Donald said nothing one way or the other, though Billie did cast an appealing look in his direction; he just kept on pushing ahead, and turning from time to time to take note of the country they were pa.s.sing through, for his map was not very lucid, and wise Donald wanted to make sure he was right.

Indeed, hardly ten minutes later Billie was heard to give an exclamation of delight and rapture.

"There she is, fellows, and as fine a spring as you'd want to see in a 'c.o.o.n's age!" he went on to call out, in his explosive way. "And say, if somebody hasn't gone and planted palms around it, too, just for all the world like the oasis you read about in stories of Africa. And just you watch me lower that same basin, when I get started. We've got to keep the ponies back, though, so they won't muddy things up before we get our fill. See, they've scented water; you can tell it by the way they act."

Both Adrian and Donald smiled, for they had noticed this same thing some little time before. The acute sense of smell on the part of the animals had allowed them to know about the presence of water long before their masters were aware of it.

"Hold on, take your time, Billie," warned Donald; and somehow the other thought he said this in the queerest possible way.

"Oh! I see how it is, you just don't feel like making a rush, and think we all ought to be on a level footing," Billie observed, with as near an attempt at irony as he could attain. "H'm makes me think of that story they used to tell about the parson and his little flock on the coast."

"What was that, Billie?" asked Donald.

"Why, you see, he had for his people mostly wreckers; and one day when he was preaching so fine, some one brought word that there was a wreck floated in down the coast. Of course every man in the congregation started to run, leaving the preacher stuck up there in his high pulpit.

So he calls out, and tells them how wicked it was to think of such things on a Sunday; and all the while he talks he's a heading toward the door, calming the men, and holding of 'em spellbound like. But when the parson gets right up to the door he alters his tune immediate, for what does he shout out but: 'Now boys, as every one has an even chance, let's hurry down and see if we can save any poor sailorman from that terrible wreck!' And away he goes at the head of the string, lickety-split for the beach. And p'raps that's what our friend Donald here's got in mind."

Both the others laughed at Billie's story; but Donald did not seem inclined to either admit or deny the truth of the other's accusation.

Still Adrian could see that strange look on his face, and noted that Donald had taken up his station close alongside Billie, as though bent on restraining the other.

They quickly reached the palms that waved above the spring. Everyone could see that it was a perfectly lovely resting spot. The afternoon sun was quite hot down in the valley there, and the shade under those palms, with their wide crowns of handsome leaves, seemed particularly inviting.

But best of all was the gleam of the water that nestled in a fair sized cup under the trees. Billie had eyes only for this.

"Oh! don't it look great, though?" he was saying enthusiastically, as he hastened his pace, while the others kept alongside persistently. "Plenty for all of us, and the ponies in the bargain. We might fill up the canteens again with fresh stuff because there's no tellin' whether we'll run across another spring as fine as this one seems to be."

"Yes, seems to be," repeated Donald; but Billie was too anxious to get to drinking to pay any heed to the word.

He led the procession, and reached the border of the pool. It certainly did present a most inviting aspect to those hot and tired boys, and small blame to Billie that he should immediately proceed to throw himself down alongside the spring, as though bent on carrying out his threat to lower it more or less.

To his astonishment he felt someone grip him by the shoulder, before he could even wet his lips; and looking up in wonder, he saw it was Donald who held him.

"Didn't I tell you to go slow, Billie?" said the other, seriously; "and here you are, rushing headlong into trouble, without even bothering looking around. Just turn you head, and take a peep at what you see there."

Billie, his eyes as round as saucers with surprise, did so; and in another second he found himself staring at a piece of paper that was stuck in the cleft of a stick close to the water's rim, and which had in large letters the one word "WARNING."

CHAPTER IX.

THE POISONED SPRING.

All of them were staring at the little placard by now, even Adrian feeling almost as much astonishment as the kneeling Billie. Indeed, what they saw written there in a crude manner was quite enough to give the fat boy a cold chill. Underneath that plainly printed word "Warning!"

was the following:

"Don't yu drink here, spring poizened by crazy Injun long tim ago.

Dangrous. Go on further down vally, mor water."

There was no name signed, but just then none of the boys thought anything about that little fact.

