“This is very queer,” thought the mighty buffalo. “Hot water is all right in a cold winter, maybe, but even then I’d have to let it cool in the snow before I could drink it. But hot water in the summer is no good at all. I wonder what makes this water so hot, and I wonder if it will cool?”
Shaggo stood back, out of reach of the splashing, hot water, and looked at it. Never before had he seen anything like that.
The column of hot, hissing water was shooting up from the middle of what he had thought was a quiet pool. It shot up just as you may have seen a fountain spurt in some city park, though of course Shaggo knew nothing of cities or city parks. All his life he had lived on the buffalo range, and though that was in what is called a National Park, such as is the Yellowstone, Shaggo knew nothing of this.
“Well, there’s no use in trying to drink that hot water,” thought the big buffalo. “If I wait a bit, though, it may cool. I guess I’ll do that, for I’m very thirsty. If I had a drink of cool water I think my shoulder would feel better.”
Shaggo moved back a little and lay down where he could watch the spouting water. It was light in this part of the cave, and he could see very well. For some time Shaggo lay there.
All at once, and as suddenly as it had begun, the water stopped bubbling up, and the pool became quiet.
“Good!” exclaimed Shaggo to himself. “Now I can get a drink.”
When he got up his shoulder hurt him again, and he had to cry “ouch!” several times before he managed to reach the edge of the pool, which was in the middle of the rocky floor of the cave. Shaggo could tell by sniffing that the water was cool now.
“And such a good drink as I’ll have!” he said to himself.
But just as he was about to put his nose down into the pool to drink, again came that bursting, bubbling column of hot water, and Shaggo had to leap quickly back for fear of being scalded.