"The chief," says Curly, "is right on his ear, and sends this Pieface to find out what's wrong at Clay Flat."
When this Pieface person had hit the trail, we took both boats across the river and swam our horses. From the far bank our way turned sharp to the left into the side Cañon of Dirty Devil Creek. There we rode along some miles in the water, so as to leave no trail; then, quitting the bottom, turned sharp back up a ledge, threading the face of the cliffs. The heat was blinding; it seemed as if we were being baked alive, and even my tanned hide broke out in blisters. Curly allowed this cliff was over six thousand feet high, and the trail kept circling round red buttresses, flanks of broken rock, to one sheer cape where nothing lay below us but blue space. Then we swung into a little arroyo with trickling water, shady trees, and a gentle glade until we reached the summit. At the rim rock a robber halted us, until Curly pushed her hat-brim up, showing her face. She answered for me, and we rode on through level pine woods. I noticed horse tracks scattering everywhere, but no trail whatever; and then even the horse-tracks petered out. I looked back, and there was not a sign to show the way we had come. For the first mile we headed towards where the sun would set, now we swung around on a long curve until we pointed north-east. I might just as well have been blindfold.
"Curly," I asked, "is this Main Street?"
"I reckon," she laughed. "Could you find the way back?"
Once before she had told me that no trails led to the stronghold.
Then away to the left I saw a big corral, with a dust of horses inside, and men sitting round on the top rail, maybe a dozen of them. Beyond it lay a streak of open water, and right in front loomed a house, set in the standing woods, where one could hardly see a hundred paces. It was a ranche house of the usual breed, log-built, low-pitched, banked up around with earth as high as the loopholes, and at each end against the gable stood a dry stone chimney. Two or three men stood in the doorway smoking, and but for the fact that they packed their guns when at home, they looked like the usual cowboys. The dogs were plenty exuberant, but Curly might have been out shooting rabbits for all the fuss that these men made about her coming.
We unsaddled and set our horses loose.
"Wall, Curly," asked one of the robbers, "got any liquor along?"
"Nary a smell."
Then McCalmont came round the end of the house, dusty after some argument with a broncho, trailing his rope while he coiled it.