It's just the thing I want. Please
take the axe and get it for me, and don't cut off all the limbs."

Chris obeyed with alacrity, for experience had taught him that Charley
never made useless demands. In a few minutes he was back dragging the
sapling after him.

With a few strokes of the axe, Charley lopped off all the branches save
one close to the small end of the trunk. This one he cut off so as to
leave a projecting stub of about four inches, thus making of the end of
his sapling a sort of rude harpoon.

His companions looked on with curiosity, but asked no questions, for
they knew their chum delighted in surprises.

The pole finished, Charley poked the barbed end down into the hole.
Down, down it went, fifteen, twenty feet, then struck with a dull thud.
He began twisting the sapling over and over, then drew it slowly and
gently up, but the end came into view with nothing adhering to it.
Again and again was the fruitless operation repeated, and a look of
disappointment had begun to settle on Charley's face when at last his
harpoon came into view with a dark mass clinging to it.

"A turtle," exclaimed Walter in delight.

"No, a gopher, but I'll admit it is a kind of land turtle, although it
feeds entirely on grass and never goes near the water," explained
Charley, proud of his capture. "Chris, ride on to that first little
lake yonder and get a fire started. We'll be there in a few minutes."

Charley fastened a buckskin thong to one of the gopher's flippers and
hung it from his saddle-horn, then all remounted and turned their
ponies toward the place where Chris had disappeared among the trees
fringing the lake.

They had covered part of the distance when there came a yell and Chris'
pony broke from the trees and bore down upon them at a run. The little
darky was clinging to its back, his face ashen and his eyes bulging
with terror.

"Go back, Massas," he shouted, "hit's a lake of blood, hit's a lake of
blood!"

Walter grabbed the flying pony's rein and brought the animal to a halt.
"Nonsense," he said, roughly, "you're crazy, Chris. Come on all, let's
see what's scared him so." He spurred forward followed by the others
and still retaining his hold upon the bridle of Chris' pony, in spite
of the little darky's chattering, "Let me go, Massa Walt. Please let
me go."

In a few moments the little party entered the fringe of timber and
reined in their horses on the shore of the tiny lake. For a mom