The trail led through the canon, over a divide beyond, 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 lariat, then surrendered tamely.  Dave patted it gently, stroked the neck, and spoke softly reassuring words.  He picked up one of the front feet and examined the shoe.  This was badly worn, and on the left side part of it had broken off.

A man came to the back door of the cabin and stretched in a long and luxuriant yawn.  Carelessly and casually his eyes wandered over the aspens and into the corral.  For a moment he stood frozen, his arms still flung wide.