"Come with me," ordered the foreman, slipping on his clothes; and in ten minutes they emerged from the blacksmith shop, which also was a storeroom, and Johnny carried a coil of old but strong rope and an iron bar.
"I never thought I'd be totin' a runnin' iron," he chuckled. "If my friends could only see me now! Johnny Nelson, cow-thief an' brand-blotter!"
"You needn't swell up," growled Logan. "You ain't th' only one in this country right now."
"Well," said Johnny, "go back an' finish yore dream—mebby you can find out how to make them cows come back through Little Canyon."
"Yo're goin' to do that," responded Logan; "an' I'm goin' to close that window in case you come back. I ain't forgot nothin' you said—an' if we don't see one of yore signs for a period of five days, we'll comb yore valley an' th' whole Twin Buttes country. So long!"
Johnny melted into the dark, a low whistle sounded and in a few minutes Logan heard the rhythmic drumming of hoofs, rapidly growing fainter.
CHAPTER VI
A MOONLIGHT RECONNAISSANCE
The evening following his visit to the CL, Johnny went to bed early but not to sleep. For several hours he lay thinking and listening, and then he arose and put on his moccasins, threw on his shoulder Logan's rope, now knotted every foot of its length, slipped out of the cabin and was swallowed up in the darkness along the base of the rocky wall. To cover the few yards between the cabin and the narrow crevice took ten minutes, and to go softly up the crevice took twice as long.
Reaching the top he listened intently, and then moved slowly and silently to a small clump of pines growing close to the rim of the steep wall enclosing the walled-in pasture, at a point where it was so sheer and smooth that he believed it would not be watched. Fastening one end of the rope to a tree, he lowered the rest of it over the wall and went down. Pausing again to listen, he made his way to a line of stones which lay across the creek, crossed with dry feet, and reached the northern wall of the pasture. This could be climbed at half a dozen places and he soon was up it and on his way north. After colliding with several bowlders and tripping twice he waited until the moon arose and then went on again at a creditable speed.
The crescent moon had risen well above the tops of Twin Buttes when a man in moccasins moved cautiously across a high plateau some miles north of Nelson's creek and finally dropped to all fours and proceeded much more slowly. From all fours to stomach was his next choice and he wriggled toward the edge of the plateau, pausing every foot or so to remove loose stones. These he put aside before going on again, for there is no telling where a rolling pebble will stop, or the noise it may make, when the edge of a mesa wall is but a few feet away. Coming to within an arm's length of the edge, he first made sure that the rim was solid rock and free from dirt and pebbles; and then, hitching forward slowly, he peered down into the deep valley.
Its immensity amazed him, for upon the occasion of his former reconnaissance he had viewed it from the outside; and as a picture of his own pasture flashed into his mind he snorted softly at the contrast, for where he had acres, this great "sink" had square miles. It was wider than his own was long, and it stretched away in the faint moonlight until its upper reaches were lost to his eyes. It was large enough to hold one great butte in its middle, and perhaps there were more; and from where he lay he judged the wall below him dropped straight down for three hundred feet.
"There ain't no line ridin' here, unless th' cows grow wings," he muttered.
To the south of him were four lighted windows near the forbidding blackness of the entrance canyon, and from their spacing he deduced two houses. And across from the windows he could make out a vague quadrangle, which experience told him was the horse corral. As if to confirm his judgment there came from it at that moment a shrill squeal and the sound of hoofs on wood, muffled by the distance. And from the corral extended a faint line which ran across the valley and became lost in the darkness near the opposite cliff. This he knew to be a fence.
"If this valley ends like it begins, three or four men can handle an awful lot of cows, 'cept at drive time," he soliloquized, and then listened intently to the sound of distant voices.
… many happy hours away,
A sittin' an a singin' by a little cottage do-o-r.
Where lived my darlin' Nel-lie Gr-a-ay,
came floating faintly from far below him.
He peered in the direction of the singing and barely made out a moving blot well out in the valley. As it came steadily nearer, the blot resolved itself into several dots, and the chorus had greater volume. It appeared that the group was harmonizing.
"You'll be doin' somethin' more than sittin' an' singin' at yore little cottage door one of these days," grunted Johnny savagely. It was his rebuff to the thought which came to him of how long it had been since he had ruined the silence in company with his friends. "That first feller is purty good; but one of 'em shore warbles like a sick calf."
Several other dots arose suddenly from the earth and lumbered sleepily away as the horsemen approached them.
"There's some of Logan's cows, I reckon," grunted the watcher grimly. "Wish I could see better. I've got to do my prospectin' in daylight; an' I got to find some way to ride over here—waste too much time on foot."
More squealing came from the corral and grew in volume as other horses joined in it. From the noise it appeared to be turning into a free-for-all. A door in one of the distant houses suddenly opened and framed a rectangular patch of light, dull and yellow; and from it emerged a bright little light which swung in short, jerky arcs close to the ground and went rapidly toward the corral. Soon thereafter the squealing ceased and a moment later the little light went bobbing back again, blotted out in rhythmic dashes by the swinging legs beside it.
"Big Jerry fightin' again," laughed one of the horsemen during a pause in the singing. Johnny barely was able to hear him.
Oh my darlin' Nellie Gra-a-y, they have taken her awa-a-y;
An' I'll never see my darlin' any more—ANY MORE!
rumbled the harmonizers, bursting into a thundering perpetration on the repetition of the last two words.
"Th' farther off they get th' better they sound," growled Johnny as the harmonizers were swallowed up in the darkness near the opposite cliff. "They'd sound better at about ten miles."
Lying comfortably on his stomach, his head out over the rim of the wall, he was lost in thought when a sudden, startled snort behind him nearly caused him to go over the edge. A contortionist hardly could have changed ends quicker than he did; he simply went up in the air and when he came down again he was on hands and knees, one foot where his head had been. But he did not stop there; indeed, he did not even pause there, for he kept on moving until he was on his feet, his knees bent and his head thrust forward, and each hand, without conscious direction, held a gun. And almost instantly they chocked back into the holsters.
A gray shape was backing slowly into the shadows of a bowlder, two green eyes boring through the gloom, and Johnny's hair became ambitious.
"I dassn't shoot, I dassn't run, an' I can't back up! All right; when in doubt try a bluff; but I shore hopes it's th' bluffin' kind!"
He emitted a throaty, ferocious snarl, dropped the tips of his fingers to the earth and started for the bowlder and the green eyes, on a series of back-humping, awkward jumps, like a weak-kneed calf cavorting playfully. Another snort, curious, incredulous, frightened, came from the bowlder and a great gray wolf backed off hastily, but with a hesitating uncertainty which was not as reassuring as might be hoped for.
Johnny