Robin and Tex headed for one such place which they had found while on circle two seasons earlier, and thought they could locate again. The curse of the Bad Lands is the ghastly similarity; one gulch, one canyon, one winding plateau is fellow to all the rest. There are no peaks, no hills; it is all etched deep in a general level, like a sunken garden planned by a madman. A man needed a keen sense of direction, a most acute sense of location to find his way to any given spot.
The two came at last to a point where uncertainty rested on them. Robin knew he was within a couple of miles of that particular cabin. But in the network of broken land he could not be certain. Nor could Tex. It was all gray, brown, dusky pine-green, far as the eye could reach. The chinook wind had stripped the range of snow. The frost held. The ground was like flint. The December wind sighed mournfully about their ears.
“The hell of this country is that you never can be sure where you are,” Robin complained. “I thought that old camp was in the mouth of this gulch. Let’s try the next bench.”
“Can we follow this one to the river?” Tex wondered when half an hour brought no result.
“Yes, but I’d as soon not make camp in the river bottoms,” Robin said.
“I don’t suppose it would be good policy,” Matthews agreed. “But say, I’m gettin’ empty. Let’s camp the first water we strike.”
Robin nodded. They bore down a ridge that seemed to offer access to low ground, out of that biting wind. The point of this spur ran suddenly out into a circular depression, unsuspected, unseen until they came upon it. It was like a meadow surrounded by a deep fringe of jack pine and lodge-pole. They reined up in the belt of timber and stood to gaze.
A round corral stood in the middle of this flat. A long wing ran from one side of the bars—a typical pen for wild stock.
“Never saw this before?” Robin lowered his voice.
“Don’t know as you better see too much of it right now,” Tex murmured. “Least not till we see if anybody’s around. This here looks like strictly private premises to me. There’ll be a cabin an’ water handy. Maybe likewise some eagle-eyed jasper with a Winchester.”