XV
They rode from the devastated fields and angled southwest across therange. Harris pointed out the calves along their course.
"Look at those chunky little youngsters," he said. "Nearly every oneis good red stock. Only a scattering few that threw back to off-colorshades. This grading-up process doesn't take long to show."
When some ten miles from the Three Bar he dismounted on a ridge and shejoined him, listening with entire indifference to his optimistic plans.
"We're only scratched," he said. "It won't matter in the end."
"This is the end," she dissented. "The Three Bar is done."
"It's just the start," he returned. "It's the end for them! Don't yousee? They staked everything on one big raid that would smash the ThreeBar and discourage the rest from duplicating our move. That would giveSlade a new lease of life--delay the inevitable for a few more years.They made one final attempt and lost."
"Did they lose?" she inquired. "I thought they'd won."
"They're through!" he asserted positively. "Slade is locked up.Inside of a week the sheriff would have cleaned out the Breaks. It wasmy fault this happened. With Slade locked up and Morrow dead it didn'toccur to me that anything was planned ahead. If the albino had livedhe'd never have run his neck into a noose by a raid like this. ButLang was born without brains. Slade could hire him for anything."
"Can you prove this on Slade?" she demanded. It was the first sign ofinterest she had shown. Deep under her numbed indifference a thoughtpersisted,--a hope that Slade, the man who had brought about the raid,should be made to pay. Harris shook his head.
"As usual, Slade's in the clear," he said. "There's been a rumorafloat which would be considered sufficient cause for Lang's men toraid the Three Bar without other incentive."
He resumed his glowing plans for reconstruction.
"That's their last shot," he said. "We're only delayed--that's all.We lost a few fences. Posts are free for the cutting and most of thewire can be restrung. New wire is cheap. The corral poles arescattered right on the spot; only the posts broken off. We can setmore posts and throw up the new corrals in two days. The homesteadcabins are only charred. The old buildings at the ranch are gone.I'll put a crew in the hills getting out new logs and there'll beenough out-of-job peelers riding grub-line to rebuild the whole place.We can put up a few tents for the hands till the new bunk house isbuilt. We've got our land. The hay is tramped flat right now but theroots aren't hurt. Next spring will show the whole flat coming up witha heavy stand of hay."
"You're a good partner, Cal," she said. "You've done your best. Butthe whole thing would only happen over again. Slade's too strong forus."
"Slade's through!" he asserted again. "He's locked up and when he getsout his hands will be tied. Inside of a month the law will be in thesaddle for the first time in years. Public sentiment is running thatway. All it ever needed was a start. Once Alden gets a grip onthings, with folks behind him, he'll never lose it again. From now onyou'll see every wild one cut short in his career. Folks will be busypointing them out instead of helping them cover it up."
He painted the future of the Three Bar as the foremost outfit within ahundred miles, but her mind was busy with a future so entirelydifferent from the one he portrayed that she scarcely grasped hiswords. She felt a vague sense of relief that there was no decision forher to make. It had been made for her and against her will, but it wasdone. Always she had heard her parents speak of the day when theyshould go back home; and she had always felt that the day would comewhen she too would live in the place from which they had come,--withfrequent trips back to the range. The love for the ranch had delayedher departure from year to year. But now the old familiar buildingswere gone and there were no ties to hold her here, or even to call herback once she was gone.
Harris rose and pointed, rousing her from her abstraction. Down in thevalley below them filed a long line of dusty horsemen. Behind themcame two men wrangling a pack string carrying equipment for a longcampaign.
"There is the law!" he said. "That's what I brought you here to see.It's what we've been waiting for. That is the first outfit of its sortever to ride these hills. There have been gangs organized by one brandor another that rode out and imposed justice of their own, according totheir own ideas--and the next day perpetrated some injustice againstmen whose ideas were opposed to theirs. But that little processionstands for organized law!"
She turned and looked behind her as her ear caught the thud of hoofsand jangle of equipment. The Three Bar men were just topping the ridge.
They had caught up a number of the horses released from the pasture lotby the stampede. Calico and her own little horse, Papoose, were amongthem. Waddles and Moore brought up the rear with a pack train loadedwith the bed rolls saved from the bunk-house fire.
