yond, and down into a
small grassy valley.

At the summit Crawford gave strict orders. "No talkin', Mr. Thomas. This
is serious business now. We're in enemy country and have got to soft-foot
it."

The foothills were bristling with chaparral. Behind any scrub oak or
cedar, under cover of an aspen thicket or even of a clump of gray sage,
an enemy with murder in his heart might be lurking. Here an ambush was
much more likely than in the sun-scorched plain they had left.

The three men left the footpath where it dipped down into the park and
followed the rim to the left, passing through a heavy growth of manzanita
to a bare hill dotted with scrubby sage, at the other side of which was
a small gulch of aspens straggling down into the valley. Back of these a
log cabin squatted on the slope. One had to be almost upon it before it
could be seen. Its back door looked down upon the entrance to a canon.
This was fenced across to make a corral.

The cattleman and the cowpuncher looked at each other without verbal
comment. A message better not put into words flashed from one to the
other. This looked like the haunt of rustlers. Here they could pursue
their nefarious calling unmolested. Not once a year would anybody except
one of themselves enter this valley, and if a stranger did so he would
know better than to push his way into the canon.

Horses were drowsing sleepily in the corral. Dave slid from the saddle
and spoke to Crawford in a low voice.

"I'm going down to have a look at those horses," he said, unfastening his
rope from the tientos.

The cattleman nodded. He drew from its case beneath his leg a rifle and
held it across the pommel. It was not necessary for Sanders to ask, nor
for him to promise, protection while the younger man was making his trip
of inspection. Both were men who knew the frontier code and each other.
At a time of action speech, beyond the curtest of monosyllables, was
surplusage.

Dave walked and slid down the rubble of the steep hillside, clambered
down a rough face of rock, and dropped into the corral: He wore a
revolver, but he did not draw it. He did not want to give anybody in the
house an excuse to shoot at him without warning.

His glance swept over the horses, searched the hoofs of each. It found
one shod, a rangy roan gelding.

The cowpuncher's rope whined through the air and settled down upon the
shoulders of the animal. The gelding went sun-fishing as a formal protest
against the l