There was a new contentment in the eyes of the Three Bar girl as she sat her horse beside Carlos Deane and looked off down the bottoms. A haze of smoke drifted above the little valley of the Crazy Loop. Three mule outfits were steadily ripping up the sage flats. Men lifted the uprooted brush on forks and piled it for the burning. The two rode down to the fields with the pungent sage smoke drifting in their faces. Harris joined them, a smudge of fire-black across his forehead, and swept his arm across the stretch of plowed ground.
"Can you picture that covered with a stand of alfalfa hay?" he asked.
The girl nodded.
"Yes—and cut and cured and in the stack yards," she said. "And a straight red run of Three Bar cows wintering under fence."
Harris wondered if her new contentment came wholly from the progress the Three Bar was making or was derived partly from the presence of Carlos Deane. Each man had recognized the other as a contender for the love of the Three Bar girl and during the two days of Deane's stay each one had been covertly sizing and estimating the caliber of the other man.
"The opposite faction hasn't succeeded in wrecking the Three Bar up to date," Deane said. "It's probable they see you're too strong for them."
"It's hard to wreck plowed ground," Harris pointed out. "And that's all they have to work on right now; not a fence to tear up, a stack to fire or any growing crops to trample down. All they can do right now is to wait. It must be wearing. But sooner or later they'll show their teeth."
For a month prior to Deane's arrival Harris had been occupied from dawn till dark with the details of the new work. The wagons had made a week's trip to the railroad to freight in more implements and supplies. A hundred acres of plowed ground lay mellowing under the sun. Five miles back up the slope of the hills two men worked in a valley of lodgepole pine, felling, trimming and peeling sets of matched logs for the cabins that must be erected on each filing. The cowhands were out working the range in pairs, branding late-dropped calves and moving drifted stock back to the home range. Forty white-face bulls had been trail-herded from the railroad and thrown out along the foot of the hills to replace the other bulls that had been rounded up and brought in. These old stags now grazed in the big pasture lot until such time as the beef herd should be gathered and shipped. In a few more days the boys would come in from the range and gather at the home ranch, preparatory to going out once more on the beef round-up.
"I'm about to take a vacation," Harris said. "The ranger is coming over to mark out some more trees for us and to run the U. S. brand on the logs we've already cut. I'm going back up in the hills with him to sort out a valley or two for summer range."
"We don't need any extra range now," Billie said. "Why pay grazing fees before we need the room."
"Just to get our wedge in first," Harris explained. "We can get grazing permits on the Forest now—right in the best grass valleys. Each year we'll throw some cows up there to hold our rights. There'll always be good grass on the Forest Reserves for they won't permit overstocking. The day will come when we'll be glad to have permits to summer-feed a thousand or so head on the Forest. I was thinking maybe you and Deane would like to make the jaunt."
"We'll go," the girl decided.
"It's a question of time," Deane said. "How long will we be gone?"
"We'll start in an hour or two," Harris said. "Just as soon as Wilton turns up. We'll only be gone five days at the most."
"Then I'll stretch my stay to cover it," Deane accepted. "I'd certainly hate to pass up a chance for a trip in the hills."
"We'll ride back and make up an extra bed roll," Harris said. "Then we'll be all set to start when Wilton shows up."
Calico had sidled off the plowing and was cropping the grass at the edge of it. As Harris moved toward him Evans rode down the right-hand slope and the three waited for him.
"Moore and I were working in close and I thought I'd ride over to tell you that the wild bunch has lost a veteran," he said. "Some one put Barton out over in the Breaks."
Barton, whose name was linked with that of Harper, had been found with a rifle ball through his chest. His own gun, found by his out-stretched hand, had showed one blackened cylinder, the empty shell sufficient proof that he had fired a single shot at his assailant.
"Anyway, he had a chance to see who got him," Lanky philosophized. "He was likely ordered to turn round—given a fighting chance maybe."
The girl could find no sorrow in her heart over the passing of Barton but there was an uneasy feeling deep within her,—a vague suspicion that she should be able to pronounce the killer's name. This elusive thought was crowded from her mind when the ranger rode up to the Three Bar accompanied by Slade, each man leading a pack horse.
"Slade's going to look over a little territory up on the Forest," Wilton explained. "So we can get it all done on one trip."
There was no way to avoid this unexpected addition to their party. Harris and the ranger packed the three bed rolls and Billie's teepee along with the necessary equipment and in half an hour the little cavalcade filed up a gulch back of the Three Bar, the ranger in the lead with his pack horse. The other pack animals followed and the three other men and the girl brought up the rear in single file. By noon they made the first rims and followed over into a rolling country, heavily timbered in the main. In the early evening they rode out on to a low divide and Blind Valley showed below them, a broad expanse of open grassland. A little stream threaded the bottoms and its winding course was marked by thickets of birch. In places it disappeared under the leafy tunnels of aspen groves, their pale silvery trunks and leaves contrasting with the heavy blue-green of an occasional water-spruce. In a narrowing of the valley it was choked from wall to wall by a cottonwood jungle, opening out once more into wide meadows immediately below the neck. Long open parks extended their tongues well back up the timbered sidehills.
