“How far now?” Rock inquired.
“Coupla miles.”
“I don’t want to show a squad of armed men around here till I know what we’re going up against,” Rock mused. “If we got to take action, it would better be a surprise party, with us doing the surprising. I think you and me had better scout a little, Charlie.”
“I was goin’ to suggest that,” Charlie said.
“All right. You boys lay low here,” Rock ordered. “From the edge of this timber you can look down over the slope, without anybody seeing you or your horses. If we should happen to get in a mix-up, there will be guns popping. And if they pop too long and loud, you had better come running. I don’t want to stage any wild play, if it can be helped, but, if we have to throw lead to protect ourselves, we will. Otherwise, we will be back in a couple of hours at the outside. Now don’t show yourselves unless you have to. Use some judgment.”
The riders got down off their horses, stretched their legs, and rolled cigarettes. Rock and Charlie Shaw bore along in the edge of the timber. A narrow plateau, open, grassy, almost level, ran along under the low, pine-swathed ridge, where they left the riders. Off to the left a hillside lifted a stretch of jack pine and scrubby juniper. They darted across a narrow bit of open and trotted along under cover once more.
“Not far now—not so far as I thought it was,” Charlie said after a time. “I remember this place.”
In a few minutes he pulled up, lifted his face, and sniffed.
“Say, we’re right on top of them corrals,” he whispered. “An’ I’d say they was populated. Smell that?”
“Wood smoke,” Rock muttered. But he knew that with the smell of burning wood there was mingled another, more pungent odor—the smell of burning hair. He had sweated around too many branding fires not to recognize that.