Harris knew that action, not inaction was the best outlet for herenergies, temporarily smothered by the shock of the raid. It was notin her nature to sit with folded hands among the ruins of the ranch andpatiently wait for news.
"I thought maybe you'd like to go," he said. "The jaunt will do yougood."
She showed the first sign of interest she had evidenced.
"And we're going to the Breaks," she stated.
"That's where," he said. "We'll order them to give up and stand trial.They won't. Then we'll clean them out. Hunt them down like rats!We've only been waiting for folks to wake up to the fact that they weresick of having the country run by men like Slade and harassed by thewild bunch--and till after we'd picked up Slade. The way it'stranspired we'd maybe have done better to ride over a week ago."
The little band in the valley was drawing near. She recognized Carp,Bentley and another Slade man riding with the sheriff at their head.
"What's Bentley doing there?" she asked.
"One of Carp's men," Harris said. "If any of them get away from usCarp will hound them down. He wears the U. S. badge and won't bestopped by any feeling about crossing the Utah or Idaho lines.Rustling is of no interest to him. That's the sheriff's job. But Carpwill round them up for obstructing the homestead laws."
The Three Bar men came up and halted. Harris and the girl changedmounts and led their men down to join the file of riders below. As sherode she speculated as to Carlos Deane's sensations if he could butknow that she rode at the head of thirty men to raid the strongholdHarris had once pointed out to him from the rims.
For hours they rode at a shuffling trot that covered the miles. It waswell after sundown when they halted in a sheltered valley. Waddlescooked a meal over an open fire. Bed rolls were spread and the menwere instantly asleep. Three hours before sunup the cook was once morebusy round a fire. The men slept on, undisturbed by the sounds, butwhen he issued the summons to rise they rolled out. In a space of fiveminutes every man was eating his meal; for they were possessed of thatcharacteristic which marks only the men who live strenuously and muchin the open,--the ability to fall instantly asleep after a hard day andto wake as abruptly, every faculty alert with the opening of their eyes.
The meal was bolted. The men detailed to guard the horses hazed theminto a rope corral. Saddles were hastily cinched on and the men rodeoff through the gloom, leaving Waddles and three others to pack andfollow later in the day. Each man lashed a generous lunch on hissaddle before riding off.
They held a stiff trot and in an hour out from camp they struck roughgoing, the choppy nature of the country announcing that they were inthe edge of the Breaks. The horses slid down into cut-bank washes andbad-land cracks, following the bottoms to some feasible point of ascentin the opposite wall. Daylight found them twenty miles from camp andthe horses were breathing hard. They turned into a coulee threaded bya well-worn trail. Three miles along this Bentley turned to the rightup a branching gulch with eight men. Another mile and Carp led asimilar detachment off to the left. Billie rode with the sheriff andHarris at the head of the rest, holding to the beaten trail.
"They had hours the start of us," Harris said. "They'd catch up freshhorses on the range and keep on till they got in sometime in the night."
He motioned to Billie.
"You fall back," he said. The men had drawn their rifles from thescabbards. "They never did post a guard. It wouldn't occur to Langthat such a force could be mustered and start out short of a month. Ifhe thought so they'd be out of here and scattered instead of having alookout along the trail. But there's just a chance. So for a littlepiece you'd better bring up the rear."
She started to dissent but the sheriff seconded Harris's advice.
"You move along back, Billie," he said. He patted her shoulder andsmiled. "I'm a-running this layout and if you don't mind the oldsheriff he'll have to picket you."
She nodded and pulled Papoose out of the trail till the others filedby, riding with Horne in rear of the rest.
The party halted while Harris dismounted to examine the trail. It washard-packed but the scant signs showed that shod horses had come insince any had gone out.
"At least, there's some of them back," he said. "Likely all."
"Lang is busy gloating over the fact that the Three Bar is sacked,"Alden said. "Figuring that the whole country will be afraid of him nowand that his friends will stand by--without a thought that his neckwill maybe get stretched a foot long before night."
Harris turned up a side pocket and the men waited while he and thesheriff climbed a ridge on foot to investigate. Harris motioned to thegirl.
"Come along up where you can see," he said and she followed them up theridge. Two hundred yards from the horses they came out on a crestwhich afforded a view of the basin that sheltered Lang's stockade.
