A CHANGE OF BASE
Johnny, upon leaving Hastings, struck south from it and spent the night
west of the Circle S after a journey of twenty miles on foot. Pepper
was again a pack horse, and the diamond hitch which held the bulging
tarpaulin in place would have dispelled any doubt as to Johnny's
abilities to cut loose from civilization and thrive in the lonely
places. And he had cut loose when he placed a note under a rock behind
a certain tree near the ford; for when "Hen" Crosby, riding for the
mail, saw the agreed-upon sign on the tree, it would not be long before
Logan had the note.
Following the line of least resistance, the second day found him
bearing westerly, and the next three days found him crowding the pack
on Pepper's back and riding due north through a country broken, wild,
and without a trail. The way was not as difficult as it might have been
because the valleys joined one another, and through them all flowed
creeks, which made a trail that left no tracks. To an experienced man
who had plenty of time the difficulties were more often avoided than
conquered.
At noon of the fifth day he drove Pepper slantingly up the wall of a
crumbling butte, and, reaching the top, looked around for his bearings.
They were easily found, for Twin Buttes looked too much alike, even
from the rear, to be easily mistaken; and they loomed too high to
be overlooked. Almost on a direct line with the Twins lay Quigley's
cabins, a matter of fifteen miles from him; which he decided was too
far. That distance covered twice daily would take up too much time.
Returning to the valley he built a fire, had dinner, and, hanging the
edible supplies on tree limbs for safety, whistled Pepper to him and
departed toward the Twins.
Two hours later he left the horse in a deep draw and crawled up the
eastern bank. Crossing a bowlder-strewn plateau he not long afterward
wriggled to the edge of Quigley's valley and looked down into it.
The size of the enclosed range amazed him, for it was fully thirteen
miles long, eight miles across at its widest, the northern end, and
three miles wide at the middle, where massive cliffs jutted far out
from each side.
The more he saw of it the better he liked it. The grass was better and
thicker than even that in the prized and fought-for valley of the old
Bar-20. He judged it to contain about eighty square miles and believed
that it could feed two hundred cows to the mile. The main stream, which
he named Rustler Creek, flowed through a deep ravine and was fed, in
the valley alone, by six smaller creeks. There was a sizable swamp and
six lakes, one of them nearly a mile long. It was singularly free from
bowlders and rocks except at a place near the upper wall, where a great
collection of them extended out from a broken cliff.
Except at three places the canyons which cut into the cliffs were
blind alleys and he could see that two of them had narrow waterfalls
at their upper ends. The three open canyons were the only places where
cattle could leave the great "sink," as Johnny called it; and they were
strongly fenced. The first was the entrance canyon, near the houses;
the second was a deep, steep walled defile at the northwest corner of
the range, and it led into another, but smaller valley, also heavily
grassed. Through it ran a small stream which joined Rustler Creek at
the swamp. The third canyon, at the northeast corner of the valley,
was wide enough to let Rustler Creek flow through it and leave room
for the passing of cattle; and judging by the gates in the heavy fence
which crossed it, Johnny knew this to be the exit through which the
drive herds went. Where that drive trail led to he did not know, but he
believed it to pass well to the west of Hope.
Taking it all in all, it was the most perfect range he ever had
seen. Rich in grass so heavy and thick as to make him wonder at it,
naturally irrigated, blessed with natural reservoirs, surrounded by a
perpendicular wall of rock which at some places attained a height of
three hundred feet, the water courses lined with timber, its arroyos
and draws heavily wooded, and with but three places, easily closed
and guarded, where cattle could get out, it made the Tin Cup and the
Bar-20, large as they were, look like jokes. Its outfit could laugh at
rustlers, droughts, and blizzards, grow fat and lazy and have neither
boundary disputes nor range wars to bother them. There were no brands
of neighboring ranches to complicate the roundups and not a cow would
be lost through straying or theft.
