He chose this time, the thickening darkness before moonrise, for he had caught the insistent plea for secrecy running through the lines of the letter.  And so, though he was not a little impatient and curious, he let his tired horse choose its own loitering gait, willing that the night draw down blacker about him.

He crossed the Big Flat, rich grassy land watered by the Big Little River, and struck off into the hills that closed in about it, following the river trail.  It was very still, with no sound save the swish of the water against the willows drooping downward from its banks, no light save the dim glimmer of the early stars.  For two miles he followed the stream, then left it for a short cut over the ridge, to pick it up again upon the farther side.  Now he was in a tiny valley with the mountains close to the spot which gave its name to the range.

Big Little River writhed in from the east, twisted out to the south.  And in the shut-in valley it made and left behind it to all but cover the entire floor of the valley a lakelet of very clear water not over a quarter of a mile from edge to edge, but very deep.  Upon the far side, a little back and close under the overhanging cliffs, there was a great, jagged-mouthed, yawning hole, of a type not uncommon in this part of the western country, from which heavy, noxious gases drifted sometimes when the wind caught them up, gases which for the most part thickened and made deadly the dark interior.  There were skeletons to be seen dimly by daylight down there, ten feet below the surface of the uneven ground, the vaguely phosphorescent bones of jack rabbits that had fallen into this natural trap, of coyotes, even of a young cow that had been overpowered before it could struggle upward along the steep sides.  And the odour clinging to the mouth of the hole was indescribably foul and sickening.

Not a pretty place, and yet some man many years ago had builded him a habitation here that was half dugout, half log lean-to.  The door of the place faced Poison Hole, and was not two hundred yards from it.  The hovel had been in disuse long before Buck Thornton came to the range save as a shelter to some of the wild things of the mountains.

From the southern shore of the lake Thornton stared across the little body of water trying to make out a light to tell him that Clayton was expecting him.  But there was no fire, and the stars, reflecting themselves in the natural mirror, failed to show him so much as the outline of the lean-to in the shadows of the cliffs.  He turned down into the trail which ran about the shore, passed around the western end of the lake, and riding slowly, his eyes ever watchful about him as was the man’s habit, he came at last to the deserted “shack.”

CHAPTER XIV

IN THE NAME OF FRIENDSHIP