“Got mired while they were feeding, perhaps; or the water drained off and left them high and dry.”
The general chuckled at this juncture, and lit another cigar. “She knows more questions than you do the answers to them,” quoth he. “But I wouldn’t mind hearing where the water went to, myself. I should like to see some of it back again.”
“Ask the earthquakes, and the sun. There’s a hundred and thirty degrees of heat in some of these valleys,--abysses, rather, three or four hundred feet below sea-level. The earth is very thin-skinned in this region, too, and whatever water wasn’t evaporated from above would be likely to come to grief underneath.”
“But, professor,” said the musical voice, “I thought there was a law that water always seeks its own level. So how can there be empty places below sea-level?”
“It’s the fault of the aneroid barometer, my dear. We were very comfortable and commonplace until that came along and revealed anomalies. The secret lies, I suppose, in the trend of the strata, which is generally north and south. You see the ridges cropping out all through the desert; and there’s a good deal of lava oozing over them, too. They probably act as walls, to prevent the sea getting in from the west, or the Colorado leaking in from the east.”
“In that case,” remarked the general, “a little more seismic disturbance might produce a change.”
“It would have to be more than a little, I suspect,” returned Meschines.
“Kamaiakan told me that the Indians have a prophecy that a great lake will come back and make the desert fruitful, and that there are some who know the very place where the water will begin to flow.” And here the hammock, with a final convulsion, gave birth to a beautiful young woman, in a diaphanous silk dress and a white lace mantilla. She crossed the veranda, and seated herself on the broad arm of her father’s chair.
“Why, that’s important!” said the general, arching his brows. “I wonder if Kamaiakan is one of those who know the place? If so, it might be worth his while to let me into the secret.”
“Oh, you couldn’t go there! It’s enchanted, and people who go near it die. There are bones all about there, now.”
“This Kamaiakan appears to be a remarkable personage: where did you pick him up?” inquired the professor.