"They are not hungry just now," replied Pedro, so significantly that our merriment was checked; "and you see for yourselves," he added, "that a man is a new animal to them. They know not what to make of us. It is that which makes me uneasy. A big pack of hungry wolves would be very dangerous, for the reason that they have never learned that we are dangerous, too. For me, I am afraid of them."
Such an admission, coming from such a man, one who, we knew, was not lacking in courage, was impressive; so, in order that he should not regard us as merely a pair of careless, light-headed boys, Dick assured him in all earnestness that we had no intention of treating the matter lightly; that we fully understood and agreed with his view of the matter.
"You are quite right, Pedro," said he. "We can't afford to be careless. A pack of wolves is dangerous enough when you know what to expect of them, but when you don't——! It will pay us to be careful, all right; there's no doubt about that. Come on, now. Let us get ahead. Those beasts back there have gone off—to tell the others, perhaps."
Proceeding up the stony draw for about half a mile, we presently came upon a most unexpected sight:—a little lake, covering perhaps a space of twenty acres, its surface, smooth as a mirror, reflecting the trees and rocks surrounding it, and dotted all over with hundreds of wild ducks and geese.
"Here's the head of the ditch!" cried Dick, exultingly. "Here's where the Pueblos got their water! They drew from this lake down the gully we have just come up. The mouth of the draw has been blocked by the caving of the sides, you see, but it will be an easy job to dig a narrow trench through the dam, and then the pitch is so great that the water will soon scour a channel for itself. Don't you think so, Pedro? The water must have run down here, filled the grassy basin where the deer were, flowed out at its lower end down the gully to the flume, and then by the ditch over the foothills to the valley. Wasn't that the way of it, Pedro?"
It was natural that Dick should address his question to the Mexican rather than to me, for Pedro, one of a race that had followed irrigation for centuries, knew far more of its practical possibilities than I did, and his opinion was infinitely more valuable than mine was likely to be. In reply, he nodded his big head and said, gravely:
"That is it. It is not possible to doubt. The Pueblos drew their water from the lake at this point. That is very sure. But——"
"But what?" asked Dick.
"This lake is small, and I see nowhere any stream coming into it," replied Pedro.
"That's a fact," Dick assented. "Perhaps it is fed by underground springs. Let us walk round the lake and see where the water runs out and how much of a stream there is. That is what concerns us. Where it comes from doesn't matter particularly—it's how much of it there is."