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Twenty feet away in a deep crevice at the edge of the coulee, Bat Lajune, who had overheard every word, was convulsed with silent mirth. "You say they've dug up all the coulees? Red Rock an' an' all, Buffalo, Six-mile, Woodpile, Miller's?"
Immediately upon the advent of this famous corps matters began to improve. The open ravages of the whiskey runners ceased and these daring outlaws were forced to carry on their fiendish business by midnight marches and through the secret trails and coulees of the foothills. The profits of the trade, however, were still great enough to tempt the more reckless and daring of these men.
"And there will likely be some buffalo near there." So we ascended cautiously to the top of the divide, keeping in the coulées as much as possible, for we knew that other field-glasses would be focused on the hills. Once over the crest, we halted and watched for riders coming our way. But none appeared. Once I thought I glimpsed a moving speck on the farther bank of Lost River.
Throughout the region mountains, volcanic cones, volcanic necks, and coulees are found, while the mountains themselves rise to great altitudes and are forest-clad. Some of the plateaus attain huge proportions, and between the plateaus labyrinthian mesas are found. Buttes, as stupendous cameos, are scattered everywhere, and the whole region is carved with canyons.
Then the land was further degraded, and a third set of coulees was spread still lower down on the flanks, and on these last coulees the black cinder cones stand. So the foundations of the Uinkaret Mountains are of limestones, and these foundations are covered with sheets of lava overlapping from below upward, and the last coulees are decked with cones.
The hoof marks are beyond the Musselshell, over the Bad Lands and the coulees and the flat prairies; and far up into the land of the long cold you may see, even today if you like, the shadow of that unparalleled pathway, the Long Trail of the cattle-range. History has no other like it. The Long Trail was surveyed and constructed in a century and a day.
You're all right, as far as yuh go but this range is carrying just about all the stock it needs right at present. I don't reckon yuh realize that all the good bottoms and big coulées are getting filled up with nesters; one here and one there, and every year a few more. It ain't much, uh course, but every man that comes is cutting down the range just that much.
In the fierce fights that often followed, the Indian, poorly armed and half dead with the poison he had drunk, would come off second best and many a wretched native was left to burn and blister upon the plains or among the coulees at the foothills to mark the trail of the whiskey runners. In British territory all this style of barter was of course unlawful.
Sheep, and a sheep camp and Happy Jack, hater of sheep though he was, hailed the sight as a bit of rare good luck. His spirits rose immediately, and he started straight for the place. Down in the next coulee there were always coulees to cross, no matter in what direction one would travel he came near running plump into three riders, who were Irish Mallory, and Weary, and Pink.
The atmosphere took on the appearance of a thin grey fog that momentarily grew thinner. Endicott walked to the top of a low mound and gazed eagerly about him. Distant objects were beginning to appear bare rock-ridges, and low-lying hills, and deep coulees. In vain the man's eyes followed the ridges for one that terminated in a huge broken rock, with its nearby soda hill.
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