"Feed!" Harris said. "Feed. Worlds of it."
They angled down the slope and struck the rank grass of the bottoms,—mountain hay in which the horses stood knee-deep. They made camp at the mouth of a branching canyon, just within the timber. The ranger threw the horses up this side gulch while Harris felled a dead pine and kindled a fire. When the ranger returned he picketed one horse in the heavy grass while Slade pitched Billie's teepee under a spruce. The meal was finished, dishes washed and the five sat round a fire.
Harris sensed Deane's attitude toward it all for he knew something of the other man's way of life. Those with whom Deane was thrown most in contact were careful of appearances. It was unheard-of in his code that a girl should jaunt for days accompanied by four men. Here appearances seemed entirely disregarded and no one gave the matter a thought.
The moon swung over the ridges and shed its radiance over Blind Valley. Deane motioned to Billie and the girl rose and followed him to the edge of the timber where they sat on a blow-down.
"Billie, let me take you away from all this," he urged. "All this hard riding and rough man's work. Let me give you the things that will shut out all the hardships. What's the use of going on like this?"
The girl was conscious of a vague sense of disappointment. Deane was an active figure in the business life of his own community and she had felt some pride in the fact that when he should come to the Three Bar he would find that she too was doing real work in the world. She reflected that his attitude was that of so many other men, his idea of love synonymous with shelter for the object of it, and his main plea was that of providing her with shelter against all the rough corners of life. Shelter! And what she wanted was to be part of things—to have a hand in running her own affairs. It came to her that of all men perhaps Slade understood her the best.
"I don't want shelter!" she said. "And I can't think of anything else till after the Three Bar is a going concern."
The voices of the three men round the fire drifted to them.
"Listen," she urged.
"Blind Valley ought to summer-feed three hundred head," the ranger was saying. "I'll recommend permits for that many cows."
"That'll suit me," Slade nodded. "I'll put in application through you?"
"Not if I can help it you won't," Harris said. "Why should you have permits right in the back yard of the Three Bar with all the rest of the hills open to you? There's a natural lead right down to the corrals; divides to form wings. It's up to Wilton, of course, but I'm going to make application to graze Blind Valley myself. They'll allow whichever one he recommends."
"Harris has first call," the ranger stated mildly. "This is the logical range for his stuff—this and one or two others right close. We can fix you up in a dozen other good grass countries further on, Slade, if it's all the same."
Slade nodded agreement. The ranger had authority to recommend the issuing of permits and his superiors would not go contrary to his suggestions in any but exceptional cases—certainly not in this matter. Slade's eyes turned frequently toward the two figures on the log, silhouetted against the white of the moonlit meadow, and his slashed mouth set in disapproval. Harris noted this and smiled as it occurred to him that Slade's views on the subject of Deane's appropriating the girl for himself were about on a par with Deane's ideas relative to her touring the hills with four men.
The two came back and sat with the others round the dying fire, then all turned in for the night, Billie in her teepee and the men in their bed rolls with no other overhead shelter than the trees. In less than an hour Harris raised on one elbow. The ranger woke just as Harris slipped from his bed roll and tugged on his chaps. The steady thud of hoofs had penetrated each man's consciousness and apprised him of the fact that the horses were coming down.
Wilton closed his eyes as Harris departed to head them back. Three times during the night Deane was roused as one or the other of the three men left his bed roll to frustrate an attempt of the horses to make a break for home. Near morning he was once more wakened by a clammy dampness on his face. A fine drizzle was falling. Slade was on his feet, shoving a few sticks of wood inside the flap of Billie's teepee.
In the first gray light of morning Harris was up and slicing shavings from the few dry sticks Slade had so thoughtfully tucked away. Breakfast was cooked under the dripping trees. The ranger was soaked to the knees as he waded through the tall grass to the picketed horse. He saddled him and went up-country after the other horses. The outfit was packed up and the little procession filed away toward the next valley—and Carlos Deane proved his real caliber to Harris.
Throughout the day they rode in a fine drizzle; in the timber the wet branches whipped them and sprayed water down the necks of their slickers; in the boggy meadows of the bottoms the mosquitoes hovered round them in humming swarms. The horses stamped, shook their heads angrily and switched their tortured flanks with dripping tails till at last the men greased their noses, eyes and flanks to protect the animals from the singing horde. When they dismounted to lead their horses up precipitous game trails leading to the crest of some divide Deane's Angora chaps flapped like dead weights and seemed to drag him back. From the lofty ridges they gazed down upon white clouds floating in the valleys; and at night they made camp and slept in damp bed rolls with the clammy mist chilling them. The next day was the same.
