"And that's the Half Moon!" Conniston was eager, as he saw at a glance
how the range got its name.

The hills fell away even more abruptly here than they did in the
north, cut so often into straight, stratified brown cliffs of
crumbling dirt that Conniston wondered how and where the road could
find a way out and down into the lower land. They swept away, both
east and west, in a wide curve, roughly resembling a half moon. Toward
the east, perhaps twenty-five miles from where Conniston sat upon his
horse, the distant mountains sent out two far-reaching spurs of
pine-clad ridges between which lay Rattlesnake Valley. Due south, as
Lonesome Pete's outstretched finger indicated, lay the road which they
were to follow and the headquarters of the Half Moon. There again a
thickly timbered spur of the mountains ran down into the plain on each
side of a deeply cleft cañon from which Lonesome Pete told them that
Indian Creek issued, and in which were the main corrals and the range
house of the Half Moon.

"Which is sure the finest up-an'-down cow-country I ever see," he
added, by way of rounding off his information. "Bein' well watered by
that same crick, an' havin' good feed both in the Big Flat, as folks
calls that country down below us, an' in the foothills. Rattlesnake
Valley, over yonder, ain't never been good for much exceptin' the
finest breed of serpents an' horn-toads a man ever see outside a
circus or the jimjams. There ain't nothin' as 'll grow there outside
them animals. The ol' man's workin' over there now, tryin' to throw
water on it an' make things grow. The ol' man," he ended, shaking his
head dubiously, "has put acrost some big jobs, but I reckon he's sorta
up against it this trip."