The calf round-up was nearing the end. Two weeks would see the finish and supply the final tally. The figures had already progressed to the point where they gave evidence of another shrinkage from the count of the previous year; and during one of the weekly half-day periods of rest three members of the Three Bar personnel found their minds occupied with a problem which excluded all thoughts of sleep. The problem in each case was the same but each one viewed it from the individual standpoint of his own particular knowledge of the subject.
Harris sat on a rock and reviewed the plans he had formulated for the salvation of the Three Bar brand, realizing the weak spots and mapping out some special line of defense that might serve to strengthen them. In the seclusion of the wagon Waddles was carefully rereading a much-thumbed document for perhaps the hundredth time. A man had come in at daylight with the mail from Brill's and Billie Warren was within her teepee poring over her share of it. The men had finished theirs and were sleeping.
The girl read first the four letters in the same handwriting, one to mark each week she had been on the round-up. The fifth was from Judge Colton, her father's old friend, to whose hands all his affairs had been entrusted. After scanning this she read again the other four. Ever since her last visit to the Coltons, just prior to her father's death, the arrival of these letters had been as regular as the recurrence of Sunday, one for each week, and in moments of despondency over the affairs of the Three Bar she drew strength from them. Very soon now, in the course of a few months at the outside, she and the writer would meet away from his native environment and in the midst of her own. Always before this had been reversed and her association with Carlos Deane had held a background of his own setting,—a setting in startling contrast to her log house, nestling in a desert of sage. The Deane house was a wonderful old-fashioned mansion set in a grove of century-old elms and oaks. She knew his life and now he would see her in her natural surroundings.
Perhaps it was her very difference from other girls that had first interested Carlos Deane, and the fact that he stood out from others, even among his own intimates, that had drawn her interest to him. Deane had been an athlete of renown and a popular idol at school and his energy had been brought to bear in business as successfully as in play. In a hazy sort of way she felt that some day she would listen to the plea that, in some fashion or other, was woven into every letter; but not till the Three Bar was booming and no longer required her supervision. Everything else in the world was secondary to her love for her father's brand and the anxiety of the past two years of its decline eclipsed all other issues.
Her reflections were interrupted by Harris's voice just outside her teepee.
"Asleep, Billie?" he asked softly.
"No," she said. "What is it?"
"I've thrown your saddle on Papoose," he said. "Let's have a look around."
She assented and they rode off up the left-hand slope of the valley. A mile or so from the wagon Harris dismounted on a high point.
"Let's have a medicine chat," he offered. "I've got considerable on my mind."
She leaned against a rock and he sat cross-legged on the ground, facing her and twisting a cigarette as an aid to thought. Her head was tilted back against the rock, her eyes half-closed.
"They say folks get disappointed in love and go right on living," he observed. "I wonder now. I've met quite a scattering of girls and maybe there were a dozen or so out of the lot that sized up a shade better than the rest. Looking back from where I sit it occurs to me that it was a right colorless assortment, after all. I've heard that men run mostly to form and at one time or another let it out to some little lady that there's no other in the world. That's my own state right about now. Are you always going to keep on disliking me?"
"I don't dislike you," she said. She was still convinced of his father's trickery toward her own; but Cal Harris's quiet efficiency and his devotion to Three Bar interests had convinced her, against her will, that he had taken no part in it. "But if you brought me out here to go into that I'm going back."
"I didn't," he denied. "But I drifted into it sort of by accident. No matter what topic I happen to be conversing on I'm always thinking how much I'd rather be telling you about that. Whenever I make some simple little assertion about things in general, what I'm really thinking is something like this, 'Billie, right this minute I'm loving you more than I did two minutes back.' You might keep that in mind."
The girl did not answer but sat looking off across the jumbled foothills, rock-studded and gray with sage. Some distance from them a bare shale-slide extended for half a mile along a sidehill, barren and devoid of all vegetation. Here and there, far off across the country, vivid patches on the slopes indicated thickets of willows and birch growing below spring seeps. A few scattered cedars sprouted from the rocky ledges of the more broken country and a clump of gnarled, wind-twisted cottonwoods marked a distant water hole. A whitish glare was reflected from an alkali flat in the bottom of a shallow basin. Twenty miles to the north the first rims of the hills rose out of the low country and through the breaks in them she could see long sloping valleys of lodgepole, the dark green relieved by the pale silvery sheen of aspen clumps; dense spruce jungles of the more precipitous slopes topped by rugged peaks covered with perpetual snow; certainly no soft or homelike scene. One must be filled with a vast love of it—or die of it—for without that love of the open life would be a deadly thing to bear in a desert of sage.