Harris knew that a man might evidence great courage in the face of danger, risk his life in the heat of excitement, but that the true test of iron control is to experience grinding discomfort and smile. Deane's neck was raw and chafed from the wet neckband of his flannel shirt and his hands and cheeks were puffed with the bites of the buzzing pests. But Deane had been cheerful throughout and had uttered no complaint.
Toward evening of the second gloomy day Harris rode up beside him.
"You'll do," he said.
"How's that?" Deane asked.
"There's maybe one man out of every two hundred that can go along like this and not get to blaming every one in sight for what's happening to him. I don't know as I'd have blamed you any if you'd been cussing us all out for the past two days."
Deane laughed and shook his head.
"I've been rather enjoying it," he said.
"You're just a plain, old-fashioned liar, Deane," Harris returned. "You haven't been enjoying it any more than the rest of us—which is mighty little; but you've got insides enough to let on like it's considerable sport—which is a whole lot."
"No one else has done any beefing," Deane said. "So why should I?"
"This is everyday business with us," Harris pointed out. "And right unusual for you. There's likely a number of things you do every day back your way, but that doesn't signify that I could amble back there and perform as well as you."
"I suspect you'd make out all right," Deane said. "Anyway—I'm much obliged for the endorsement."
They camped again in the drizzle but by noon of the following day the sun peeped through. In an hour every cloud and fog-bank had been dispersed with a rapidity which is seen only in the hill country. The ranger pulled up his horse as they struck a game trail in the saddle of a low divide. A bunch of shod horses had been over it a few hours past.
"Some of the albino's layout," Wilton surmised. "They cross through here to that camp of theirs down in the Breaks. I've run across their trails up here before."
They rode out on to a spur and looked down on the low country. Slade and the ranger were going on, the others returning to the Three Bar. Harris pointed to the country spread out below them.
"That's the Breaks," he told Deane. "I'll point out the albino's stronghold."
"While they're looking I want to talk to you," Slade said to Billie.
"Let's get together," he said, when the others had passed on. "Why are you so dead set on making a squatter outfit of the Three Bar? Don't you know the nesters will flock in here and cut the range all up as soon as they see a chance?"
"Not my range," she said. "Outside of the V L and the Halfmoon D there's not another site they can get water for, except maybe a couple of spring gulches where flood reservoirs will hold back enough to water a forty. So we'll still control our home range."
"But there's a dozen sites down in my range," he said.
"And a dozen small outfits wouldn't run any more cows than you do now," she said. "At least not on my range; so what difference will it make to me? Why don't you have men file on all those sites?"
"You can't make a contract that will hold a man to turn over his homestead after it's proved up," he said. "Half of them would keep their land."
"Of course," she agreed. "But then you'd have half instead of nothing at all. Do you want the world?"
"I want you!" he said. "Throw in with me, girl. I'm going to fight these nesters off—the Three Bar among the rest if you don't quit. I'll smash the Three Bar into mincemeat unless you run this damned Harris off and quit this game."
It was the first time Slade had ever threatened. Her spirits had soared over the prospects of the Three Bar and she was suddenly afraid for her brand if Slade, who had whittled down a dozen outfits at once, should suddenly turn his whole attention to the Three Bar.
"I've got it to do," Slade stated. "Since you've started this deal there's been nesters filed papers on every good site in my range, waiting to rush in as soon as I lose my grip. Do you think I'll let them crowd me out? Not in a thousand years! I'm telling you—I'll break the Three Bar if you keep it up."
"All right!" she said. "And what about the homestead laws?"
"I'm the law out here," he asserted.
It came to her that Slade was fighting on the defensive, that he feared to let the Three Bar succeed and set up a precedent in defiance of the signs that dotted the range.
"Then it's war!" she said. "And you'll go under yourself, from your own size, if you haven't the judgment to hedge yourself now like the rest. The Three Bar is going ahead—and we're going to win."
She turned her horse but Slade caught her arm and whirled her around. He jerked a thumb at the two men down the ridge.
"What can Deane, a half-baked boy, give you?" he demanded. "Money—and trinkets to hang all over you till you flash like a Mexican's bridle; a flower garden and a soft front lawn to range in—and after a year or two you'd give your soul to trade it off for an acre of raw sage. You'd trade a castle full of glittering chandeliers for one hour at the round-up fire—your box at the opera for a seat on the ground with your back against the chuck-wagon wheel while the boys sang just one old song. I know! You'd soon get fed up on too much of that. You want an outfit of your own. I'll give you that—the biggest in the State."
She shook her head without answering.
