"There wasn't anyone to get away," Bud answered grimly. "It was only a boiling spring, and we took the steam of it for smoke."
"Boiling spring!" cried Nort. "I never saw one before."
"Me, either," added his brother, and together they looked at the depression in the ground, filled with scalding hot water. At times it bubbled up, like some great kettle over a fire, and then the steam was as thick as the smoke at some camp fire when green wood is used. Again the spring was comparatively quiet.
"I've seen 'em before," remarked Bud, "though I didn't know we had any so near Happy Valley. There's lots of 'em out in the Yellowstone Park region, and in other places, some not many miles from here."
"Any volcanoes?" asked Nort.
"Or geysers?" Dick queried.
"Not that I know of," Bud answered. "You don't need volcanoes to make boiling springs, though I suppose the hot water must be boiled over some internal fire beneath the earth's surface. And these same fires do, sometimes, make volcanoes.
"But I've never seen any volcanoes around here; have you, fellows?" and he appealed to the cowboys.
"Not since I came up from Mexico," one answered. "I was close to one there. And I've seen Old Faithful, and some of the other geysers in the Yellowstone."
"They put soap in some to make 'em spout, don't they?" asked
Dick, who remembered to have read something to that effect.