e."

Sile was making a tremendous effort. He had been doing it all day. He
almost wanted to cry when he saw that spring of water. Then he wanted to
laugh, but his mouth was too dry for that. All he could do was to smile
in a sickly sort of way and take the cup his father held out to him.
There was only a little water in the bottom of it.

"Oh father, give me some more."

"Not yet, Sile. Sit right down and wait till you get the effect of that.
Hold it in your mouth before you swallow it. I don't mean to let you
kill yourself."

"Aha! But isn't it good? There isn't anything else quite so good as
water."

"That's a fact, Sile, but it's like a great many other good things, you
don't know the value of it until you've had to go without it."

A full hour was spent in getting men and animals ready to drink without
injury, and Yellow Pine at last declared, triumphantly,

"Jedge, we've won the riffle; we won't lose a hoof. All the men are
doing first-rate too. This 'ere's my old campin'-ground, but there's
been an Indian camp here since sun-up."

"How do you know that, Pine?"

"Found live fire. There hasn't been any dew on it to put it out. What's
more, they've gone on into the mountains. Hunting-party. We're all
right, jedge."

The mining expedition now kindled fires of its own, and something was
done in the way of getting supper. There was no grass, but the horses
and mules could attend fairly well to the contents of their nose-bags,
and the men paid them all manner of attention. Only a greenhorn is
careless of the comfort and welfare of his horse.

Sile drank well at last, under his father's direction, and then he felt
like eating something. After that it seemed to him as if the whole world
had only been made as a good place to sleep in. He did not care whether
the tents were pitched or not. All he wanted was a piece of ground large
enough to lie on, and a blanket, and he was ready to sleep as soundly
and silently as if he had been one of the mountains which raised their
shadowy heads into the light of the rising moon. He had been without
water for the first time in his life. He had stood it through
heroically, he had found a spring, and now he needed a long sleep.

CHAPTER IX

INTO A NEW WORLD

Two Arrows wiped the blood of the cougar from the blade of his lance. He
was glad it was a good lance. His father had traded a pony for it, as he
well knew, with a Mexican, years before that, and it was no ord