"Holy smoke! What if it had been half-starved, or a grizzly! Blast you!" he growled, shaking a vengeful fist at the presumed locality of the wolf.
"You just come snortin' around my valley! I'll shoot yore insides all over th' landscape!"
Hanging onto the rock, he readjusted his belts and went nearer the entrance canyon to get a closer view of the houses and surroundings. When again he looked over the edge of the precipice he was directly over the corral and across from the houses, which the rays of the moon, slanting through a break in the opposite cliff, now faintly revealed.
There were three houses and they were low, long and narrow, and built of stone, with the customary adobe roofs; and they were built in echelon, the three end walls appearing as one from the canyon. He nodded appreciatively, for it required no great imagination to see, in his mind's eye, the loopholes which undoubtedly ornamented that end of the houses. The narrow canyon, straight as an arrow and fully half a mile long, lay at almost perfect right angles to the three walls. A handful of determined men, cool and accurate, in those houses could hold the canyon against great odds while their food, water and ammunition held out. Moving his head, he caught a sudden glint, and peered intently to discover what had caused it. He moved again until he saw it the second time, and then he knew. A small trickle of water flowed from a spring back near the great wall, and it passed under one corner of each house.
"That's purty good!" he ejaculated in ungrudging admiration. He was something of a strategist himself and he was not slow to pay respect to the handiwork of genius when he saw it. "Built 'em like steps so as to cover th' canyon from all three houses; an' diverted that little stream so they could get water without showing themselves. No matter which side of them houses is rushed, there is allus three walls to face. Th' only weak spots are th' north an' south corners. If they ain't loopholed a good man could sneak right up to th' corner of th' end houses; but what he'd do after he got there, I don't know."
He studied the problem in silence and then nodded his head: "Huh! Them walls don't overhang, an' so they can't shoot down close to 'em. Mebby I've found th' weak spot—but I'll have to get a whole lot closer than I am now before I'm shore of it. An' that can wait."
He wriggled back from the wall and arose. "Seen all I can at night. Don't even know if these fellers are rustlin'. Bein' suspicious an' bein' shore ain't th' same. But th' next time I come up here I won't leave until I am shore, not if it takes all summer. Logan said to be shore to find out how many there are, their trail from his ranch an' th' place where they operates on th' CL. Says he's got to get 'em actually stealin' his cows on his ranch. Says he ain't got no friends out here and that th' other ranches acts like they was sort of on th' side of th' thieves. That's a h—l of a note, that is! Buck, an' Hoppy, an' us: we never gave a whoop where we found rustlers if they had our cows; an' we never gave two whoops in h—l what th' rest of th' country thought about it. Times have changed. Imagine us askin' anybody if we could shoot rustlers! Huh!"
He started back the way he had come up, and reached his own valley without incident; but when he wriggled toward the wall he was puzzled, and worried. There was the clump of pines up above him, ghostly in the faint moonlight; but he could see no rope. Thankful that he had been cautious in crossing the valley, he wriggled a little closer and then started back over his trail, recrossed the valley, climbed the other wall in the shelter offered by a crevice and slipped along the great ridge. All he cared about now was to get back into the cabin without being seen. All kinds of conjectures ran through his head concerning the absence of the rope, and while he thrashed them out he kept going ahead, careful to take full advantage of the wealth of cover at hand.