The Circle L had a dozen line camps--little adobe cabins scattered over the range, occupied during the winter by Circle L cowboys whose duty it was to guard the cattle against the aggressions of timber wolves, rustlers, cold, and starvation.
For two days the chuck-wagon had been sent rattling to the various line camps, stocking them with supplies against the winter.

As the weather was threatening the hoodlum wagon had been pressed into service this morning; and all the men, with the exception of the blacksmith--who was working diligently in his shop near the corral; and two punchers--Davies and Harris, who had been assigned to Number One camp--were away with the two wagons.
Davies and Harris had not been able to resist the lure of "town." The prosperity that had descended upon them had made them restless, and the night before they had importuned Lawler to permit them to spend "one more night in town before holin' up for the winter." Lawler had consented; and now he was wishing that he hadn't.

For when he emerged from the ranchhouse this morning he saw a dark cloud bank far in the north, moving southward on the chill wind.
The herd, he knew, was somewhere on the big level beyond the slope of the valley, in the vicinity of Number One line camp.

It was an isolated section, off the trail that led to town--a section of featureless level near a big break in the valley.

The break opened upon another big level that stretched southward for a hundred miles.