its course to the river. The house stood back from the road a matter of three hundred yards, open prairie on all sides of it except the west, where the brook ran through a grove of walnut trees, its little valley broadening as it extended toward the river. Where the stream crossed the road which Simpson had followed to that unexpected, peaceful appearing end, there was quite a strip of timber and brush. Tom rode into that shelter, where he stopped and studied the ranch-house and its surroundings.
He had approached undiscovered, apparently. From his screen of brushwood he could see a dog walking lazily about the yard, and a file of ducks marching down to the stream. There was nobody about; not a sound disturbed the air of desertion that surrounded the place. There was not even a horse in sight, although the tracks of the stolen band, which must have numbered twenty, swerved from the road at the brookside and entered the premises.
A spacious corral near the house, with hay-covered sheds along its farther end, made it plain that animals in considerable number were kept there. Naturally the horses would be grazing at that time of day under a herder's care. They would be returned to the corral at evening.
The house was a two-part structure, built of logs, roofed with clapboards rived from native timber. It was built in the style common to the mountain districts of Arkansas, Missouri and other parts of the south, the kitchen on one end, living quarters on the other, a roofed passage, called a dog-run, between.
Back of the corral there was a larger log building, evi-
