While
still some distance away, they turned sharply to the left, and as it
seemed to him, rode straight into the side of the mountain and were
lost to sight.
Checking his horse, he watched for them to come into view again, and
while he waited, wondering at their strange disappearance, the men
urged their mules up a narrow gulley that was so hidden by the
undergrowth and fallen timber as to escape an eye untrained to the
woods and hills. After riding a short distance, they dismounted, and
leaving the animals, quickly scaled the steep sides of the little cut
and came out in an open space about two hundred yards above the trail
along which the solitary horseman must pass. Dropping behind the trunk
of a big tree that lay on the mountain side, uprooted by some gale and
blackened by forest fires, they searched the valley below with the
keen glance of those whose eyes are never dimmed by printed page or
city lights. Dressed in the rude garb of those to whom clothes are a
necessity, not a means of display, tall and lean with hard muscles,
tough sinews and cruel stony faces, they seemed a part of the wild
life about them; and yet withal, there was a touch of the mountain
grandeur in their manner, and in the unconscious air of freedom and
self-reliance, as there always is about everything that remains
untouched by the conventionality of the weaker world of men.
"'Bout time he showed up, aint it, Jake?" said one as he
carefully rested his rifle against the log and bit off a big piece
of long green twist tobacco.
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