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The buildings of Sky Line Ranch lay nestled at the foot of Rainbow Cliff, compact, solid, like a fortress, reached only by cattle trails, for there was no wagon road. There could have been none on these forbidding steeps. The buildings themselves were built of logs, but all that was within them had come into the lonesome country on pack-mules, even to the big steel range in the kitchen. The house itself was an amazing place, packed with all necessities, beautiful with luxuries, its contents worth a fortune. It had many rooms and a broad veranda circled it. Pine trees stood in ranks about it, and out of the sheer face of Rainbow Cliff at the back a six-inch stream of crystal water shot forth in a graceful arc from the height of a man’s shoulder, to fall into a natural basin in the solid rock by its own ceaseless action.

And stretching out like widespread wings on either side this majestic cliff ran crowning the ridge for seven miles, a splendid escarpment, straight up-and-down, averaging two hundred feet from its base in the slanting earth to the sharp line of its rimrock.