“Yellow Dog Park,” said Larry, pointing to the valley. “Queer names they have up in these mountains. I suppose some prospector had a hound dog, and it died or got lost, or something, down yonder in that valley.”
“Queer” fitted the break in the mountain labyrinth into which they were looking down, in the sense that it was singularly unlike any of the canyon widenings in the lower reaches of the river. In shape it was roughly circular and of considerable extent, with so many gulches running down into it that it looked from their height like the center of a many-pointed star. It seemed to be entirely bare of timber, and its color, in sharp contrast to the dark greens of the wooded mountain sides, was a sort of dirty yellow, with here and there a patch of green that was even darker than that of the forests.
From their high lookout they could not trace the course of the river through the valley, though they finally concluded that the Tourmaline must flow along its northern edge, which lay at their left as they faced eastward. In this case it would be hidden beneath its fringing of trees.
“What do you suppose makes those square green patches?” Dick asked, lamenting in the same breath his forgetfulness in failing to bring his field-glass along.
“I’ve been wondering,” said Larry; then: “I’ll bet I know! They’re fields of alfalfa. There’s a hay ranch in that valley, taking its irrigation water from the river.”
“A ranch?” Dick queried—“this far up in the mountains?”
“Sure. With a trig mining-camp that can’t be more than fifteen miles away there’d be a good market for every pound of hay that could be raised. Dad says it used to be that way in the little valleys around Leadville, back in the early days, and some of the hay ranchers made more money than the miners did.”
Dickie Maxwell, still grumbling because he hadn’t brought the field-glass, was trying to make a binocular of his curved hands.
“I don’t see any ranch house,” he offered, “but there is a path or road of some sort winding around across the park. Can’t you see it? It begins down here at the left and goes across sort of cater-cornering to the southeast.”
Larry looked closely and saw what appeared in the distance to be the tiniest of footpaths running in the direction Dick had indicated.