"I've always loved it," she said. "Whenever I've been away there always came a time when I was restless to get back. I've always felt that it would kill me to leave with the idea that I'd never see the Three Bar range again. But now the country has changed. At times it seems as if it would be a vast relief to me to leave it all behind."
"It's the people that have changed," he said. "It's only the history of all frontiers. The first settlers win it for themselves. Then clashing elements creep in; sheep and cattle wars; stockmen and squatter quarrels; later the weeding out of the wild bunch—parasites like Harper's crew: still later there'll be squabbles between the nesters themselves; jumping claims and rowing over water rights. Then it will all iron out, the country will settle up according to its topography and give its best to the human race. You may grow to think you hate the hills for what happens to you individually during the change—but it's in your blood to love them and that love will always return."
"It may return if the Three Bar weathers the change," she said.
"We'll weather it," he asserted cheerfully. "Shall I tell you how?"
"Yes. Tell me," she said. "I'd like to know. The Three Bar is going to show another loss this year."
"And likely the next," he assented. "Maybe still another. But that will be about all."
"That will surely be all," she said. "Two more years of decrease and there won't be enough left of the Three Bar to divide."
"Listen," he said, tapping his knee with a forefinger to emphasize his point. "Cal Warren always wanted to put the Three Bar flats under cultivation. He's probably told you that a hundred times."
"A thousand," she amplified. "But the sentiment of the country was against it the same as it is to-day."
"But it's not," he contradicted.
"Then why all those signs?" she asked. "They run every squatter out now just as they always did."
"Who?" he asked. "Do you have a hand in it?"
"No," she said. "The others do."
"Probably they think the same of you," he pointed out. "There's just one man in this country that profits by keeping that no-squatter sentiment alive."
"You must hate Slade," she observed.
"I haven't any feeling toward him one way or the other," he asserted. "He's an obstacle, that's all. That's the way he would feel about me if I stood in his way. There's at least one Slade in every locality and in every line of business throughout the world. Ambition for power. He wants the whole countryside. If he'd win out on that he'd want the next—and finally he'd want the world."
"He has this particular part of the world under his thumb," she said.
"But he won't have for long," he insisted. "He's topheavy and ripe for a fall. Those signs are all that saves him from going to pieces like an over-inflated balloon. He's the only man we'll have to fight."
"What convinces you of that?" she asked.
"See here," he urged, the emphasizing forefinger tapping again. "This will always be range country. It will only support a certain number of cows. If the Three Bar had a section in hay to winter-feed your stuff you could run double what you do now on the same range. It's the same with every other small concern. There's only a few spots suitable for home-ranch sites and every one of those has a brand running out of it now—excepting those sites down in Slade's range. If all those outfits put in hay it wouldn't cut up the range any more than it is now—except down Slade's way. Every outfit in the country could run twice as many head as they do now—except Slade. He couldn't."
"Why?" she asked. "Why wouldn't that apply to him as well?"
"Because he's strung out over a hundred miles. The minute farming starts there'll be squatters filing on every quarter where they can get water to put it in crop. There's twenty places Slade would have to cover by filings to hold his range where the others would only have to file on one to control the amount of range they're using now."
She nodded as she caught this point.
"Folks have fallen into a set habit of mind," he explained. "You think because every squatter is burned out that every outfit but the Three Bar is against sticking a plow in the ground. The rest probably feel the same way—know they haven't a hand in it but figure that you have. As a matter of fact, it's Slade alone. That's how I got a line on Morrow the first night I landed. I said something about putting in hay and he came right to the front and made a red-hot anti-squatter talk. I knew right off he was Slade's man."
"How could you be sure of that?" she asked. "I've heard men with every outfit express the same views."
"Morrow hasn't a brand of his own," Harris said. "He wouldn't lose a dollar if the whole range was under fence. He's drawing down money to keep that feeling alive. You'll find one with every outfit in this country. And the chances are you'll find every one of them overlooking a few calves on his circle—same as Morrow did. There's a persistent rumor to the effect that any man who burns out a squatter can drop in at Slade's and get five hundred dollars in cash. The wild bunch will handle every case that turns up if that rumor is true."
"The sheriff has never been able to pick up a single one of the men who have burned those squatters out," she said.
"And he never will without some help," Harris agreed. "Alden's hands are tied. He's only an ornament right now and folks have come to believe he's real harmless. But Alden is playing his own game single-handed the best he can. One day he'll get his hooks into some of these torch-bearers so deep they'll never shake them out. The homestead laws can't be defied indefinitely. The government will take a hand and send marshals in here thicker than flies. Then the outfits that have hedged themselves in advance are on top. The rest are through."