"Then I'll break you," he predicted a second time. He drew a folded slip of paper from his pocket and held it out to her. "That's the exchange slip," he said. "It calls for three hundred odd head of mixed stuff. You can send yours over any time." He turned his horse and followed after the ranger while the girl joined Harris and Deane.
Harris had slipped the strap of his glasses and handed them to Deane who had dismounted and was peering off at the spot Harris had pointed out. A few scattered shacks, showing as toy houses from the distance, stood in the center of a broad open basin, sheltered on all sides by the choppy mass of the Breaks. A solid corral, almost a stockade, stood near the buildings and a few white points indicated that a teepee or two had been pitched along its edge.
"That's Arnold's stockade," Harris explained to Deane. "Arnold was an old-time rustler that finished at the end of a rope fifteen years ago. Now all the drifters in the country stop over here if they want a place to hole up."
Deane had been striving to fathom the attitude of a community where the thieves were known as such, their headquarters a matter of common knowledge, and yet allowed to carry on their trade.
"Can't the sheriff clean them out of there?" he asked.
"He could," Harris said. "But no man will make a complaint. They can rustle every steer in the country and the losers are afraid to make a report. Every outfit is supposed to protect its own. If Alden should ride up to almost any ranch within a hundred miles and ask them if they'd missed any stock in the last three years they'd shake their heads and swear that they hadn't lost a hoof. But the Three Bar has a clean page; we're not afraid he'll get a line on us while we're having him round up some one else. The first time we get a scrap of real evidence on any man we'll call Alden in."
"You told me the Three Bar herds have been cut in half," Deane said. "How much evidence do you need?"
"It's like this:" Harris explained. "We'd have to make a specific charge against a few men—name them in connection with some raid. That nest down there is only a sort of stopping place. There's twenty or so that use it on and off. Maybe the very men we'd name would be in Coldriver or some other place and could prove it. Even if they couldn't we couldn't get a man to testify. Then too, rustling is about the hardest thing in the world to prove. There's a dozen ways they can work it. I could catch some of them driving a bunch of Three Bar cows toward the Idaho line. They'd look up and see me and calmly ride on past the cows. They could say the bunch was just drifting ahead of their horses—that they weren't driving them at all. Who can prove a case of rustling even if you see it, unless you actually catch one altering a brand—which they wouldn't do anywhere within a hundred miles of that brand's range."
"Then how will you ever convict one?" Deane asked.
"The only way to convict a rustler right now is to kill him and swear that you run up on him changing a brand," Harris said. "I expect that's what we'll have to do."
Deane looked at the girl to determine how she met this suggestion. Instead of the shiver of distaste which he rather expected her lips were pressed tight.
"A little of that would help Slade too," she said. "He told me just now that he'd smash the Three Bar."
The man reflected that this sort of a life could not help but wear off some of her natural fineness and harden her.
They followed the rims till they had cleared the Breaks, then angled down to the foothills and headed for the Three Bar. They held a steady gait until a half hour after sunset and camped in the open near a tiny spring. Again Deane was impressed with the impropriety of the girl's being out with two men who loved her and the thought was an ache that remained with him. It was a natural reaction,—the lifelong training to guard against appearances which were open to criticism as religiously as against the accomplished fact.
As they sat round the little fire the girl handed Harris the paper Slade had given her. It was a scrawled bill of sale calling for three hundred odd head of Circle P cows, listed in the exact numbers of all ages and sexes. In return she would send him an exchange slip for the same number of Three Bar stock. This exchange system was one of Slade's own devising, intended to eliminate the time and expense of sending riders to scour adjacent ranges in search of drifted stock. Each outfit exchanged slips based on the round-up tally with every other brand and so could show bill of sale for off-brand stuff in their beef shipments or for any rebrands on the range.
"This labor-saving device is Slade's trump card," Harris said. "It works all his way. We couldn't turn in a false report. But he has three crews covering his range, each under a different wagon foreman and no one of them wise to what the rest are doing. It's only the foremen that jot down the daily tallies and keep the final score. Even if they talked among themselves, why, they're all riding for Slade's brand—and there you are."
Deane was regarding the penciled memorandum signed by Slade.
"Not a very impressive document," he observed.
Harris laughed at the other's evident disapproval of such a slipshod method of property transfer.
"Not very," he agreed. "But it's absolutely good. You could borrow money against that at the bank. He doesn't get us that way but here's how he does: He's mapped out a rebrand system. His rebrand is Triangle on the hip. When he gets our exchange slip all he has to do is go on his range and run the Triangle on the hip of the number of Three Bar stock it calls for. There are Three Bar cows ranging a hundred miles from here, just as there's brands a hundred miles off whose stock turns up here—with a Triangle on the hip. Who's going to check Slade up? It would take three crews to cover his range and tally the fresh Three Bar rebrands of this one season—a few here and a few there. He ships trainloads of cows in a year. There's some old rebrands in each lot, say; maybe more than last year's exchange. Well he simply has been holding them over. He can easy explain that. It would break a small outfit to hire enough hands to cover his range and check him up—and he'd buy part of those. The albino's men are petty-larceny bandits compared with Slade."