From behind a sage-clump Harris trained his glasses on the group a mileout across the shallow basin. Smoke rose from the chimney of the mainbuilding. Two men stood before a teepee near the stockade. There weretwo other tents inside the structure, with a number of men moving aboutthem. Three sat on the ground with their backs against the log wallsof the main house. Thirty or more horses fed in a pasture lot and alittle band of eight or ten stood huddled together inside the stockadeat the far end from the tents.
He handed his glasses to the girl.
"We'll be starting," he said. "By the time we get fixed the rest willbe closing in. You stay here and watch the whole thing."
"I'm going along," she said.
The sheriff demurred.
"It will be dirty business down there--once we start," he said."Business for men; and you're a better man than most of us, girl; butyou surely didn't reckon that Cal and me would let you go careeningdown in gunshot of that hornet's nest."
"I'm as good a shot as there is in the hills," she said. "And it wasmy ranch they burned."
The sheriff shoved back his hat and pushed his fingers through his mopof gray hair.
"Fact," he confessed. "Every word. But there's swarms of men in thiscountry--and such a damn scattering few of girls that we just can'ttake the risk. That's how it is. If you don't promise to stay out ofit we'll have to detail a couple of the boys to ride guard on you tillit's over with."
She knew that the other men would back Harris and Alden in theirverdict. She nodded and watched them turn back toward the horses. Shewanted to lead her men down in a wild charge on the stockade, shootinginto it as she rode, avenging the sack of the Three Bar in a smashingfight.
But there was nothing spectacular in the attack of Harris and thesheriff. They went about it as if hunting vermin, cautiously andsystematically, taking every possible advantage of the enemy with theleast possible risk to their men.
An hour after the two men had left her she saw a figure off to theright. She trained the glasses on it and saw that it was Alden movingtoward the buildings. She swept the glasses round the edge of thecircular basin. From all sides, from the mouth of every coulee thatopened into it, dark specks were converging upon the stockade. Some ofthem stood erect, others crouched, while a few sprawled flat andcrawled for short distances before rising and moving on.
From her point of vantage it seemed that those round the buildings mustsee them as clearly as she did herself; but she knew they were keepingwell out of sight, taking advantage of every concealing wave of groundand all inequalities of surface. The advance was slower as they closedin on the stockade. There was a sudden commotion among the men at thebuildings. They were moving swiftly under cover. Some of theattacking force had been seen. The majority of the rustlers took tothe stockade. Four ran into the main cabin.
It was as if she gazed upon the activities of battling ants, the wholegame spread out in the field of her glasses. There came a lull in theaction and she knew that the sheriff had raised his voice to summonthem to come out without their guns and go back as prisoners to standtrial for every crime under the sun.
Not a shot had been fired. One after another she picked up the menwith her glasses. Occasionally one moved, hitching himself forward tosome point which afforded a better view. One or two knelt in thebottom of shallow draws, peering from behind some sheltering bush.Inside the stockade she could see Lang's men kneeling or flattened onthe ground as they gazed through cracks in the walls.
She made out Harris, crouching in a draw. A thin haze of smoke spurtedfrom his position. Three similar puffs showed along the face of thestockade. Then the sounds of the shots drifted to her,--faint, snappyreports. Harris had dropped flat and shifted his position the instanthe fired. A dozen shots answered the smoke-puffs along the stockade.
Throughout the next half-hour there was not a shot fired in the flat;no general bombardment, no wild shooting, but guerilla warfare whereevery man held his fire for a definite human target. A man shifted hisposition in the stockade, raised to peer from a hole breast high, andshe saw him pitch down on the ground before the sound of the shotreached her. One of her men had noted the darkening of the crack andhad searched him out with a rifle shot. Three shots answered it fromthe main cabin.
The thud of hoofs on the trail below drew her eyes that way. Waddleswas riding out into the basin. He had brought the pack string up tosome point near at hand and deserted it to the care of the others whilehe rode on ahead to join in the fight. He was almost within gunshot ofthe place before he dismounted and allowed the horse to graze. Shewatched his progress as he covered the last half-mile on foot. He haddiscarded his heavy chaps, his blue and white shirt and overalls givinghim the appearance of some great striped beetle as he crawled up ashallow ravine. The figures were small from distance, even when viewedthrough the glasses, thus lending her a feeling of detachment andlessening the personal element and the grim reality of the scene.Rather it was as if she gazed into some instrument which portrayed themoves of mannikins; yet the scene wholly absorbed her interest.
