is a kind of fairy land, that hidden pocket in the hills, always
covered by a mystic haze, for which the Mexicans give it the name
_Humada_. Its steep canyon comes down from the breast of the most
easterly of the Four Peaks, impassable except by the one trail; it
passes through the box and there widens out into a beautiful valley,
where the grass lies along the hillsides like the tawny mane of a
lion, and tender flowers stand untrampled in the rich bottoms. For
three miles or more it spreads out between striated cliffs where hawks
and eagles make their nests; then once more it closes in, the creek
plunges down a narrow gorge and disappears, writhing tortuously on its
way to the Salagua whose fire-blasted walls rise in huge bulwarks
against the south, dwarfing the near-by cliffs into nothingness by
their majestic height.

In the presence of this unearthly beauty and grandeur old Bill
Johnson--ex-trapper, ex-soldier, ex-prospector, ex-everything--had
dwelt for twenty years, dating from the days when his house was his
fortress, and his one desire was to stand off the Apaches until he
could find the Lost Dutchman.

Where the valley narrowed down for its final plunge into the gorge the
old trapper had built his cabin, its walls laid "square with the
world" by sighting on the North Star. When the sun entered the
threshold of the western door it was noon, and his watch never ran
down. The cabin was built of shaly rocks, squared and laid in mud,
like bricks; a tremendous stone chimney stood against the north end
and a corral for his burros at the south. Three hounds with bleared
eyes and flapping ears, their foreheads wrinkled with age and the
anxieties of the hunt, bayed forth a welcome as the cavalcade strung
in across the valley; and mild-eyed cattle, standing on the ridges to
catch the wind, stared down at them in surprise. Never, even at San
Carlos, where the Chiricahua cattle fatten on the best feed in
Arizona, had Hardy seen such mountains of beef. Old steers with six
and seven rings on their horns hung about the salting places, as if
there were no such things as beef drives and slaughter houses in this
cruel world, and even when the cowboys spread out like a fan and
brought them all in to the cutting grounds there was hardly a calf
that bawled.

As the three or four hundred head that made up his entire earthly
possession drifted obediently in, the old man rode up to Creede and
Hardy and waved his hand expansively.