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That long line of shadow, which widened as they neared it, was a great canyon which the Red Deer River had cut out of the level plains. From the jaws of the mouth of the canyon, which were a mile or so apart, the floor of the prairies fell away sheer in places, to a depth of a thousand feet. In many spots there were several parallel cuts in the edge of that floor. Where, during the ages, the elements had been unable to remove the loose earth, it lay along the bank in steep hills which rose up from the bottom of the canyon like gigantic teeth, all crumbling more or less, all dotted with stones and covered here and there with blotches of sagebrush and cacti.

In the centre of the flat-bottomed canyon, as if an ancient torrential flood had spent itself and narrowed down at last to a small, shining stream, a quarter of a mile in width, ran the Red Deer River. In the middle of the half-mile wide space between the river and the hills that made the wall of the canyon, stood the buildings of the ranch. The house, a small shingled structure, stood on the east end of the spacious, sandy yard; while opposite and facing it was the long, red barn with its open door below and the gaping window space in the loft above. North of the barn and against its blind wall there was a big corral, divided into two parts by a partition. The corral walls as well as the partition were made of logs laid horizontally, a foot apart and rising to a height of some eight feet. Each of these two sections had huge swinging gates which opened inward.