Waddles cautiously raised his head for a view of the stockade and shecould see his convulsive duck as a rifle ball tossed up a spurt ofgravel round it. The man who had fired the shot went down as thesheriff drilled the spot where a faint haze of smoke had shown.
She presently noted one of her men sitting under a sheltering bank andeating his lunch. She looked at her watch; it was after three,--theday more than half gone and less than a hundred shots had been fired.Five men were down in the stockade.
The sun was sinking and the higher points along the west edge of thebasin were sending long shadows out across the flats before there wasfurther action except for an occasional shifting of positions. Thoseremaining alive in the stockade were saddling the bunch of horses keptinside. These were led close under the fence on her side where shecould no longer see them.
The shadows lengthened rapidly and her view through the glasses wasbeginning to blur when the gates of the stockade swung back and fivehorses dashed out, running at top speed under the urge of the spurs. Arider leaned low upon the neck of each horse and they scattered wide asthey fanned out across the basin, a wild stampede for safety, every manfor himself.
She saw one man lurch sid
ewise and slip to the ground; anotherstraightened in the saddle, swung for two jumps, and slid off backwardsacross the rump of his mount. She saw the great striped bug which wasWaddles rise to his knees in the path of a third. The rider veered hismount and swung from the saddle, clinging along the far side of therunning horse. Then man and horse went down together and neither rose.Waddles had shot straight through the horse and reached the mark on theother side. The shooting ceased when six shots had been fired. Fourriderless horses were careening round the basin. Five hits out of six,she reflected; perhaps six straight hits.
The stockade was empty, leaving only the four in the house to beaccounted for. The dark specks in the brush were working closer to thehouse, effectually blocking escape. Then she could no longer make themout. The building showed only as a darker blot in the obscurity. Atiny point of light attracted her eye. It grew and spread. She knewthat one of her men had crawled up under cover of night and fired thehouse. It was now but a question of minutes, but the sight oppressedher. She thought of the burning buildings on the Three Bar and rose tomake her way back to the pocket where the horses had been left in thecare of a deputy.
"It will be over in an hour," she told the horse guard.
All through the day she had scarcely moved and she was tired. Thehours of inactivity had proved more wearing than a day in the saddle.Harris and the sheriff came in with their detail.
There were no prisoners.
"So they wouldn't give up even when they was burnt out," the horseguard commented. "I thought maybe a few would march out and surrender."
"I'd sort of hoped we'd have one or two left over so we could put on atrial," the sheriff said. "There was three come out. But the lightwas poor and all. Maybe they did aim to surrender. It's hard to say.But if they did--why, some of the Three Bar boys read the signs wrong.Anyway, there won't be any trial."
They rode to the sheltered box canyon where Waddles had left the packtrain. A little later Bentley's men rode up and five minutes behindthem came Carp with the rest. The bed rolls were spread among thestunted cedars on the floor of the canyon and all hands turned in. Atdaylight the long return journey to the Three Bar was commenced. Thehorses were tired and the back trip was slow. They camped for thenight twenty miles out from the ranch and before noon of the next daythe sheriff and the marshals had split off with their men, leaving theThree Bar crew to ride the short intervening space to the ranch alone.
As she neared the edge of the Crazy Loop valley the girl dreaded thefirst glimpse of the pillaged ranch. For the first time it occurred toher to wonder at the speed with which Harris had planned and executedthe return raid while the Three Bar still burned.
"How did you get word to them all?" she asked. "Did you have it allplanned before?"
"It was Carp," he said. "One of Lang's men rode down to inquire forMorrow and told Carp the cows were gathered for the run and held nearthe Three Bar. They figured Carp was a pal of Morrow's and all right.It was near morning then. Carp sent Bentley fanning for Coldriver tosee if the sheriff was back and to bring out the posse if he hadn'tturned up. He started out for the Three Bar himself. The run wasunder way when he came in sight so he cut over and headed the muleteams at the forks and turned them back, then kept on after the boys atBrill's. Sent word to me by Evans to meet them where we did."
She did not hear the latter part of his explanation for they hadreached the edge of the valley and she looked down upon the ruins ofher ranch.
