"Looks like," he assented.
Study of the ground above showed the trail of two horses striking off at a right angle from the ditch toward the mouth of a box cañon about a mile distant. The horses were both larger than broncos. One of them was shod. One of the front shoes, badly worn, was broken and part of it gone on the left side. The riders were taking no pains apparently to hide their course. No doubt they relied on the full ditch to blot out pursuit.
The trail led through the cañon, over a divide beyond, and down into a small grassy valley.
At the summit Crawford gave strict orders. "No talkin', Mr. Thomas. This is serious business now. We're in enemy country and have got to soft-foot it."
The foothills were bristling with chaparral. Behind any scrub oak or cedar, under cover of an aspen thicket or even of a clump of gray sage, an enemy with murder in his heart might be lurking. Here an ambush was much more likely than in the sun-scorched plain they had left.
The three men left the footpath where it dipped down into the park and followed the rim to the left, passing through a heavy growth of manzanita to a bare hill dotted with scrubby sage, at the other side of which was a small gulch of aspens straggling down into the valley. Back of these a log cabin squatted on the slope. One had to be almost upon it before it could be seen. Its back door looked down upon the entrance to a cañon. This was fenced across to make a corral.
The cattleman and the cowpuncher looked at each other without verbal comment. A message better not put into words flashed from one to the other. This looked like the haunt of rustlers. Here they could pursue their nefarious calling unmolested. Not once a year would anybody except one of themselves enter this valley, and if a stranger did so he would know better than to push his way into the cañon.
Horses were drowsing sleepily in the corral. Dave slid from the saddle and spoke to Crawford in a low voice.
"I'm going down to have a look at those horses," he said, unfastening his rope from the tientos.
The cattleman nodded. He drew from its case beneath his leg a rifle and held it across the pommel. It was not necessary for Sanders to ask, nor for him to promise, protection while the younger man was making his trip of inspection. Both were men who knew the frontier code and each other. At a time of action speech, beyond the curtest of monosyllables, was surplusage.