owed
only in the spring freshets. Pete had to pick his way over boulders and
across stretches of sand and boggy patches of black mud formed by little
springs leaking out under clumps of willows. Here and there the white
ribs of a steer's skeleton peered through the brush; once or twice an
overpowering stench gave notice of a carcass not wholly decomposed.

It was not a pleasant environment, but in an hour Drazk was out again
on the brow of the brown hills, where the sunshine flooded about and a
fresh breeze beat up against his face. After all his winding about in
the gully he was not more than a mile from the cutbank.

"I reckon I could get a great view from that cutbank of what Landson
is doin'," he suddenly remarked to himself. He took off his hat and
scratched his tousled head in reflection. "Linder said to beat it," he
ruminated, "but I can't get back to-night anyway, an' it might be worth
while to do a little scoutin'. Here goes!"

He struck a smart gallop to the southward, and brought his horse up,
spectacularly, a yard from the edge of the precipice. The view which
his position commanded was superb. Up the valley lay the white tents of
Transley's outfit, almost hidden in green foliage; the ford across the
river was distinctly visible, and stretching south from it lay, like a
great curving snake, the trail which wound across the valley and lost
itself in the foothills far to the south; across the western horizon
hung the purple curtain of the mountains, soft and vague in their
noonday mists, but touched with settings of ivory where the snow fields
beat back the blazing sunshine; far down the valley was the gleam of
Landson's whitewashed buildings, and nearer at hand the greenish-brown
of the upland meadows which his haymakers had already cleared of their
crop of prairie wool. This was now arising in enormous stacks; it must
have been three miles to where they lay, but Drazk's keen eyes could
distinguish ten completed stacks and two others in course of building.
He could even see the sweeps hauling the new hay, after only a few hours
of sun-drying, and sliding it up the inclined platforms which dumped it
into the form of stacks. The foothill rancher makes hay by horse power,
and almost without the aid of a pitch-fork. Even as Drazk watched he
saw a load skidded up; saw its apparent momentary poise in air; saw
the well-trained horses stop and turn and start back to the meadow with
their sweep. And up the valley Tr