The ranch lay off to the east as they looked down upon it, a great sweep of rolling hills sprinkled with big oaks looking like shrubs from their vantage point, cut in two by the Big Little River, along the banks of which and out in the meadow lands many herds of cattle ranged free.  Rising in his stirrup Smith pointed out to her the spot near the centre of the big range where Buck Thornton’s “range house” was, a dozen miles away over the rolling country.  And then he swung about and pointed to the south, saying shortly: 

“Yonder’s the country you’re lookin’ for.  We strike due south here along the edge of the Poison Hole ranch.  When we get to that next string of lulls you can see the hills of three states, all at once and the same time.  And you can see the town you’re headed for; it sets on top a sort of hill.  Down yonder,” and he swung his long arm off to the south-west, “is the Bar X outfit; that’s as far as I’m going.  But, if you want company, one of the boys will sure be glad to ride on with you.  The Corners is only about a dozen mile from there on.”

CHAPTER XII

RATTLESNAKE POLLARD

IT was barely noon, the air clear, the sky cloudless, when Winifred Waverly rode into Hill’s Corners.  She had shaken her head at the suggestion of further escort.  Here, in the open country and in the full sunlight, she was grateful for the opportunity of being alone.

At the foot of a gentle eminence she entered the narrow, winding street of the town, a crooked little town physically both in the matter of this meandering alley-like thoroughfare and in the matter of the hastily builded, unprepossessing houses; a crooked town in its innermost character, it was easy to believe.  On either hand as she rode forward were low, squat, ugly shacks jammed tight together or with narrow passageways between their unlovely walls, these spaces more often than not cluttered and further disfigured by piles of rusty tins, old clothing and shoes and other discarded refuse.  As she rode farther she saw now and then the more pretentious buildings, some with the false fronts which deceived nobody, the houses appearing shoddy and aged and sinister, one here and there deserted and given over to ruin, disintegration and spiders spinning unmolested in dark corners.

The next peculiar impression created upon her was that some evil charm was over the place, that in the sweet sunlight it lay drugged, that in those rows of slatternly shacks where the sunlight did not enter men either hid in dark secrecy or lay in some unnatural stupour.  The whole settlement seemed preternaturally quiet; the fancy came to her that the town had died long ago and that she merely looked on its ghost.