United States or Belize ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Now, about this Tenaja Poquita we're headed for. How much water do you think there is in it?" "If there's a hundred gallons it's doing well, this dry season." Average Jones got painfully to his feet. Looking carefully over the scattered camp outfit, he selected from it a collapsible pail. Captain Funcke glanced at it with curiosity, but characteristically forebore to ask any questions.
They didn't do it carefully enough... Straight for the rocky mesa.... That's it! They made their sneak while Hoff was asleep, probably covering trail behind them, and struck out for the inside desert route to the Tenaja Poquita." He took a quick look about the camp and picked up an empty canteen. "Of course, they wouldn't leave him any water." "Then he's gone to hunt it," suggested Average Jones.
"All he'd have to do would be to quit the boy while he was asleep. A tenderfoot would die of thirst over there in a short time." "Is there no water?" "There's a tenaja they're depending on. But I doubt if they find any water there now. It's been an extra dry season." "A tenaja?" queried the Ad-Visor. "Rock-basin holding rainwater," explained the hunter. "There's been no rainfall since August.
In any case, we would have to gamble on Brewer's winning through, and having sense enough in his opium-saturated mind to make a convincing yarn of it. So after a drink at the tenaja below the mine we entered the black square of the tunnel. The work was old, but it had been well done. They must have dragged the timbers down from the White Mountains.
If they find the tenaja empty they'll, have barely enough in the canteens they pack to get them to the next water, the Tenaja Poquita, around behind the mountains and across the desert into the next range." "What's the next water to that?" "The Stream of Palms. That's a day and a half on foot." For the space of a hundred oar-strokes Average Jones ruminated.
"Suppose er they didn't er find any water in the Tenaja Poquita, either?" he drawled. "Then they would be up against it." "And there's no other water in the Pintos?" "Yes, there is," said the captain. "There's a tenaja that's so high up and so hidden that it's only known to one other man besides me, and he's an Indian. It's less than an hour from the tenaja that Richford will take his party to.
"Then er there's a er shorter way?" drawled Average Jones, removing some sand from a wrinkle in his scarified and soiled trousers as carefully as if that were the one immediate and important consideration in life. "Yes. Across the Padre Cliffs. It cuts off about four hours, and it takes us almost to the secret tenaja I spoke of. We can fill up there.
They led direct to a side barranca. There the pursuers found the camp. It was deserted. Like a hound on the trail, Captain Funcke cast about him. "Here's where they came in. No yes this is it. Confound the cross-tracks!.. Here one of them cuts across the ridge to the tenaja for water. "Wait!... What's this? Coyote trail? Yes, but... Trail brushed over, by thunder!
It was under duress and threats, it's true, but who's to prove that, they being two to one, and this being Mexico? No; they're within the law, and I've a notion that we can get the swag back by straight sale and barter. Provided, always, we can catch them in time." "They'll want to make pretty good time to the Tenaja Poquita," pointed out the captain. "They're shy on water." "On wind, too.
On the Padre Cliffs, however, had occurred that rare phenomenon, a benevolent avalanche, piling up a safe and feasible embankment around the angle of an impracticable precipice, and thus saving an hour of the most ticklish going of the journey. Thanks to this dispensation, the two men reached the Tenaja Poquita before dawn.
Word Of The Day