“Now comes a cur’ous thing,” continued Mr. Weston. “You’d athought I was all in, me acrawlin’ on my hands an’ knees the night before. But this goin’ without no water has funny angles. I was mad and demandin’ the water that should ’abeen waitin’ fur me. An’ on them raw feet o’ mine I started to find it. I couldn’t talk, an’ I couldn’t think, to speak of, but I could see. An’ afore I quit I saw smoke.
“Somehow, that didn’t int’rest me; didn’t even surprise me. But it was right whar I thought water was, an’, somehow, I kept goin’. This is one place they say I’m nutty. I’ve forgot a good deal about gittin’ out o’ the rocks, but I’ll make affedavit I went toward that smoke all day. How do I figger that? It was black all around me when I quit goin’.
“When I knowed anything agin, I knowed I was with Injuns. Couldn’t fool me on Injun smell. An’ when an old Injun woman poured water on my tongue, I jist shet my eyes an’ went to sleep agin.”
For the last few moments, Roy had leaned forward as if afraid he might miss some word of his companion’s strange tale.
“Indians had saved you!” he exclaimed huskily.
“A white man,” remarked Mr. Weston. “The High Mucky-Muck o’ the Sink Hole--the high priest o’ the Lost Injuns--him that they say loosened some o’ my screws.”
“Go on,” interrupted the boy impulsively, now wholly indifferent as to the result of possibly drawing out the plainsman’s hallucination. Weston arose, went over to the water barrel and put his mouth to the spigot.
“You don’t never see me wastin’ any o’ that sence the day I got out o’ the rocks,” he explained, “an’ I got a purty high regard fur it ever sence.”
He moved the fire coals together with his foot and added a couple new mesquite roots to the embers. As the coals flared into a flame, he took from his hip pocket a worn and greasy pocketbook. The flap was reinforced with a string. Slowly untying this, Weston opened the book and extracted a little pocket or envelope made of what appeared to be thin, black oilcloth. The boy was on his knees close by the fire. Weston squatted on his heels, opened the oilcloth packet and took out a piece of yellowish paper, about twice the size of an envelope, folded once in the middle.
“What’s that?” exclaimed Roy, moving closer.