Hank nodded.
“I ain’t never bin back there. What’s the use? They got the bulge in that country. They kin set on a pinnacle and see every rider between the brakes and my place, if they got ary fieldglasses, which they likely has. The only way tuh git into the hills is along them trails and every danged trail is watched. Them cattle is like so many flies in a bottle and Fox’s hand over the mouth tuh keep ’em in. The same crew uh gun fighters that keeps folks from goin’ into the hills, keeps the cattle from driftin’ out.”
“Hmm,” mused Tad aloud. “Regular hole-in-the wall proposition, ain’t it? Yeah. How many trails leadin’ into that section, Hank?”
“Two,” came the prompt reply. ‘It’s a kinda pocket, widening out beyond where the brakes meets the bottom lands.”
“Trails along the river bottoms, ain’t there?”
“Nary trail ’ceptin’ late in the fall when the water’s low. It’s what they call the Narrows. Except fer where trails has bin cut out, a man can’t water his saddle hoss along the riverbank fer ten miles. Thirty and forty foot banks, sabe? And at each end uh the ten-mile stretch is a gorge cut out by spring rains and the cricks, which is so full uh quicksand that they’d bog a jacksnipe. A danged pocket, I tell yuh, a danged, gyp-water, soap-hole, shale-banked pocket. And they’s feed in them cañons tuh winter half the cattle in Montana.”
“Uh-huh. Yet, some way er another, Hank, it don’t sound noways reasonable that a man can’t git in there. Supposin’ that a man was tuh cross the river, say at one uh the ferries, ride back on the opposite bank till he come opposite them Narrers, then swim across to where one uh them trails is cut in the bank?”
Hank laughed mirthlessly. “Can’t be done, pardner. My boy Pete is the only human that ever done it and he crossed when the river was down. Now, at high water, the —— hisself couldn’t make it.”
“Yore Pete done it?” put in Shorty, silent up till now.
Hank smiled reminiscently.