“Let’s look her over anyhow,” Robin suggested.
“Do the lookin’ afoot, then,” Tex counseled. “I wish there was snow. Tracks would tell.”
They were well hidden by the timber in which they had pulled up. They tied their horses in a thick portion of the grove. Carbines in hand they began to encircle this small basin, moving always under cover. On the farther side where a low place pitched out of the flat toward a gloomy canyon they found a pole cabin by a small clear spring. They stared silently from a thicket of chokecherry. To their right loomed the roof of another shelter. There was no sign of life.
“Let’s go clean around and take a look for tracks,” Tex whispered. “Then we can ride up an’ investigate this here secluded dwellin’.”
They did so, returned to their horses, satisfied that the flat harbored no life. They mounted, rode across the open, pulled up beside the corral.
“She’s been used recent.” Robin pointed to fresh cattle-signs. His roving eye lit on fresh charred wood. “Been some iron work.”
Tex nodded. Both were grown silent, wary. That hidden place, the fire-sign, the trampled floor of the corral told a definite story. No range rider needed pictures to illustrate that tale.
They rode on to the cabins. By the spring where the earth was moist they found fresh horse tracks, shod horses, leading both in and out. Tex squinted at the ground.
“That was yesterday,” he stated with conviction. “Let’s see how the shack is fixed for use.”
Looking first into the brush-hidden building they discovered it to be larger than it looked. It was a stable with room for two horses and all the rest of the space in one end packed with hay, bunch grass cut with a sickle. The marks of the haying were plain on the nearby sward. They grinned at each other and walked over to the house.