A Moonlight Reconnaissance
were more; and from where he lay he judged the wall below him dropped straight down for three hundred feet.
"There ain't no line ridin' here, unless th' cows grow wings," he muttered.
To the south of him were four lighted windows near the forbidding blackness of the entrance canyon, and from their spacing he deduced two houses. And across from the windows he could make out a vague quadrangle, which experience told him was the horse corral. As if to confirm his judgment there came from it at that moment a shrill squeal and the sound of hoofs on wood, muffled by the distance. And from the corral extended a faint line which ran across the valley and became lost in the darkness near the opposite cliff. This he knew to be a fence.
"If this valley ends like it begins, three or four men can handle an awful lot of cows, 'cept at drive time," he soliloquized, and then listened intently to the sound of distant voices.
.... many happy hours away,
A sittin an' a singin' by a little cottage do-o-r,
Where lived my darlin' Nel-lie Gr-a-ay,
came floating faintly from far below him.
He peered in the direction of the singing and barely made out a moving blot well out in the valley. As it
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