soon a couple of tourists arrived on the scene and assisted the two with their contract to raise the devil, as well as the bed of the torrent, and, at length, to extricate us water-soaked donks from our unhappy predicament. Then we were taken to the stable, rubbed down, and put to bed.