“It’s a fooler for distance, too,” he went on, “it’s more than a mile to that little spot of rock, that projectin’ up, over there.  College professors have been here, lookin’ at it, an’ they say the thing is fed from underground rivers, or springs, or somethin’ that they can’t even guess.

“One of them was tellin’ Boss Edwards, over on the Cimarron, that that rock point that you see projectin’ up was the peak of a mountain, an’ that this narrow trail we’re on is the back of a ridge that used to stick up high an’ mighty above a lot of other things.

“I can’t make it out, an’ I don’t try; it’s here, an’ that’s all there is to it.  An’ I ain’t hangin’ around it any longer than I have to.”

“A stampede—­” began Sanderson.

“Gentlemen, shut up!” interrupted Carter.  “If any cattle ever come through here, stampedin’, that herd wouldn’t have enough left of it to supply a road runner’s breakfast!”

They returned to the camp, silent and anxious.

CHAPTER XX

DEVIL’S HOLE

Sanderson took his turn standing watch with the other men.  The boss of a trail herd cannot be a shirker, and Sanderson did his full share of the work.

Tonight he had the midnight shift.  At two o’clock he would ride back to camp, awaken his successor, and turn in to sleep until morning.

Because of the proximity of the herd to Devil’s Hole an extra man had been told off for the nightwatch, and Soapy and the Kid were doing duty with Sanderson.

Riding in a big circle, his horse walking, Sanderson could see the dying embers of the camp fire glowing like a big firefly in the distance.  A line of trees fringing the banks of the river near the camp made a dark background for the tiny, leaping sparks that were shot up out of the fire, and the branches waving in the hazy light from countless coldly glittering stars were weird and foreboding.

Across the river the ragged edges of the rock buttes that flanked the water loomed somberly; beyond them the peaks of some mountains, miles distant, glowed with the subdued radiance of a moon that was just rising.

Back in the direction from which the herd had come the ridges and depressions stretched, in irregular corrugations, as far as Sanderson could see.  Southward were more mountains, dark and mysterious.

Riding his monotonous circles, Sanderson looked at his watch, his face close to it, for the light from the star-haze was very dim.  He was on the far side of the herd, toward Devil’s Hole, and he was chanting the refrain from a simple cowboy song as he looked at the watch.

The hands of the timepiece pointed to “one.”  Thus he still had an hour to stand watch before awakening the nest man.  He placed the watch is a pocket, shook the reins over Streak’s neck and spoke to him.

“Seems like old times to be ridin’ night-watch, eh, Streak?” he said.