in the earth. Or, at any rate, that is how they appeared to a horseman
regarding them from the main mesa trail a mile away.

The rider, a slender tanned young fellow of about twenty-eight, sat in
the saddle with the relaxed ease of habit which allowed his body to
accommodate itself to the steady jogging trot of his horse. A roll
comprising clothes wrapped in a black rubber coat was tied behind the
cantle. His Stetson hat was tilted up at the rear and down in front
almost on his nose--a thin, bony nose, slightly curved and with the
suggestion of a hook in the tip, just the sort of nose to accord with
his lean, sunburnt cheeks and clean-cut chin and straight-lipped
mouth. Under the hat brim drawn forward to his line of vision his
eyes, notwithstanding his air of lounging indolence, gazed forth keen
and observant. He had the appearance of a man who might be seeking a
few stray cattle, or riding to town for mail, and in no particular
hurry about it, either, this hot afternoon; but, for all that, Lee
Bryant was proceeding on important business--important for him,
anyhow. When everything one possesses is about to be risked on a
venture, the matter is naturally vital; and at this moment he was
moving straight to the initiative of his enterprise.

Where the road crossed the creek bed to continue northward, a trail
branched off and followed up the stream to the little ranch house by
the three cottonwood trees. Here the creek had not yet begun to cut an
arroyo and had washed merely a course five or six feet deep and some
fifty feet wide through the mesa, so that from a distance the shallow
gash was invisible and the ground appeared unbroken. It was because of
the flat character of the mesa, too, that Bryant on reaching the bank
of the stream was able to see on the opposite side two persons a
quarter of a mile off riding toward him; women, he perceived. Far