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There were the mountains, forest clad and cloud capped, as of old. There was the great, black lava gulch of the Serpentine. It looked the same, but he knew that it was changed. Smoke hung above the cañon where tall chimneys of nitrate plant and smelters belched their foulness against the blue sky. In the forests the loggers were tearing and slashing into all but the remnant of the timber.
The sides of the gulch were "gophered" with prospect holes, most of them very shallow, with little mounds of dirt beside them, like the graves of dead hopes. Occasionally a deeper hole had picked samples from the ore vein it followed piled near its opening.
Inside the first half-hour she was away some distance from the lights of Dawson, and nothing but great snowy stretches lay around her. That night up at the west gulch it happened that neither Stephen nor Talbot had gone to bed.
Leading the way, and keeping under cover of trees, with Bobby and Jimmy close at his heels, Skipper Ed turned and ran down the gulch toward the cabin, which was not above a mile distant. The gulch ended in an open space, which was a marsh in summer but was now a white expanse of hard-beaten snow. Between this open space and the bay shore a hedge of thick brush grew.
He could string out tales of the Long Trail: Abilene, Wichita, Ellsworth, Great Bend, Newton, where eleven men were murdered in one night; he knew the vigilante days in San Francisco, and early times in Alder Gulch. "Nobody would of thought Plummer was yaller, but he turned out that way," droned on the narrator. "Grit? He had enough to fit out twenty men.
There did not appear to be break or opening of any kind, nor did it look as if there ever had been such an opening. For half an hour the two boys and Rex and Dill and Mr. Dickson searched excitedly up and down the wall of the canyon near the tree, without one of them finding the first sign of an entrance to the hidden gulch.
When the rest of us came up to the scene of the robbery he had formed a plan of pursuit. It was safe, he said, to take for granted that there was a gang of the outlaws. They would undoubtedly strike for Eagle Pass, since there was no possible way of escape in the opposite direction, the gulch, deep and wide, following the main road close into camp.
The man rode, and the girl walked in front with the elastic lightness, the unconscious flexuous grace of poise given her body by an outdoor life. After a time they left the gulch.
I think it is possible to get down that gulch. Suppose we hitch up? We'll make the ranch just about supper-time." Ashton hastened to bring in the picketed horses. When they were harnessed Isobel fetched the sleeping baby and handed him to his mother; but she did not take the seat beside her. "You drive, Lafe," she ordered. "I'm going to ride behind with Mr. Blake. It's such fun bouncing."
The Boy whipped out a little roll of money, counted out thirty dollars, and held it towards the Colonel. "I can afford to keep Nig awhile if that's his figure." The stranger was very angry at this new turn in the dog deal. He had seen that Siwash out at the gulch, heard he was for sale, and came in "a purpose to git him." "The dog season's over," said the Boy, pulling Nig's ears and smiling.
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