"Now I'm ready to go," she said. "I'll go and see what Judge Coltonwants."
"He wanted you to get away before anything like this occurred," Harrissaid. "I knew that maybe we'd have tough going for a while at somecritical time and wanted you to miss all of that--to come back and findthe Three Bar booming along without having been through all the grief.So I wrote him to urge you to come."
"Well, I'm going now," she said. "I don't need to be urged."
Three of the homesteaders had been detailed to stay at the ranch. Theywere putting up a temporary fence across the lower end to hold rangestock back from the trampled crops until a permanent one could be builtand linked up with the side fences which still stood intact. Sheshowed no interest in this. The sight below turned her weak and sick.She wanted but to get away from it all.
Harris pointed as they rode down the slope. The little cabin that oldBill Harris had first erected on the Three Bar, and which had latersheltered the Warrens when they came into possession of the brand,stood solid and unharmed among the blackened ruins which hemmed it inon all sides.
"Look, girl!" he exclaimed triumphantly.
"Look at that little house. The Three Bar was started with that! Wehave as much as our folks started with--and more. They even had tobuild that. We'll start where our folks did and grow."
XVI
Harris sat on a baggage truck and regarded the heap of luggagesomberly. Way off in the distance a dark blot of smoke marked thelocation of the onrushing train which would take the Three Bar girlaway.
"Some day you'll be wanting to come back, old partner," he predictedhopefully.
Billie shook her head. There is a certain relief which floods theheart when the worst has passed. Looking forward and anticipating thepossible ruin of the Three Bar, she had thought such a contingencywould end her interest in life and she had resolutely refused to lookbeyond it into the future. Now that it was wrecked in reality shefound that she looked forward with a faint interest to what the futureheld in store for her,--that it was the past in which her interest wasdead.
"Not dead, girl; only dormant," Harris said, when she remarked uponthis fact. "Like a seed in frozen ground. In the spring it will cometo life and sprout. The Three Bar isn't hurt. We're in better shapethan ever before and a clear field out in front; for the country iscleaned up and the law is clamped on top."
She honestly tried to rouse a spark of interest deep within her, someray of enthusiasm for the future of the Three Bar. But there was noresponse. She assured herself again that the old brand which had meantso much to her meant less than nothing now. That part of her was dead.
The trail of smoke was drawing near and there was a rhythmic clickingalong the rails. Harris leaned and kissed her.
"Just once for luck," he said, and slipped from his seat on the truckas the train roared in. It halted with a screech of brakes and hehanded her up the steps.
"Good-by, little fellow," he said. "I'll see you next round-up time."
As the train slid away from the station she looked from her window andsaw him riding up the single street on the big paint-horse. The traincleared the edge of the little town and passed the cattle chute. Along white line through the sage marked the course of the ColdriverTrail. Three wagons, each drawn by four big mules, moved toward thecluster of buildings which comprised the town, the freighters on theirway to haul out materials for the rebuilding of the ranch.
The work was going on but she no longer had a share in it. She waslooking ahead and planning a future in which the Three Bar played nopart.
Deane was with Judge Colton, her father's old friend, to meet her atthe station. The news of the Three Bar fight had preceded her and thepress had given it to the world, including her part of it. As theyrode toward the Colton home she told the Judge she had come to stay andDeane was content. After the strenuous days she had just passedthrough she needed a long period of rest, he reflected; but the olderman smiled when he suggested this.
"What she needs now is action," he said. "And no rest at all. If itwas me I'd try to wear her down instead of resting her up--keep herbusy from first to last. Cal Warren's girl isn't the sit-around type."
Deane acted on this and no day passed without his having planned a partof it to help fill her time. Her interest in the new life was genuineand she was conscious of no active regret at parting from the old. Itwas so different as to seem part of another world. The people she met,their mode of life, their manner of speech; all were foreign to thec
ustoms of the range. And this very dissimilarity kept her interestalive until she grew to feel that she belonged.
All through the fall and early winter she had scarcely an idle hour.Her days here were almost as fully occupied as they had been before.And in the late winter, after having visited other school friends wholived farther east, she found herself anticipating the return to theColton home as eagerly as always in the past she had looked forward toseeing the Three Bar after a long period away from it.
