He was quietly tearing open a half-burned cigarette, the tobacco inside of which was still moist.
“Prairie toughs don’t smoke made cigarettes around here. It’s a Caporal. Get it? That’s bought in a town.”
“Ay,” said McBain quickly. “Rocky Springs, I’d say. It’s the Rocky Springs gang, sure as hell. It’s the foulest hole of crime in the northwest. Come on, boys. We need to get busy.”
Two minutes later a moving cloud of dust marked their progress down the trail in the direction of Rocky Springs. Presently, however, the dust subsided. The astute riders of the plains were giving no chances away; they had left the tell-tale trail and rode on over the grass at its edge.
The westering sun was low on the horizon. The air was still. Not a cloud was visible anywhere in the sky. The world was silent. The drowsing birds, even, had finished their evensong.
Low bush-grown hills lined the trail where it entered the wide valley of Leaping Creek, which, six miles further on, ran through the heart of the hamlet of Rocky Springs.
It was a beauty spot of no mean order. The smaller hills were broken and profuse, with dark woodland gorges splitting them in every direction, crowded with such a density of foliage as to be almost impassable. Farther on, as the valley widened and deepened, its aspect became more rugged. The land rose to greater heights, the lighter vegetation gave way to heavier growths of spruce and blue gum and maple. These too, in turn, became sprinkled with the darker and taller pines. Then, as the distance gained, a still further change met the eye. Vast patches of virgin pine woods, with their mournful, tattered crowns, toned the brighter greens to the somber grandeur of more mountainous regions.
The breathless hush of evening lay upon the valley. There was even a sense of awe in the silence. It was peace, a wonderful natural peace, when all nature seems at rest, nor could the chastened atmosphere of a cloister have conveyed more perfectly the sense of repose.
But the human contradiction lay in the heart of the valley. It was the abiding place of the hamlet of Rocky Springs, and Rocky Springs was accredited with being the very breeding ground of prairie crime.