us, me boy."
"No, sir," said Curly, positively. "If Juan says a thing like that, he
knows. I don't know how he knows it, but he shore does, and I'll
gamble on him every time. You see, he ain't hardly like folks, that
feller. He's more like a critter. He knows a heap of things that you
and me don't."
"That's curious," said Franklin. "How do you account for it?"
"Kin savvy," said Curly. "I don't try to account for it, me. I only
know it's so. You see if it ain't."
And so it was. The wall of the sand hills was for a time apparently as
endless and impervious as ever, and they still travelled on in silence,
the Mexican making no further sign of interest. Yet presently the
procession of the sand dunes began to show gaps and open places. The
hills grew less tall and more regular of outline. Finally they shrank
and fell away, giving place again to the long roll of the prairie,
across which, and near at hand to the edge of the sand hills, there cut
the open and flat bed of a water way, now apparently quite dry.
"We're all right for water now," said Sam. "See that little pile of
rocks, 'bout as high as your head, off to the right down the creek?
That's water there, sure."
"Yep," said Curly. "She's there, sure. Or you could git it by diggin'
anywheres in here in the creek bed, inside of four or five feet at
most."
Franklin again felt constrained to ask somewhat of the means by which
these two felt so confident of their knowledge. "Well, now, Curly," he
said, "it isn't instinct this time, surely, for Juan didn't say
anything about it to you. I would like to know how you know there is
water ahead."
"Why," said Curly, "that's the sign for water on the plains. If you
ever see one of them little piles of stones standin' up, you can depend
you can git water there. Sometimes it marks a place where you can git
down through the breaks to the creek bed, and sometimes it means that
if you dig in the bed there you can find water, 'lowin' the creek's
dry."
"But who built up the rock piles to make these signs?" asked Franklin.
"O Lord! now you've got me," said Curly. "I don't know no more about
that than you do. Injuns done it, maybe. Some says the first
wild-horse hunters put 'em up. They was always there, all over the dry
country, far back as ever I heard. You ask Juan if there ain't water
not far off. See what he says.--_Oye, Juan! Tengo agua, poco tiempo_?"
The giant did not even lift hi
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