water-jars. My knife may get me a drink out of the desert's
thorns, as well as kindle a fire from its stones. And right
here's my watermelon, the bisnaga, the first one I've found in
months," he exclaimed, going over to the edge of the cliff, above
the level of which peered the fat head of a cactus covered with
spines that were barbed like a fish-hook. Its short tap-root was
fixed in a crevice a few feet below the parapet. Lying on the
edge of the cliff, the man sliced off the top of the cactus, and
began jabbing into its interior, breaking down the fibrous walls
of the water-cells, of which the top-heavy plant is almost
entirely composed. In a few moments he arose.

"Now I can empty my canteen in the coffee-pot, sure of a fresh
supply of water by the time I am ready to mosey along."

He filled the pot, set it on the fire, and then pressed the
uncorked and empty canteen down into the macerated interior of
the bisnaga.

While his coffee was boiling, the prospector continued his
examination of the fortification, beginning, in the manner of his
kind, with the more minute "signs," and ending with what, to a
tourist, would have been the first and only subject of
observation--the view. On the inner side of the large boulder in
the wall he discerned, the faint outline of a cross, painted with
red ochre.

Scraping with his pick beneath the rock, to see if the emblem was
the sign of hidden treasure or relic, he unearthed a rattlesnake.