Page:Clarence Mulford - Man from Bar-20.djvu/136

 The Man from Bar-20 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 124