Ambush at Torture Canyon

When Durfee rode up the valley, he found that the country fitted his mind as a glove fits the hand—the sort of glove that he preferred to wear—a little lighter in the leather and more delicate in the make than most of the buckskin gloves that a cowboy will buy.

He liked the look of things, because that look was clean. He saw the gleam of water, here and there; water that looked as though it might be running even in the dry middle of September, after a rainless season. And there were plenty of hills for variety, and yet it was a range that a man could gallop over. Three men, on this sort of a lay, could do the work that sometimes took the riding of ten in worse regions. And then the grass grew thick and short on the ground, the sort of grass that is sweetest on a cow’s tooth, that lays the fat round and hard along her backbone, to say nothing of horses. It was a good limestone country, too. He could see the white ribs and elbows of the stone punching through the sides of the hills. And where limestone shows, it will be in the water, and the limestone water makes bone, and bone is the first necessity in the scheme of things, if you want to build a horse.