Deane turned to the girl.
"Billie, why don't you get out of a game where everything is crooked—a game of who can steal the most and every man for himself?" he asked.
"Why don't you fold your hands and give up your business the first thing that goes wrong?" she countered. "Instead of trying to remedy it?"
"But you don't have to do it," he urged.
"Neither do you," she said. "I've the same pride in the Three Bar that you have in anything you've helped build up. You'd fight all the harder for one of your schemes that was hard-pressed—and so would I."
She turned to her teepee and ended the discussion, her pride a little hurt that Deane should so little appreciate her work—and the spirit that made her hold on instead of giving up.
That evening they rode up to the Three Bar just as Waddles announced the evening meal.
"She's hot!" the big voice wailed. "She's re-e-ed hot!"
The hands were gathering at the ranch, coming in from the range for a frolic before the beef round-up should keep out for another month. Deane's time was up and he had planned to leave on the following day.
"You can't do that," Harris said. "Two more days for you. I've given orders not to let you off the place till after the dance at Brill's. This is Tuesday and the big frolic will be staged Thursday night. Then you're free to go."
Deane shook his head and prepared to offer an excuse but Harris smilingly refused to consider it.
"No use to try," he said. "The boys won't let you go. We've had you out in the rain and now we'll try to make amends for it. Billie, don't let him leave the place. I'll detail you as guard."
"You hear the orders," she said. "You're stuck for two more days at the Three Bar whether you like it or not."
"That settles it," Deane said. "I do want to see that dance."
Horne strolled up to them as they reached the corral.
"Another of the wild bunch down," he said. "Magill this time. Got it just the same as Barton did last week. Shot from in front; one empty shell in his gun. The Breaks is getting to be a hard place to reside in."
Again the girl felt that queer sensation of having expected this to transpire, as if possibly she had helped plan the deed herself and had forgotten it. That night as she lay in bed her mind was concerned with it and at times the solution seemed almost to reach the surface of her consciousness. Two belated riders came up the lane. As they rode past her open window she heard the name of Magill.
"That's two for Bangs," said a voice she knew for Moore's.
The evasive sense of familiarity, of being in some way identified with the killings, was suddenly clear to her,—so clear that she marveled at not having known at once.
Old Rile Foster was haunting the Breaks near Arnold's, imposing grim and merciless justice on all those whom he suspected of having had a hand in the finish of Bangs.
Harris had left the ranch an hour before daylight, his ride occasioned by the reports of several of the men. In the last three days each couple that worked the range had found one or more of the new white-face bulls shot down in their territory. The evidence, as Harris pieced the scraps together, indicated that a lone rider had made a swift raid, riding for forty miles along the foot of the hills in a single day, shooting down every Three Bar bull that crossed his trail. A dozen dead animals marked his course. A few more such raids and the Three Bar calf crop would be extremely short the following spring. The near end of the foray had extended to within ten miles of the home ranch and Harris had gone out to have a look at some of the nearer victims. He located two by the flights of meat-eating birds but range stock had blotted out all possible signs. He rode back to the corrals in the early afternoon and joined Billie and Deane.
"Not a track," he said. "We must expect more or less of that. They'll cut in on us wherever there's a chance."
As Harris left them the girl pointed out a horseman riding up the lane.
"The sheriff," she volunteered, and Deane noted an odd tightening of her lips.
Alden dismounted and accosted Moore and Horne. From their grinning faces she knew that they were deliberately evading whatever questions the sheriff might be asking. Horne's voice reached them.
"Whoever it is seems to be doing a right neat job," he said. "Why not let him keep it up?"
The sheriff came over to Deane and the girl.
"Billie, I expect you can tell me who's doing this killing over in the Breaks," he said.
She was unaccustomed to the easy dissimulation that was second nature to the men of the whole countryside and her eyes fell under the sheriff's steady gaze. Deane was looking into her face and with a shock he realized that she could pronounce the name of the assassin but was deliberately withholding it. She raised her head with a trace of defiance.
"No. I can't tell you," she said.
Deane expected to hear the sheriff's curt demand that she divulge the name of the man he sought. It must be easily apparent to him, as it was to Deane, that she knew. But Alden only dropped a hand on her shoulder and stood looking down at her.
"All right, girl," he said mildly. "I reckon you can't tell. He can't be such a rotten sort; if you refuse to turn him up." He pushed back his hat and smiled at Deane. "We have to humor the womenfolks out here," he explained, as he turned toward the bunk house.
Deane, already at a loss to grasp the mental attitude of the range dwellers, was further mystified by a sheriff who spoke of humoring the ladies in a matter pertaining to a double killing.