The grip of winter was receding and a few of the hardier trees wereputting out buds when she returned. Every evening Deane was with herand together they planned the next, as once she and Harris had plannedbefore her fireplace in the old ranch house. For the first time in herlife she was glad to be sheltered and pampered as were other girls.Gliding servants anticipated her wishes and carried them out. But withit all there was a growing restlessness within her,--a vaguedissatisfaction for which she could not account. She groped for ananswer but the analysis could not be expressed or definitely cleared inher mind.
She sat in the Colton library waiting for Deane to come and take her toa lakeside clubhouse for the evening. Tiny leaves showed on the treesand the lawn was a smooth velvet green.
Slade's words of the long ago recurred to her.
"A soft front lawn to range in," she quoted aloud. The reason for herrestlessness came with the words.
Deane planned with her of evenings but the planning was all of play.No word of work crept into it. If only he would accept her as whollyinto that part of his life as he did into the rest. She suddenly feltthat he was excluding her from something it was her right to share.Their planning together was not constructive but something which lednowhere, a restless, hectic rush for amusements which she enjoyed butwhich could not make up the whole of her life. Always she had saidthat men went to extremes and made of their wives either drudges orlittle tinsel queens. They never followed the middle course and madethem full partners through thick and thin.
And suddenly she longed to sit for just one evening before the fire andplan real work with Cal Harris. He had been the one man she had knownwho had asked that she work with him, instead of insisting that shework for him,--or that he should work for her. She had drifted along,expecting that that same state of affairs would go on indefinitely,believing that he filled the void left by old Cal Warren. But now sheknew he held that place he had created for himself. They had workedtogether and she had deserted the sinking ship to play the part of thetinsel queen.
The men would be just in from the horse round-up and breaking out theremuda, preparatory to starting after the calves. She pictured Waddlesbawling the summons to feed from the cook-house door. She wasconscious of a flare--half of resentment, half of apprehension--towardHarris for not having sent a word of affairs at the ranch.
"There's millions of miles of sage just outside," she quoted. "Andmillions of cows--and girls." Perhaps he had gone in search of them.Perhaps, after all, he had found that the road to the outside was notreally closed as he had once told her it was.
Judge Colton entered the room and interrupted her reverie by handingher a paper. In the first black headline she saw Slade's name andHarris's; an announcement of the last chapter of the Three Bar war.
The first line of the article stated that Slade, the cattle king, hadbeen released. There was insufficient proof to convict on any count.She felt a curious little shiver of fear for Harris with Slade oncemore at large. The article retold the old tale of the fight andportrayed Slade, on his release, viewing the range which he had oncecontrolled and finding a squatter family on every available ranch site.
She had a flash of sympathy for Slade as she thought his sensationsmust have been similar to her own when she had looked upon the ruins ofthe Three Bar. But this was blotted out by the knowledge that he hadonly met the same treatment he had handed to so many others; that hehad dropped into the trap he had built for her. She found no realsympathy for Slade,--only fear for Harris since Slade was freed. Theold sense of responsibility for her brand had been worn too long to beshed at will. She knew that now.
"I suppose you'll be surprised to hear that I'm going back," she said.
Her father's old friend smiled across at her and puffed his pipe.
"Surprised!" he said. "Why, I've known all along you'd be going backbefore long. I could have told you that when you stepped off thetrain."
He left her alone with Deane when the younger man arrived. She plungedinto her subject at once.
"I'm sorry," she said. "But I'm going home. I'm not cut out forthis--not for long at one time. In ten days they'll be rounding up thecalves and I'll have to be there. I want to smell the round-up fireand slip my twine on a Three Bar calf; to throw my leg across a horseand ride, and feel the wind tearing past. I'm longing to watch theboys topping off bad ones in the big corral and jerking Three Barsteers. It will always be like that with me. So this is good-by."
Four days later, in the early evening, the stage pulled into Coldriverwith a single passenger. The boys were in from a hundred miles aroundfor one last spree before round-up time. As the stage rolled down thesingle street the festivities were in full swing. From one lighteddoorway came the blare of a mechanical piano accompanied by the scrapeof feet; the sound of drunken voices raised in song issued from thenext; the shrill laughter of a dance-hall girl, the purr of the ivoryball and the soft clatter of chips, the ponies drowsing at the hitchrails the full length of the street, the pealing yelp of someover-enthusiastic citizen whose night it was to howl; all these wereevidences of the wide difference between her present surroundings andthose of the last eight months. She gazed eagerly out of the stagewindow. It was good to get back.
