Three days later, riding by a trail that led ever to the east, Pecos came upon a narrow valley filled with cottonwoods and wild walnuts and echoing to the music of running water. A fine brook, flowing down from the brushy heights of the Peaks, leaped and tumbled over the bowlders and disappeared through a narrow cleft below, where the two black walls drew together until they seemed almost to block the cañon. As Pecos rode cautiously down the creek-bed he jumped a bunch of cattle from the shade of the alders and, spurring after them as they shambled off, he saw that they bore the familiar U, even to the young calves. Undoubtedly they belonged to the same bunch that he had been working on over at Carrizo Springs—the fresh-branded calves and U cows that Crittenden was shoving over the Peaks. Riding farther down the gulch Pecos came upon a cave at the base of the overhanging cliff. In time past the Indians had camped there, but the ashes of their fires were bedded and only their crude pictures on the smoke-grimed rocks remained to tell the tale. It was the cave of Lost Dog Cañon. On their trip over the simple-minded José had spoken of a lost cañon somewhere over in the mountains but Pecos had never dreamed of finding a paradise like this. According to José the Cañon of Perro Perdito was haunted by a spirit which was _muy malo_, throwing down great rocks from the sides of the cañon and howling like a lost dog at night, but in the broad light of noonday Pecos was undaunted and he rode on into the tunnel-like box cañon until it pinched down to a mere cleft. It was an eerie place, but there never was a ghost yet that threw a track like a cow and, led on by their familiar foot-prints among the rocks, Pecos forged ahead until he stepped out suddenly into a new world. Behind him the pent and overhanging walls shut out the light of day but here the sun was shining into a deep valley where in exquisite miniature lay parks and grassy meadows, while cathedral spires of limestone, rising from the cañon floor, joined their mighty flanks to the rim-rock which shut the whole space in. The glittering waters of the Salagua, far below, marked a natural barrier to the south and as Pecos Dalhart looked at the narrow trail which had brought him in he began instinctively to figure on a drift fence, to close the entrance to the pocket, and make the hidden valley a mile-wide pasture and corral. All nature seemed conspiring to make him a cattle-rustler and this hidden pasture, with its grass and water and the gate opening at his very door, cast the die. Two days later he moved his camp to Lost Dog Cañon and flew at the fence with feverish energy. Within a week he had the box cañon barricaded from wall to wall and then, as the U cows came down to the creek to drink, he roped them, worked over their brands, and threw them into his new pasture. By this time, with his tongue in his cheek, he attached a circle instead of a bar to the U and named his