A hundred miles from the haunts most familiar with Duane's deeds, far up where the Nueces ran a trickling clear stream between yellow cliffs, stood a small deserted shack of covered mesquite poles.

It had been made long ago, but was well preserved.

A door faced the overgrown trail, and another faced down into a gorge of dense thickets.

On the border fugitives from law and men who hid in fear of some one they had wronged never lived in houses with only one door.
It was a wild spot, lonely, not fit for human habitation except for the outcast.

He, perhaps, might have found it hard to leave for most of the other wild nooks in that barren country.