"Billie, you know!" he accused; "why wouldn't you tell?"
"Because there's a good chance that he's a friend of mine," she stated simply. "Those men had it coming to them and some way I can't feel any regret."
"But if it was justified he should give himself up and stand trial," he said.
"Then let him do it of his own accord," she said. "I certainly won't." The memory of little Bangs, his adoring gaze fastened on her face, was uppermost in her mind and brought a lump to her throat. "I hope he gets them all."
"Billie, let me take you away from all this," Deane urged again. "Let me give you the things every girl should have—shut all the rough spots out of your path. I want to give you the things every girl needs to round out her life—a home and love and shelter."
Shelter! Slade's words recurred to her: "A soft front lawn to range in."
"This is what I need," she said and waved an arm in a comprehensive sweep. Two hands, recently arrived, were unpacking before the bunk house. A third was shoeing a horse near the blacksmith shop. The mule teams were plowing in the flats. A line of chap-clad men roosted as so many crows on the top bar of the corral, mildly interested in the performance of another who twirled a rope in a series of amazing tricks. "That's what I need; all that," she said. "And you're asking me to give it up."
"But it's not the life for a girl," he insisted.
"You've told me a hundred times that I was different from other girls. But now you're wanting me to be like all the rest. Where would the difference be then?" she asked a little wistfully. "Why can't you go on liking me the way I am, instead of making me over?"
But Carlos Deane could not see. It was his last evening alone with her and after the meal they rode across the hills through the moonlight. In that hour she was very near to doing as he wished. If only he had suggested that she come to him as soon as the Three Bar was once more a prosperous brand; had only pointed out how she could spend months of each year on the old home ranch,—then he might have won his point without waiting. But that is not the way of man toward woman. His plea was that she leave all this behind—for him. And his hold was not quite strong enough to induce her to give up every link of the life she had loved for long years before Carlos Deane had been even a part of it.
"I can't tell you now," she said as they rode back to the corrals. "Not now. It would take something out of me—the vital part—if I had to leave the old Three Bar in the shape it's in today. It's sort of like deserting a crippled child."
The next day her stand was unaltered and in the evening, when the whole Three Bar personnel swung to their saddles and headed for the frolic at Brill's, Deane had been unable to gain her promise. His luggage had been sent ahead in a buckboard, for the dance was to be an all-night affair and he would leave on the morning stage.
There were but few horses at the hitch rails when they reached the post but a dozen voices raised in song drifted faintly to their ears and apprised them of the fact that other arrivals were not far behind. As the Three Bar girl entered at the head of her men she saw Bentley and Carpenter leaning against the bar, well toward the rear of the room.
Within the last week she had heard that Carp, after being let off by Harris, had started up a brand of his own down in Slade's range. Harris's remarks about Slade's mode of acquiring new brands recurred to her,—that he fostered some small outfit for a few seasons, then bought it out. As the men scattered she commented on this to Harris. The Three Bar foreman nodded.
"Likely the same old move," he said. "I've been trying to get a line on Carp. He started off with a bill of sale from Slade for a hundred head of Three Bar rebrands. But it didn't come direct from Slade at that. Morrow engineered the deal. Said he came into the paper for two years' back pay from Slade; last year and the one before—had figured to start up for himself and was to draw his pay in cows. The paper is dated at the time Morrow quit Slade last year. What can we prove wrong with that? Morrow simply sells the paper to Carp. Of course it's a plant. All Carp has to do is to run Slade's Triangle on the hips of any number of Three Bar she-stock. Like I told you, there's no way to check Slade up on the number of our rebrands. If Carp gets caught it's his own hard luck."
A dozen men from the Halfmoon D swarmed in the door. Mrs. McVey, the owner's wife, stationed herself in one corner with the Three Bar girl while the men gravitated to the bar.
"I'll take Deane in tow for a while," Harris said. "And get him acquainted with folks." He led Deane to the bar and gave him scraps of the history of various neighbors as they arrived.
Harper's men came in, the albino standing half a head taller than any other on the floor, and they mingled with the rest as if their records were the most immaculate of the lot. Two of Slade's foremen arrived with their families. The wife of one was lean and bent, worn from years of drudgery. The other was an ample, red-cheeked woman of great self-confidence, her favorite pose that of planting both hands on her hips, elbows outspread, and nodding vigorously to emphasize her speech.
Bart Epperson, a trapper from far back in the hills, had brought his family to the frolic. Mrs. Epperson was a tiny, meek woman who had but little to say. Her two daughters, in their late teens, had glossy black hair, high cheek bones and faint olive tinge of skin which betrayed a trace of Indian ancestry.
