"What's wrong now?" said Wilton sharply.

"Anything the matter, Lee?" cried Bourne, for the mules seemed to have come to a sudden stop, just as if all had been moved by one impulse communicated to them by their leader.

"I don't know yet, and I'm obliged to be very cautious."

"Strikes me that we've been coming up and up for the last hour, sir,"

said Griggs, "and that we're now just at the edge of a canon with a drop down to nowhere just ahead. Skeeter came to a stop all at once."

"I'll get down and see what I can make out with the lanthorn."

"Wait a minute, sir, while I get a rope uncoiled. You shall have it fast round you and the other end to my saddle. These places go straight down sometimes hundreds of feet to a river. Listen! Can you hear water?"

There was silence for a few moments before the doctor said--

"No."

"Too deep down perhaps, sir."

"Well, I can soon see if I go cautiously, and you let the rope pa.s.s slowly through your hands. But try first if the bell-mule will take a step or two in advance."

"Not he, sir. I can see; he's got his legs all spread-out like a milking-stool."

The doctor was off his horse, and the next minute he was advancing slowly, with the lanthorn held near the ground.

"There's nothing here that need have stopped him, but--Oh, what a blessing!"

"What is, sir?"

"Here's short gra.s.s, and the mules cropping it."

"Then there's no canon, sir," said Griggs sharply. "The poor brutes are all dead beat; they've come to something that they can nibble, and they've struck work. The ponies are at it too. It's as good as saying that they won't stir another peg till daylight, if they will then."

"Why, two of the mules have regularly squatted down, with their loads touching the ground," said the doctor, holding up the lanthorn.

"Yes, it's all right, sir," cried Griggs. "There's no canon, but level ground all about, I'll be bound. They've called a halt without being told, so we must do the same."

"But here, with those horrible snakes about?" cried Bourne.

"None here, sir," said Griggs. "If there were one it would have been smelt out by this time, and the poor beasts wouldn't have been so quiet.

Oh, we're right for a time, sir; and, I say, hadn't we better follow the beasts' example and find a bit of something to eat?"

"And drink?" said Wilton.

"Nay, eating will make our mouths turn a bit moist; we've no business to touch any more of that water till we know where the next is to come from. Let's chance it, sir, and relieve the poor brutes of their packs."

"Very well," said the doctor, "but I don't like halting without knowing our ground. You know my rules that I laid down."

"No rule without an exception," said Wilton drowsily. "This is one. I don't want anything to eat, but if I die for it I must sleep."

"Well, I'll do the best I can to keep watch with the lanthorn," said the doctor; "but some one must relieve me soon."

"Put the light out, sir," said Griggs. "There's morning coming yonder.

It's of no use, sir. We must chance everything and sleep. I can't keep awake any more."

"Let's have the packs off, then. By the way, where are the boys?"

"Here are their ponies," replied Bourne, peering about in the darkness.

"Tut, tut, tut! Here they are upon the ground, fast asleep too. Here, Ned--Chris! Wake up, my lads; you can't lie there."

Ned's father was never more away from the truth in an a.s.sertion. In fact, he was quite wrong, for the two boys were proving that they could lie there, and were sleeping heavily, careless of snakes, and ponies' or mules' hoofs, careless of everything but obeying the stern dictates of a monitor who bade them sleep and make up for lost time.

Hunger and thirst did not exist to them then, nor did they to any other member of the expedition, for when day came brightly, not very long after, it was to look down upon the strange group of horses, mules, packs, and men, lying anyhow upon a wide down-like place covered with thin, short, crisp gra.s.s, which the animals were browsing upon contentedly enough.

Fortunately for the party there was no sign of danger far or near-- nothing but rolling down for a few miles, and beyond that mountains towering up towards the clouds, looking clear and distinct in the pearly grey of morning, and apparently close at hand, though some sixty or seventy miles away.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE, BUT--

"Hallo! What's that?" said Chris softly, as he lay on his left side gazing at an elevation about a couple of feet from his nose; and it was some time before he could make out that it was a sack, stuffed so full that it threatened to burst the coa.r.s.e st.i.tches down one side.

His head felt confused and thick. His thinking apparatus would not work properly, but seemed to be struggling to carry on the narrative of some weary dream in which there had been snakes, heat, thirst, and riding, till his bones seemed to ache and he felt sore all over.

It was very puzzling, and though he tried to make out where he was, he could see nothing but that big sack.

After lying still for some minutes, his reasoning powers began to act, and overcoming the disinclination to move, consequent upon his being so horribly stiff, he gave himself a wrench and turned right over on his other side.

This brought a little illumination, bodily and mental too, for the sun was beating down upon his face making him raise his hand stiffly to shade his eyes; and there before him lay Ned, flat upon his back, with his mouth wide open.

The mist floating in his brain now began to disperse, and rising upon one elbow he could see first one and then another of the party, lying fast asleep in different att.i.tudes with the packs belonging to the expedition dotted-about anyhow, just as they had been released from the mules' backs.

Then there were the bearers of the said packs about a couple of hundred yards away, every one with its muzzle near the ground, browsing busily at some kind of low, scrubby, greyish growth that looked like very dwarf juniper, while in quite another direction, there they were--all six-- forming a group to themselves--the mustangs, their saddles still on and the reins upon the ground, cropping away at the thin wiry gra.s.s that clothed the sandy earth.

"Of course; I recollect now," thought Chris. "I went to sleep on my pony, and must have fallen off without waking. Am I hurt?"

He screwed himself about and raised arms and legs, wincing a little the while.

"Yes, I am hurt," he muttered. "I can hardly move, but I don't think anything's broken: it's just as if the mules had been kicking me and the ponies walking about on my chest."

His eyes wandered round again, and he sat up now with a start, the aforesaid eyes dilating and the lids getting so wide that he showed a good deal of white, while it seemed as if all the blood in his body had rushed to his heart, so horrible were his thoughts. But he could see no sign of rattlesnakes, and the heavy throbbing in his breast calmed down, to give place to a sensation of pleasure, as he breathed in the fresh elastic air and let his eyes rest upon a great blue mountain which towered up above a clump of a dozen or so on one side and as many more spreading away in a row, their tops looking like the teeth of a gigantic saw. In fact, it was one of the ranges to which the old Spanish settlers gave the name of Sierras.

"It is not what I dreamed about," said Chris to himself. "Let me see-- yes, that was of looking down into a glorious green valley with a sparkling river running through and beautiful park-like prairies on each side for the mules and ponies to graze in while we hunted and shot the buffaloes. Of course; I remember it all quite clearly, and about our going to bathe and drink, and--oh, how thirsty I am!"

"Why, there must be water here, or the animals wouldn't be so contented.

Get enough juice out of what they're eating, I suppose," he added, after a few minutes' more thought. "Well, this is a hundred times better than the salt desert, and there must be water in the valleys over yonder. How blue it all looks! That doesn't seem as if there were trees, because they'd look green. But there must be valleys because there are mountains, and--Here, I say, Ned, don't snore like that," he said aloud. "Wake up, lazy! It's ever so late."