“That’s a good punishment for a rascally thief,” whispered Obed.  “I don’t blame him for trying to get something to eat, but it’s our deer.  Let him go away and do his own hunting.”

The cougar came back down the tree, but his descent was made with less spirit than his ascent.  Nevertheless he made another try at the jumping.  Ned saw, however, that he did not do as well as before.  He never came within six inches of the deer now.  At last he lay flat again on the ground and panted, staying there a full five minutes.  When he got up he made one final and futile jump, and then sneaked away, exhausted and ashamed.

“Now, Ned,” said Obed, “since the comedy is over I think we can safely go to sleep.”

“Especially as we know our deer is safe,” said Ned.

Both slept soundly throughout the remainder of the night.  Toward morning the cougar came back and looked longingly at the body of the deer hanging from the bough of the tree.  He thought once or twice of leaping for it again, but there was a shift of the wind and he caught the human odor from the two beings who lay forty yards away.  He was a large and strong beast of prey, but this odor frightened him, and he slunk off among the trees, not to return.

Ned and Obed stayed two days beside the little river, taking a complete rest, bathing frequently in the fresh waters, and curing as much of the deer as possible for their journey.  Then, rather heavily loaded, they started anew, always going northward through a sad and rough land.  Now they entered another bare and sterile region of vast extent, walking for five days, without seeing a single trace of surface water.  Had it not been for their capacious water bottles they would have perished, and, even with their aid, it was only by the strictest economy that they lived.  The evaporation from the heat was so great that after a mouthful or two of water they were invariably as thirsty as ever, inside of five minutes.

They passed from this desert into a wide, dry valley between bare mountains, and entered a great cactus forest, one of the most wonderful things that either of them had ever seen.  The ground was almost level, but it was hard and baked.  Apparently no more rain fell here than in the genuine desert of shifting sand, and there was not a drop of surface water.  Ned, when he first saw the mass of green, took it for a forest of trees, such as one sees in the North, but so great was his interest that he was not disappointed, when he saw that it was the giant cactus.

The strange forest extended many miles.  The stems of the cactus rose to a height of sixty feet or more, with a diameter often reaching two feet.  Sometimes the stems had no branches, but, in case they did, the branches grew out at right angles from the main stem, and then curving abruptly upward continued their growth parallel to the parent stock.

The stems of these huge plants were divided into eighteen or twenty ribs, within which at intervals of an inch or so were buds, with cushions, yellow and thick, from which grew six or seven large, and many smaller spines.