“This’ll be enough for both until we reach the supply,” he said. “Don’t need so much water at night.”
But the tenderfoot hung upon his own shoulder, not only the smallest of their three canteens, but also the empty one which they had found in the camp. Their own third tin, almost full, they left beside Hoff, with a note.
“I’ve a notion,” said Jones, “that I’ll need all these receptacles for water in my own peculiar business.”
“All right,” assented the other patiently. He took one of them and the pail from Jones and skillfully disposed them on his own back. “Ready? Hike, then.”
Two hours of the roughest kind of climbing brought them to a landslide. These sudden shiftings of the slopes are a frequent feature of travel in the Lower California mountains, often obliterating trails and costing the wayfarer painful and perilous search for a new path. On the Padre Cliffs, however, had occurred that rare phenomenon, a benevolent avalanche, piling up a safe and feasible embankment around the angle of an impracticable precipice, and thus saving an hour of the most ticklish going of the journey. Thanks to this dispensation, the two men reached the Tenaja Poquita before dawn. Scouting ahead, the captain reported no fresh trail except coyotes and mule deer, and not more than seventy-five gallons of water in the basin. Of this they both drank deeply. Then after they had filled all the canteens, Average Jones unfolded his scheme to the captain.
“If any one caught us at it,” commented that experienced hunter, “we’d be shot without warning. However, the water would be evaporated in a few days anyhow, and I’ll post notices at the next watercamps. I’m with you.”
Taking turn and turn about with the pail, they bailed out the rock-basin, scattering the water upon the greedy sand. What little moisture remained in the sticky mud at the bottom they blotted up with more sand. They then rolled in boulders. Average Jones looked down into the hollow with satisfaction, and moved his full canteens into a grotto.
“This company,” he said, “is now open for business.”
At eight o’clock there was a clatter of boots upon the rocks and two men came staggering up the defile. Colonel Richford and his partner did not look to be in good repair. The colonel’s face was drawn and sun-blotched. His companion, the “Fred” of Silent Charley’s bar, was bloated and shaken with liquor. Both panted with the hard, dry, open-lipped breath of the first stage of thirst-exhaustion. The colonel, who was in the lead, checked and started upon discovering astride of a rock a pleasant visaged young man of a familiar American type, whose appearance was in nowise remarkable except as to locality. With a grunt that might have been greeting, but was more probably surprise, the newcomer passed the seated man. Captain Funcke he did not see at all. That astute hunter had dropped behind a boulder.
At the brink of the tenaja the colonel stopped dead. Then with an outburst of flaming language, he leaped in, burrowing among the rocks.