The Lone Ranger Rides

There was something in the air he couldn't explain. He felt a vague uneasiness despite the almost pastoral scene before him. He scanned the hills on all sides of the basin, knowing that no stranger could come through the tangle of underbrush and dense forest. Those hills had always been practically impassable. Then his restless eyes fell on the weird riot of color to the north. That was Bryant's Gap. Water flowing from the basin springs had patiently, through countless ages, cut the deep cleft in solid rock. The walls towering high on each side reflected unbelievable hues. Bryant's scowl deepened as he observed the Gap. He could see but a few yards into it, and then it turned and his view ended abruptly on a rainbow wall. That wall had often reminded Cavendish of a rattler, beautiful but dangerous. "If it uz only straight," he growled, "I c'd see when someone comes this way. But the damn canyon is as fickle as a wench's disposition." Once more his finger scraped across the two-day beard. Cavendish had survived a good many years there in the West. He had risen above the many forms of sudden death, to know an old age of comparative security. But, like men in that region, where eternal vigilance was the price of safety, his intuition was developed to a high degree. In a poker game he played his hunches. And in life he listened to that little-understood sixth sense. "Somethin'," he decided, "is goin' on in that Gap, as sure as I'm sittin' here."