of provisions, tools and
bedding, we carried them up the mountain as far as we could on wheels,
and then packed them the rest of the way on horseback, when, having seen
Tom comfortably established in camp near the Big Reuben--with the look
of which he expressed himself as immensely pleased--Joe and I turned
homeward again about four in the afternoon.

We were driving along, skirting the rim of our canyon, and were passing
between the stream and the little treeless "bubble" upon which Joe had,
as he believed, seen Long John standing the day before, when my
companion remarked:

"I should very much like to know, Phil, what Long John was doing up
there. Do you suppose----Whoa! Whoa, there, Josephus! What's the matter
with you?"

This exclamation was addressed to the horse; for at this moment the
ordinarily well-behaved Josephus shied, snorted, and standing up on his
hind feet struck out with his fore hoofs at a big timber-wolf, which,
springing out from the shelter of some boulders on the margin of the
canyon and passing almost under his nose, ran off and disappeared among
the rocks.

"He must have been down to the stream to get a drink," suggested Joe.

"He couldn't," said I; "the canyon-wall is too steep; no wolf could
scramble up."

"Well, if he didn't," remarked my companion, "how did he get his feet
wet? Look here at his tracks."

As he said this, Joe pointed to the bare stone before us, where the
wolf's wet tracks were plainly visible.

"Well," said I, "then I suppose there must be a way up after all. Wait a
moment, Joe, while I take a look."

Jumping from the buckboard, I stepped over to the boulders whence the
wolf had appeared, where, to my surprise, I found a pool, or, rather, a
big puddle of water, which, overflowing, dripped into the canyon.

Where the water came from I could not at first detect, but on a more
careful inspection I found that it ran, a tiny thread, along a crack in
the lava not more than a couple of inches wide, which, on tracing it
back, I found we had driven over without noticing. Apparently the water
came down from the "bubble" through a rift in the crater-wall.

As I have stated before, several of the little craters contributed small
streams of water to our creek, but this was not one of them, so,
turning to my companion, I said:

"Joe, this is the first time I have ever seen any water come down from
that 'bubble.' Let us climb up to the top and take a look inside."

Away we