He remembered that Phil had told him, as they were riding out the morning before, of a spring a little way up the small side canyon that opens into the main wash through that break in the ridge.

For a moment he hesitated; then he turned aside, determined to find the water.
Riding perhaps two hundred yards into that narrow gap In the ridge, he found the way suddenly becoming steep and roughly strewn with boulders, and, thinking to make better time, left his horse tied to a bush in the shadow of the rocky wall, while he climbed up the dry watercourse on foot.

He found, as Phil had said, that it was not far.

Another hundred yards up the boulder-strewn break in the ridge, and he came out into a beautiful glade, where he found the spring, clear and cold, under a moss-grown rock, in the deep shade of an old gnarled and twisted cedar.
Gratefully he threw himself down and drank long and deep; then sat for a few moments' rest, before making his way back to his horse.

The moist, black earth of the cuplike hollow was roughly trampled by the cattle that knew the spot, and there were well-marked trails leading down through the heavy growth of brush and trees that clothed the hillsides.
So dense was this forest growth, and so narrow the glade, that the sunlight only reached the cool retreat through a network of leaves and branches, in ever-shifting spots and bars of brightness.