All morning they rode slowly, over rough trails in the mountains where a horse found scant foothold, where they wound down into deep, close walled canyons where the sunlight was dim at noon, where the pines stood tall and straight in thick ranks untouched by an ax. They came out into little valleys, past a half dozen ranch houses, saw many herds of cattle and horses, crossed Indian Gully, topped another steep ridge and at last looked down upon the Poison Hole ranch.
The ranch lay off to the east as they looked down upon it, a great sweep of rolling hills sprinkled with big oaks looking like shrubs from their vantage point, cut in two by the Big Little River, along the banks of which and out in the meadow lands many herds of cattle ranged free. Rising in his stirrup Smith pointed out to her the spot near the centre of the big range where Buck Thornton's "range house" was, a dozen miles away over the rolling country. And then he swung about and pointed to the south, saying shortly:
"Yonder's the country you're lookin' for. We strike due south here along the edge of the Poison Hole ranch. When we get to that next string of lulls you can see the hills of three states, all at once and the same time. And you can see the town you're headed for; it sets on top a sort of hill. Down yonder," and he swung his long arm off to the south-west, "is the Bar X outfit; that's as far as I'm going. But, if you want company, one of the boys will sure be glad to ride on with you. The Corners is only about a dozen mile from there on."
CHAPTER XII
RATTLESNAKE POLLARD
IT was barely noon, the air clear, the sky cloudless, when Winifred Waverly rode into Hill's Corners. She had shaken her head at the suggestion of further escort. Here, in the open country and in the full sunlight, she was grateful for the opportunity of being alone.
At the foot of a gentle eminence she entered the narrow, winding street of the town, a crooked little town physically both in the matter of this meandering alley-like thoroughfare and in the matter of the hastily builded, unprepossessing houses; a crooked town in its innermost character, it was easy to believe. On either hand as she rode forward were low, squat, ugly shacks jammed tight together or with narrow passageways between their unlovely walls, these spaces more often than not cluttered and further disfigured by piles of rusty tins, old clothing and shoes and other discarded refuse. As she rode farther she saw now and then the more pretentious buildings, some with the false fronts which deceived nobody, the houses appearing shoddy and aged and sinister, one here and there deserted and given over to ruin, disintegration and spiders spinning unmolested in dark corners.
The next peculiar impression created upon her was that some evil charm was over the place, that in the sweet sunlight it lay drugged, that in those rows of slatternly shacks where the sunlight did not enter men either hid in dark secrecy or lay in some unnatural stupour. The whole settlement seemed preternaturally quiet; the fancy came to her that the town had died long ago and that she merely looked on its ghost.
She had shrunk before now at the thought of men coming to the doors to stare after her, and perhaps even to call coarsely after her; now it seemed the dreariest thing in all the world to ride down this dirty, muddy street and see no man or woman or child, not so much as a saddled horse at a hitching pole. She came abreast of the most pretentious building of Hill's Corners; its swing doors were closed, but from within she heard a low, monotonous hum of languid voices. Upon the crazy false front, a thing to draw the wondering eye of a stranger, was a gigantic and remarkably poorly painted picture of a bear holding a glass in one deformed paw, a bottle in the other, while the drunken letters of the superfluous sign spelled: "The Brown Bear Saloon." Almost directly across the street from the Brown Bear was a rival edifice which though slightly smaller was no less squat and ugly and which bore its own highly ambitious sign: a monster hand clutching a monster whiskey glass, with the illuminating words beneath, "The Here's How Saloon." That the two works of art were from the same brain and hand there was no doubting. In the inscriptions the n's and s's were all made backwards, presenting an interesting and entirely suitable air of maudlin drunkenness.
The girl hurried by. There were other saloons, so many, so close together that, used as she was to frontier towns, she wondered at it; she saw other buildings whose signs informed her they were store and post-office, drug store, blacksmith shop and restaurant. And now the first visible token of life, a thin spiral of smoke from "Dick's Oyster House." She passed it, pushing her horse to a gallop. She had seen the two or three men upon the high stools at the counter taking their coffee and bacon. They had swung about quickly, like one man, at the cook's grin and quiet word. One of them even called out something as she passed; another laughed.