Both the driver and the shotgun guard who rode beside him were new menon the job since she had left and neither of them knew the identity oftheir passenger. As the stage neared the rambling log hotel where shewould put up for the night a compact group of riders swung down thestreet. Her heart seemed to stop as she recognized the big paint-horseat their head. She had not fully realized how much she longed to seeCal Harris. As they swept past she recognized man after man in thelight that streamed from the doorways and dimly illuminated the widestreet.
Instead of dismounting in a group they suddenly split up, as if at agiven signal, scattering the length of the block and dismountingsingly. There was something purposeful in this act and a vagueapprehension superseded the rush of gladness she had experienced withthe first unexpected view of the Three Bar crew. Men who stood on theboard sidewalks turned hastily inside the open doors as they glimpsedthe riders, spreading the news that the Three Bar had come to town.The driver pulled up in front of the one hotel.
"It'll come off right now," he said. "Slade's in town."
"Sure," the guard replied. "Why else would Harris ride in at nightlike this unless in answer to Slade's threat to shoot him down onsight? Get the girl inside."
The reason for the scattering was now clear to her. Slade, on hisrelease, had announced that he would kill Harris on sight whenever heappeared in town. Slade had many friends. The Three Bar men werescattered the length of the street to enforce fair play.
The guard opened the door and motioned her out but she shook her head.
"I'm going to stay here," she asserted.
Her answer informed him of the fact that she was no casual visitor butone who knew the signs and would insist on seeing it through. Henodded and shut the door.
Harris had dismounted at the far end of the block and was strollingslowly down the board sidewalk on the opposite side. Groups of menpacked the doorways, each one striving to appear unconcerned, as if hispresence there was an accident instead of being occasioned by knowledgethat something of interest would soon transpire. A man she knew for aSlade rider moved out to the edge of the sidewalk across the streetfrom Harris. She saw the lumbering form of Waddles edging up besidehim. Other Three Bar boys were watching every man who showed adisposition to det
ach himself from the groups in the doors. The blareof the piano and all sounds of revelry had hushed.
The girl felt the clutch of stark fear at her heart. She had come toolate. Harris was to meet Slade. It seemed that she must die with himif he should pass out before she could speak to him again and tell himshe was back. She had a wild desire to run to him,--at least to leanfrom the window and call out to him to mount Calico and ride away. Butshe knew he would not. She was frontier bred. Even the knowledge thatshe was in town might unsteady him now. She sat without a move and thedriver and guard outside supposed her merely a curious on-lookerinterested in the scene.
"A hundred on Harris," the driver offered.
The guard grunted a refusal.
"I'd bet that way myself," he said.
From this she knew that the two men were hoping Harris would be the oneto survive; but the fact that their proffered bets backed theirsentiments was no proof that they felt the conviction of their desire.She knew the men of their breed. No matter how small the chance, theirmoney would inevitably be laid on the side of their wishes, neveragainst them, as if the wagering of a long shot was proof of theirconfidence and might in some way exercise a favorable influence on theoutcome. No man had ever stood against Slade. She noted Harris's gun.He carried it with the same awkward sling as of old, on the left sidein front with the butt to the right.
"Fifty on Slade," a voice offered from the doorway of the hotel. Theguard started for the spot but the bet was snapped up by another. Wildfighting rage swept through her at the thought that to all these men itwas but a sporting event.
Her eyes never once left Harris as he came down the street. Whenalmost abreast of the stage Slade stepped from a doorway twenty feet inbefore him and stopped in his tracks. Harris turned on one heel andstood with his left side quartering toward Slade,--the old pose sheremembered so well. There was a tense quiet the length of the street.
"Those you hire do poor work from behind," Harris said. "Maybe yousometimes take a chance yourself and work from in front." His thumbwas hooked in the opening of his shirt just above the butt of his gun.
