"Cold Spring?" replied the colonel. "What do they say about it?"
"Ask the scout. He says it's Manitou Water in the old tongue. I can't work the Apache syllables."
Neither could Colonel Evans, when the Chiricahua repeated them. He was even eager to tell more, and what he did tell was curious, if true. Just before the great and noble Chiricahuas and Apaches came to own that country, he said, there had been a hill there, a sort of mountain with forests, and there was no desert there, and no chaparral. The Chiricahuas would have preferred a hill and trees and grass, but the old manitou who had lived there had to go away, and everything sunk down to a level. The trees died and rotted away, and all was dry and desolate, until one terribly hot day when a band of Apaches reached the rocky level, almost dying of thirst. Their ponies were unable to go any farther, and they had given up all hope. They sat around upon the rock, and their ponies lay down. All night long they sat there, and then, just as the sun was rising, they saw something white spring into the air in the middle of the wide rock. A new manitou had arrived, friendly to the Apaches. He brought the Manitou Water, and it had run continually to the present time. Generally it was quiet, but if the manitou heard good news, the water would sometimes jump away up, as it did when it first came.
"Very pretty story," began Captain Moore, but at that moment the air suddenly was filled with excited exclamations.
The old Chiricahua uttered a loud whoop as he sprang to his feet.
He added a few rapid sentences in his own tongue, while Ping and Tah-nu-nu darted away to the edge of the chaparral and stood there, clinging to each other as if in terror.
"Colorado!" shouted Sam Herrick. "What on earth's got into Cold Spring?"
The colonel and the captain also retreated rapidly, shivering from the shock of a sudden cold bath, for they both were wet to the skin.
Twenty feet high sprang the water, with a sharp hiss and a report like a pistol-shot. The first leap subsided, but was instantly followed by another and another, each less lofty than the one before it. Then the stream became fairly steady, but with about three times its customary supply, so that quite a rill of water ran away across the quartz, to be absorbed by the thirsty sand and gravel among the bushes.