Lafe Brandon came at the head of his tribe. Ma Brandon, white-haired and motherly and respected by all, was possessed of a queer past known to the whole community. Forty years before Lafe Brandon had stopped at a sod hut on the Republican and found a girl wife with both eyes discolored from blows of her heavy-handed spouse. Lafe had left the bearded ruffian unconscious, with a broken nose and three fractured ribs, and had ridden off with the girl. Five sons and a daughter had been born to them. Two years before, Kit Brandon, the daughter, had been wed to a merchant in Coldriver. The traveling parson who married them heard of the parents' queer case, learned that Ma Brandon's former mate was long since dead, and spoke earnestly to the pair. Both were willing to do anything which might prove of future benefit to Kit. The conference resulted in the old couple's standing before the parson and having the marriage service performed for them an hour before a like rite was rendered for the daughter.
Harris laughed as he informed Deane of this bit of history.
"They both considered it rather an unnecessary fuss," he said. "And it's rumored that they had their first quarrel of a lifetime on the way home from the service."
Two of the sons were married and living at the home ranch. They came to the dance with the rest of the family. Lou Brandon's wife, Dolly, was a former dance-hall girl of Coldriver, and Al Brandon's better half, Belle, was the daughter of a Utah cowman.
An extra stage-load rolled in from Coldriver and four couples joined the throng.
"Ex-school-teachers," Harris informed. "They marry them so fast that it's hard to keep one on the job instructing the rising generation in the Coldriver school."
Deane shrank from the thought of the Three Bar girl in such a mixture. Someway she seemed many shades finer than the rest.
"It couldn't be otherwise," Harris said, when Deane expressed this thought. "She was raised at the knee of one of the finest women in the world. I remember her mother myself—a little; and I've heard my own mother sing the praises of Elizabeth Warren a thousand times."
The albino interrupted them.
"Cal—how come?" he greeted. The three men conversed in the most casual, friendly fashion, as if there had never been a hint of friction between Harris and Harper in the past.
A great voice rose above the buzz of conversation, filling the big room to the very rafters.
"Choose your pardners for the dance!" Waddles bellowed from the makeshift platform at one end of the room. "Go get your ga-a-als!"
Deane moved across to the Three Bar girl. There was a general rush for the side opposite the bar where the ladies had gathered. Couples squared off for the Virginia reel, the shortage of ladies rectified by a handkerchief tied on the arm of many a chap-clad youth to signify that he was, for the moment, a girl. Waddles picked his guitar; two fiddles broke into "Turkey in the Straw" and the dance was on with Waddles calling the turns.
All through the room they shuffled and bowed, whirled partners, locked elbows and swung, the shriek of fiddles and scrape of feet punctuated by the caller's boom.
"Grab your gals for the grand right an' left!" the big voice wailed. "Swing, rattle and roar!" "Clutch all partners for a once and a half!" "Swing your gals and swing 'em high!" "Prance, scuffle and scrape!"
Slade came in alone as the first dance was ended.
A croupier and lookout, imported from Coldriver for the event, opened Brill's roulette layout in one corner, a game he usually operated himself on the occasions when his patrons chose to try their fortune against the bank. The rattle of chips, the whir of the ivory ball and the professional chant of lookout and croupier sounded between dances.
"Single ought in the green," the croupier droned.
"Single ought in the green," the lookout echoed. "The pea-green shade is the bank's per cent. The house wins and the gamblers lose. Place your bets for another turn."
"She's off," the croupier chanted. "Off again on the giddy whirl. The little ivory ball—she spins!"
"Ten in the black," the croupier called. "Ten in the black," the lookout seconded. "The black pays and the red falls off; the even beats the odd."
The full enjoyment of a novel scene was spoiled for Deane by the sickening realization that the Three Bar girl was part of it, rubbing elbows with the nondescript throng. He looked again at Harper, the rustler chief; at Slade, with his peculiar turtle-like face, Slade the cattle king—the killer. Billie Warren stood between the two Epperson girls whose faces betrayed the taint of Indian blood, an arm about the shoulders of each of them. The sheriff who had said that men must humor womenfolks was leaning against the bar. Deane turned to Harris but found him looking off across the room. He turned his own eyes that way and glimpsed a dark man with an overlong, thin face and a set bleak stare. Morrow had just come in.
Five minutes later Harris stepped out the back door and Deane followed him. At the sound of a footfall behind him Harris whirled on his heel and when he confronted Deane the dim light from the door glinted on something in his hand.
"Sho," Harris deprecated. "I'm getting spooky. I thought it was some one else." He slipped the gun back in its holster. "There's one or two that would like right well to run across me from behind."
"I followed you out to tell you it was decent of you to insist that I stay over a few days," Deane said. "It was a white thing to do, considering that we both want the same thing."
"We both want her to have what's best for her," Harris said. "And I don't know as she could do any better than to take up with you."
