"If there's a hundred gallons it's doing well, this dry season."

Average Jones got painfully to his feet. Looking carefully over the
scattered camp outfit, he selected from it a collapsible pail.
Captain Funcke glanced at it with curiosity, but characteristically
forebore to ask any questions. He himself shouldered the largest
canteen.

"This'll be enough for both until we reach the supply," he said.
"Don't need so much water at night."

But the tenderfoot hung upon his own shoulder, not only the smallest
of their three canteens, but also the empty one which they had found
in the camp. Their own third tin, almost full, they left beside
Hoff, with a note.

"I've a notion," said Jones, "that I'll need all these receptacles
for water in my own peculiar business."

"All right," assented the other patiently. He took one of them and
the pail from Jones and skillfully disposed them on his own back.
"Ready? Hike, then."

Two hours of the roughest kind of climbing brought them to a
landslide. These sudden shiftings of the slopes are a frequent
feature of travel in the Lower California mountains, often
obliterating trails and costing the wayfarer painful and perilous
search for a new path. On the Padre Cliffs, however, had occurred
that rare phenomenon, a benevolent avalanche, piling up a safe and
feasible embankment around the angle of an impracticable precipice,