and Thunder Pass cuts through between Sheepeater peak and this one
ahead of us--Gospel, you call it. What I referred to is that blind trail
that takes off up the canyon behind the corrals, and crosses into the
mountains the other side of Gospel."

Dirk eyed him. "I dunno 's I could say, right offhand, what trail yuh
mean," he parried. "Every canyon 's got a trail that runs up a ways, and
there's canyons all through the mountains; they all lead up to water, or
feed, or something like that, and then quit, most gen'rally; jest peter
out, like." And he added with heavy sarcasm, "A feller that's lived
on the range oughta know what trails is for, and how they're made.
Cowcritters are curious-same as humans."

To this Bud did not reply. He was smoking and staring at the brushy
lower slopes of the mountain ridge before them. He had explained quite
fully which trail he meant. It was, as he had said, a "blind" trail;
that is, the trail lost itself in the creek which watered a string of
corrals. Moreover, Bud had very keen eyes, and he had seen how a panel
of the corral directly across the shale-rock bed of a small stream was
really a set of bars. The round pole corral lent itself easily to hidden
gateways, without any deliberate attempt at disguising their presence.

The string of four corrals running from this upper one--which,
he remembered, was not seen from nearer the stables-was perhaps a
convenient arrangement in the handling of stock, although it was
unusual. The upper corral had been built to fit snugly into a rocky
recess in the base of the peak called Gospel. It was larger than some
of the others, since it followed the contour of the basin-like recess.
Access to it was had from the fourth corral (which from the ranch
appeared to be the last) and from the creekbed that filled the narrow
mouth of the canyon behind.

Dirk might not have understood him, Bud thought. He certainly should
have recognized at once the trail Bud meant, for there was no other
canyon back of the corrals, and even that one was not apparent to one
looking at the face of the steep slope. Stock had been over that canyon
trail within the last month or so, however; and Bud's inference that the
Muleshoe must have grazing ground across the mountains was natural; the
obvious explanation of its existence.

"How 'd you come to be explorin' around Gospel, anyway?" Dirk quizzed
finally. "A person'd think, short-handed as the Muleshoe is this spring,
't yo