"What!" burst out the indignant Billie, "poisoned, this lovely spring?

Now, ain't that just too bad for anything? And so we don't get a drink after all. But whatever d'ye think any Injun'd want to do such a mean thing as that for?"

"Well," remarked Donald, "I've heard something about this same spring, and that was why I warned you to go slow. Fact is, I expected we'd run across this before we came to the one that's safe to drink from. But I tell you plainly though, I didn't expect to find this kind warning stuck up here. The boys didn't say a word about that. And as sure as you live, Adrian, I begin to believe it was put here _today_, and for our special benefit!"

"Listen to that, now, would you?" burst out Billie, still staring hard at the paper in the cleft stick that had been pushed into the ground; "the mystery deepens, seems like. One night we have an unknown friend wounding an Injun that's trying to make way with our ponies; and now here's somebody mighty anxious that we don't drink from this poisoned spring. It's sure getting interesting, fellers; and I'd give a cookey to know who he might be, wouldn't you?"

But from the blank expression on the faces of his two chums, Billie realized that they were just as far from guessing the truth as he might be.

"Then we don't take the chances of having even a little drink here, do we?" the sorely disappointed fat boy asked, as he sat and looked regretfully at the water that was so tempting.

"Better not," decided Donald. "It might be only some sort of fake; but we can't afford to take the chances, you see. Let somebody else experiment, if they want to. So long as there is another spring hole further down the valley, why, we'd better be trotting along. And just notice the way the ponies sniff the air, will you? I really believe they know that this water is bad to drink."

"What, ponies know better than human beings, do they?" demanded Billie, hardly relishing such a state of affairs.

"They've been given an unerring instinct, where we depend on reason, and that often fails us. Just watch a horse feeding, and notice how he refuses to touch all kinds of weeds, and how a cow drops the same out of her mouth after she's scooped in a whole bunch of gra.s.s. Instinct, and nothing else. But there's no use in us hanging out here, when we can soon get to good water."

Reluctantly Billie quitted that beautiful spring. He even turned to look back at it several times, and went on to remark:

"That crazy Injun ought to have been shot, to do such a thing. Why didn't he pick out an ordinary spring, and put his loco weed in the same?"

"Oh! well, perhaps that story is only one of the Indian legends we read about, and it's really something else that makes the water coming from that spring bad, so that people who drink it feel sick right away. I've got an idea myself that it must pa.s.s through some sort of copper deposit that poisons the water. Because if this thing happened years and years ago, as the reds say, how could the poison still keep on working?"

"Well, now, that doesn't stand to reason, does it?" remarked Billie.

"And I reckon you're right when you say it, Donald. But let me tell you I never was more disappointed in my life. But I didn't notice any bones lying around there, or graves either."

"What makes you say that?" demanded Adrian.

"Why, if the water is really poisoned, lots of fellows must have drank of it, time in and time out, not knowing how dangerous it was; and if they fell down and kicked the bucket, wouldn't we see their bones scattered around, just as the wolves and coyotes had left 'em?"

"Oh! it doesn't kill you outright, they say; just sickens you, until you feel like you'd be glad to die to end it all," Donald a.s.sured him.

"I've heard people talk that way about being seasick," Billie observed; and then he seemed to fall into a musing spell, as though the recent strange event had, as was only natural, made a serious impression on his mind.

It was only half an hour later that the ponies again manifested an unusual eagerness to get on. Donald called the attention of Billie to the fact.

"You notice that there isn't the least sign of water, so far as we can see for ourselves, Billie; and yet they scent it plain enough. Doesn't that prove what I said about their being smarter than any human being?"

Billie admitted that it did; for he was very frank, and ready to own up to anything, after he had been convinced of his error.

"P'raps we might let the ponies try first this time," he suggested, cautiously. "If they tackle it right off the reel, then it ought to be safe for us to drink, eh, fellows?"

"Not a bad idea at all, Billie, and does you credit," said Adrian; "sort of taking advantage of their sagacity, you might call it, I reckon."

"Only don't let 'em muddy things for us," admonished the fat boy.

"Somebody else will have to lend me a hand with Bray here, because I just can't hold him in when he takes a notion to do something."