"It may sound rather trite—coming after that," Deane said. "But anyway, I'll have to say that I feel the same way about you."
"Then, if we're both right in our estimates, why she can't go very far wrong, either way she turns," Harris said. "So I reckon we're both content."
Harris moved on and motioned Deane to accompany him.
"I thought I glimpsed a man I knew a few minutes back," Harris said. "I'd like right well to have a talk with him."
They wandered completely round the post and looked in the shadows of the outbuildings but could find no trace of life.
"Likely I was mistaken," Harris said at last. "I saw a face just outside the door. He was more or less on my mind—the party I thought it was. Some one else I expect, and he's gone inside."
They returned to the hall. Morrow stood with two Halfmoon D men at the end of the bar. Harris motioned him aside and Morrow withdrew from the others.
"This is pretty far north for you, Morrow," Harris suggested.
"Is there any one restricting my range?" Morrow demanded. "If there is I'd like to know."
"Then I'll tell you," Harris answered. "The road is open—as long as you keep on the road. Any time you stray a foot off the beaten trail you're on the Three Bar range. I don't figure to get gunned up from the brush more than once by the same man. Every Three Bar boy has orders to shoot you down on sight any time you heave in view anywhere within twenty miles of the Three Bar; so I wouldn't stray off the main-traveled road any time you're going through."
Lanky Evans had detached himself from a group and Morrow looked up to find the tall man standing at his shoulder.
"So you hunt in pairs," Morrow remarked.
"And later in packs," Lanky returned. "Why don't you ever come up and visit us? Every time I'm riding north I keep looking back, expecting to see you come cantering up from the south. Harris been commenting about the little dead-line we've drawn on you?"
"What's the object of all this conversation?" Morrow flared. "If you've got anything to say to me why get it over with."
"Nothing special," Evans said. "I just thought maybe I could goad you into being imprudent enough to come up our way—which I'm sure hoping to observe you north of the line and somewhere within a thousand yards."
Evans turned away and Morrow rejoined the two men he had left at the bar. Deane looked about him. Apparently no one had noticed the little by-play.
"Evans didn't exactly mean quite all of that," Harris explained. "Of course if Morrow does come up our way Lanky would prefer to see him first—but he would rather he'd keep away. He staged that little talk as a safeguard for me. If Morrow acquires the idea that several folks are anxious to see him up there, he's apt to be real cautious how he prowls round the Three Bar neighborhood looking for me."
Deane looked again at Morrow and saw that Moore and Horne had drawn him aside from the rest. The two Three Bar men were grinning and Morrow's face was set and scowling.
"The boys must have framed it up among themselves," Harris said. "That's the third pair I've seen conversing with him. It's doubtful whether Morrow is deriving much pleasure out of the dance."
Deane crossed over to Billie. The music started but she shook her head as he would have led her to the floor.
"Sit down. I want to talk with you. Long time no see 'um after to-night," she said. "It'll be daylight soon and I've a long tale to tell."
As the others danced she gave him a dozen messages to impart to various friends.
"Tell Judge Colton that Three Bar stock is rising," she said. "And that as soon as things are all smoothed out, he can expect me for a boarder. I'm going to make him one nice long visit."
Practically all of her time away from the Three Bar had been spent with Judge Colton's family and she was accepted as part of the household. It was there she had met Deane and those others to whom her messages were sent.
Through an opening in the dancing throng Deane suddenly had a clear view of the open rear door—one brief glimpse before the crowd closed once more and shut off his view. He had an idea that he had seen a face, hazy and indistinct, a few feet outside the door. He wondered if it could be the friend for whom Harris had searched.
"Make the visit soon, Billie," he urged. "It's been a long month since we've had you with us. We thought maybe you'd deserted us back there. How soon will this visit start—and how long will it last?"
"It will start as soon as the Three Bar doesn't need me," she said. "And last a long time."
Again a lane opened through the crowd, affording a view of the door. Deane saw the face outside in the night, and a foot or more below if some bright object glinted in the dim light which filtered through. The music ceased and the chant of the roulette croupier began, mingling with the smooth purr of the ivory ball. There came a sudden hush from the vicinity of the rear door, a hush that spread rapidly throughout the room, so swift are the perceptions of a frontier gathering.
Old Rile Foster stood just inside, his gun half-raised before him. Canfield and Lang stood together in the center of the floor, apart from the rest and with no others in line beyond them. Rile tossed a boot heel on to the floor and as it rolled toward the two men he shot Canfield through the chest. Lang's gun crashed almost with his own. Rile's knees sagged under him and he pitched face down on the floor, his arms sprawled out before him.
The surge of the crowd, pressing back out of line, threw the albino on the edge of it, his big form towering alone.
The old man raised his head from the floor and crooked his wrist with the last of his ebbing strength.
"Four for Bangs," he said, and shot Harper between the eyes.