Slade held a cigarette in his right hand and raised it slowly to hislips. He removed it and flicked the ash from the end, then inspectedthe results and snapped it again,--and the downward move of his wristwas carried through in a smooth sweep for his gun. It flashed into hishand but his knees sagged under him as a forty-five slug struck him aninch above the buckle of his belt. Even as he toppled forward hefired, and Harris's gun barked again. Then the Three Bar men werevaulting to their saddles. Evans careened down the street, leading thepaint-horse, and within thirty seconds after Slade's first move for hisgun a dozen riders were turning the corner on the run. Before thespectators had time to realize that it was over, the Three Bar men weregone. Slade had many friends in town.
The girl had seen Harris's draw, merely a single pull from left toright and by his quartering pose the gun had been trained on Slade atthe instant it cleared the holster; not one superfluous move, even tothe straightening of his wrist. The driver's voice reached her.
"Fastest draw in the world for the few that can use it," he said.
The guard opened the door. The girl was sitting with her head bowed inher hands.
"Don't take it that way, Ma'am," he counseled. "He was a hardone--Slade."
But he had misread his signs. She felt no regret for Slade, only awave of thankfulness, so powerful as almost to unnerve her, overHarris's escape, untouched. She accused herself of callousness but thespring of her sympathy, usually so ready, seemed dry as dust when shewould have wasted a few drops on Slade.
The next day, in the late afternoon, Harris looked up and saw achap-clad rider on the edge of the valley. She had ridden overunannounced on a horse she had borrowed from Brill. She answered thewave of his hat and urged the horse down the slope. He met her at themouth of the lane and together they walked back to the new buildings ofthe ranch. The men breaking horses in the new corrals were the sameold hands. The same old Waddles presided over the new cook shack. Herold things, rescued from the fire, were arranged in the living room ofthe new house. A row of new storerooms and the shop stood on the siteof the old. And in the midst of all the improvements the old cabinfirst erected on the Three Bar stood protected by a picket fence onwhich a few vines were already beginning to climb.
"It didn't take long to throw them up, with all hands working, along inthe winter when there wasn't much else to do," he said.
After the men had quit work to greet the returning Three Bar boss shewent over every detail of the new house. The big living room andfireplace were modeled closely along the lines of her old quarters;heads and furs were on the walls, pelts and Indian rugs on the floors.Running water had been piped down from a sidehill spring. The newhouse was modernized. Then Harris saddled Calico and Papoose and theyrode down to the fields.
As they turned into the lane they heard the twang of Waddles's guitarfrom the cook shack, the booming voice raised in song in mid-afternoon,a thing heretofore unheard of in the annals of Three Bar life.
"There'll be one real feast to-night," Harris prophesied. "Waddleswill spread himself."
They rode past the meadow, covered with a knee-deep stand of alfalfahay.
"It was only tramped down," he said. "She came up in fine shape thisspring. We'll put up a thousand tons of hay."
He held straight on past the meadow, turned off below the lower fenceand angled southwest across the range. The calves and yearlings alongtheir route gave proof that the grading-up of the Three Bar herds wasalready having its effect. Ninety per cent. were straight red stockwith only a few throwbacks to off-color strains. The two spoke butlittle and near sunset they rode out and dismounted on the ridge fromwhich, almost a year before, they had viewed the first move oforganized law in the Coldriver strip.
A white-topped wagon came toward them up the valley along the sameroute followed by the file of dusty riders on that other day. A womanheld the reins over the team and a curly-haired youngster jostled abouton the seat by her side. A man wrangled a nondescript drove of horsesand cows in the rear.
"That's the way we both came into this country first, you and I,"Harris said. "Just like that little shaver on the seat."
"Will they find a place to settle?" she asked, with a sudden hope thatthe newcomers would find a suitable site for a home.
"Maybe not close around here," he said. "Most of the good sites youcan get water on are picked up. But they'll find a place either hereor somewhere else a little further on."
He slipped an arm about her shoulders.
"It's been right lonesome planning without a little partner to talk itall over with at night," he said. "Have you come back for keeps tohelp me make the Three Bar the best outfit in three States? I can'thold down that job alone."
She nodded and leaned against him.
"That's what they wanted--old Bill and Cal," she said. "But it's nicethat we want it too. I've come for keeps; and the road to the outsideis closed."
They stood and watched the sun pitch over the far edge of the world;and down in the valley below them the hopeful squatters were lookingfor a place to camp.
The Settling of the Sage Page 15