igh.

"We must have something more promising than that," he said. "Now I
think, Bart, you had better go along that ridge of broken rock close up
to the hills, and walk eastward for a few miles to explore. I will go
with Juan to the west. Perhaps we shall find a likely place for going
right up into the mountains. We'll meet here again at say two hours
before sundown. Keep a sharp look-out."

They parted, and for the next two hours Bart and Joses journeyed along
under what was for the most part a wall of rock fringed at the top with
verdure, and broken up into chasms and crevices which were filled with
plants of familiar or strange growths.

Sometimes they started a serpent, and once they came upon a little herd
of antelopes, but they were not in search of game, and they let the
agile creatures go unmolested.

The heat was growing terrific beneath the sheltered rock-wall, and at
last, weakened by his encounter with the bear Joses began to show signs
of distress.

"I'd give something for a good drink of water," he said. "I've been
longing this hour past, and I can't understand how it is that we haven't
come upon a stream running out into the plain. There arn't been no
chance of the waggon going up into the mountains this way."

"Shall we turn back?"

"Turn back? No! not if we have to go right round the whole world,"
growled Joses. "Come along, my lad, we'll find a spring somewheres."

For another hour they tramped on almost in silence, and then all at once
came a musical, plashing sound that made Joses draw himself up erect and
say with a smile:

"There's always water if you go on long enough, my lad. That there's a
fall."

And so it proved to be, and one of extreme beauty, for a couple of
hundred yards farther they came upon a nook in the rough wall, where the
water of a small stream poured swiftly down, all foam and flash and
sparkle, and yet in so close and compact a body that, pulling a cow-horn
from his pocket, Joses could walk closely up and catch the pure cold
fluid as it fell.

"There, Master Bart," he said, filling and rinsing out the horn two or
three times, "there you are. Drink, my lad, for you want it bad, as I
can see."

"No, you drink first, Joses," said the lad; but the rough frontier man
refused, and it was not until Bart had emptied the horn of what seemed
to be the most delicious water he had ever tasted, that Joses would fill
and drink.

When he did begin, however, it seemed