Having located the valley, he slipped away, mounted his horse and rode
back the way he had come, looking for a good place to pitch his camp.
Five miles from the valley he found it--a cave-like recess under the
towering wall of a butte, half way up the wooded slope which lay at the
foot of the wall. From it he could command all approaches for several
hundred yards, while his tarpaulin would be screened by bowlders and
trees. It was high enough for purposes of observation, but not so high
that the smoke from his fire would have density enough when it reached
the top of the butte to be seen for any distance. A spring close by
formed pools in the hollows of the rocks below him. The great buttes
lying to the east of the fire would screen its light from any wandering
member of Quigley's outfit.
"This is it," he grunted. "We'll locate here tomorrow."
The following day, having put his new camp to rights, he rode up the
western slope of the great plateau which hemmed in Quigley's ranch,
picketed his horse in a clearing, and after a cautious reconnaissance
on foot he reached the edge of the cliffs, and the valley lay before
him. Cattle grazed near a little lake, but at that distance he could
not read the brands. He first had to find out if any of the outfit
ever rode along the top of the cliffs, and he struck straight back to
cross any such trails. By evening he had covered the western side of
the ranch without finding a hoof-print, or a way up the sheer walls
where a horseman could reach the top. There were several places where
a cool-headed man could climb up, and at one of these Johnny found
several burned matches.
The next day was spent on the plateau north of the ranch, and the
third and fourth days found him examining the eastern side; and it was
here that he found signs of riders. There were three blind canyons on
this side, and the middle one had a good trail running up its northern
wall, and it appeared to be used frequently. At the top it divided, one
branch running north and the other south. It was the only place on that
side of the valley where a horseman could get out.
Now that he had become familiar with his surroundings he began his
real work. If Quigley had rustled, the operations could be divided
into two classes: past operations, now finished; or present operations
which were to continue. It was possible that enough cattle had been
stolen in the past so that the natural increase would satisfy a man
of modest ambitions. In this case his danger would decrease as time
passed and eventually he would have a well-stocked range and be above
suspicion. If he were avaricious the rustling would continue, if only
spasmodically, until he had made all the money he wanted or until his
operations became known.
Johnny early had discovered that Quigley's brand was QE and this
increased his suspicions, for the E could not be explained. Logan's
brand was childishly simple to change: The C could become an O, Q, G,
or wagon-wheel; the L would make an E, Triangle, Square, or a 4.
Satisfied that the foundation of Quigley's brand had been the CL,
Johnny had to discover if Logan's cattle still were being taken to
swell the Quigley herds. Logan's inaction and his easy-going way of
running his ranch jarred Johnny, for the foreman had confessed that for
the last few years the natural increase, figured in the fall roundups,
had not tallied with the number of calves branded each preceding
spring. But Logan was not altogether to blame, because the Barrier had
given him a false security and there was nothing to fear from other
directions. It was the last spring roundup and its tally sheets which
had stirred him; and a close study of his drive-herd records and the
use of the factor of natural increase suddenly brought to his mind a
startling suspicion. Even then he wavered, fearing that he was allowing
an old and bitter grudge to sway him unduly; and before he had time to
make any real investigations, Johnny had appeared and demanded a job.
Among Quigley's cattle the proportion of calves to cows was so small
that Johnny could not fail to notice it. He was satisfied that the QE,
so prominently displayed, originally had been CL, but when he caught
sight of a crusty old steer near the mouth of the second canyon all
doubts were removed. While the mark was an old one, the rebranding had
been done carelessly. The segment which closed the original C had not
been properly joined to the old brand, and there was a space between
the ends of the two marks where they overlapped. A look at the ears
made him smile grimly, for Logan's shallow V notch had become a rounded
scallop; and there was no honest reason why Quigley should notch the
ears of his cows when there was no chance of them getting mixed up with
the cattle of any other ranch. The scallop had been made simply to cut
out the telltale V notch.