“It's a cow trail,” Billy declared. “I bet they's a teeny pasture tucked away somewhere in them trees. Let's follow it.”
A quarter of an hour later, several hundred feet up the side of the spur, they emerged on an open, grassy space of bare hillside. Most of the hundred and forty, two miles away, lay beneath them, while they were level with the tops of the three knolls. Billy paused to gaze upon the much-desired land, and Saxon joined him.
“What is that?” she asked, pointing toward the knolls. “Up the little canyon, to the left of it, there on the farthest knoll, right under that spruce that's leaning over.”
What Billy saw was a white scar on the canyon wall.
“It's one on me,” he said, studying the scar. “I thought I knew every inch of that land, but I never seen that before. Why, I was right in there at the head of the canyon the first part of the winter. It's awful wild. Walls of the canyon like the sides of a steeple an' covered with thick woods.”
“What is it?” she asked. “A slide?”
“Must be—brought down by the heavy rains. If I don't miss my guess—” Billy broke off, forgetting in the intensity with which he continued to look.
“Hilyard'll sell for thirty an acre,” he began again, disconnectedly. “Good land, bad land, an' all, just as it runs, thirty an acre. That's forty-two hundred. Payne's new at real estate, an' I'll make 'm split his commission an' get the easiest terms ever. We can re-borrow that four hundred from Gow Yum, an' I can borrow money on my horses an' wagons—”
“Are you going to buy it to-day?” Saxon teased.
She scarcely touched the edge of his thought. He looked at her, as if he had heard, then forgot her the next moment.