"But what can the Three Bar do against Slade until those marshals come?" she asked.
"There's a difference between sacking an established outfit with a big force of hands and burning out some isolated squatter roosting in a wagon," Harris said. "I've filed on water out of the Crazy Loop to cover the section I bought in the flats. We can pick men and give them a job with the Three Bar between spells of doing prove-up work. We can put in a company ditch to cover all the filings, pay them for working on it and charge their pro-rata share of improvements up against each man's final settlement. When they've made final proof we can buy out those who want to sell."
"The cost of a project like that would be too big for the Three Bar to stand," she objected.
"I'll put it up," he offered. "The money from the sale of the little old Box L. I want to see this go through. We can square accounts when the Three Bar makes the top of the hill."
He pointed to a bunch of cows that fed in a bottom below them.
"Look at that. Every color under the sun—and every shape. Let's put the flats in hay, girl, and start grading the Three Bar up. We'll weed out the runty humpbacked critters and all off-color she-stuff; keep only straight red cows. It doesn't take much more feed to turn out a real beef steer than one of those knife-backed brothers down in the flat. We'll gather our own cows close to the home ranch and shove other brands off our range, throw forty white-face bulls out close round the place and start building up real beef; steers that will bring fifty a head where those runts bring twenty-five. And big red she-stock will bring more money too. In five years we'll have a straight red brand and the Three Bar will be rated at thirty dollars a head, come as they run on the range, instead of round ten or twelve as they'd figure us now. We'll have good hay land that will be worth more by itself than the whole brand is to-day. Say the word, girl, and we'll build up the old outfit that both of our folks helped to found."
The girl had closed her eyes as he painted this picture of possibilities and except for the difference of voice it might well have been old Cal Warren speaking; the views and sentiments were the same she had so often heard her father express. Next to the longed-for partnership with old Bill Harris the dream of his life had been to see the Three Bar flats a smooth meadow of alfalfa.
"I'll put a bunch of terriers in there that will be hard for Slade to uproot," Harris said. "What do you say, Billie? Let's give it a try."
"I'd like to see it done," she said. "But so much depends on the outcome. I'll have to write Judge Colton first. He has all my affairs in charge."
Harris smiled across at her.
"That's right peculiar," he observed. "The Judge is holding the reins over my little prospects too. They've tangled your interests and mine up all along the line it seems. You drop a line to Judge Colton and sort of outline the plan. Maybe he'll see it our way."
They mounted and rode back to the wagon and the girl went straight to Waddles with the proposition Harris had urged. The big man had fallen asleep with the paper he had been perusing still clutched in his hand.
"Tell him to go his best," Waddles advised, when she had outlined Harris's scheme. "He'll put a bunch of terriers on the Three Bar that will cut Slade's claws. If they burn out the boys Cal Harris puts on the place then there'll be one real war staged at the old Three Bar."
"He's been telling you," she accused.
"He did sort of mention it," Waddles confessed.
"Then his idea is to import a bunch of gun-fighters," she said. "I won't have a bunch of hired killers living at the Three Bar."
"These boys will just be the sort that's handy at knowing how to avoid getting killed themselves," Waddles evaded. "You can't rightly blame any man for that. And besides, Slade has to be met on his own ground."
"Do you think Slade is at the bottom of the Three Bar losses every year?" she asked.
"Every hoof," Waddles stated. "Every last head! Maybe the albino's layout rustles an odd bunch on and off. But Slade is the man that's out to wreck your brand." The big cook heaved a sigh as he reached a decision on a matter which had been troubling him for days. "That's what Cal Warren was afraid of—Slade's branching out our way like he had already toward the south. And that's one reason he left things tied up the way he did."
He tapped the much-thumbed document on his knee and handed it to the girl.
"You and Young Cal have been sort of half-hostile," he said. "Cast an eye over that and maybe it'll help you two youngsters to get along."
Three times the girl read every word of the paper while Waddles smoked his pipe in silence. Then she sat on the gate of the wagon and gazed off across the sage; and she was picturing again the long trail of the Three Bar cows; but this time she was reconstructing the scene at the end of it. Instead of one man scheming to trick an old friend at the last crossing of their trails she now visioned two old men regretting that the life-long hope of a partnership had never been fulfilled and planning to cement that arrangement in the next generation. For old Bill Harris had left her a full half-interest in everything he owned on earth with the single stipulation that she retain her half of the Three Bar for five years after her father's death.
"But why?" she asked presently. "Why did he do that for me? He'd never seen me since I was three years old."
"He did it for the girl of old Cal Warren, the best friend he had topside of ground," Waddles said. "Your dad and Bill Harris had been pals since they was hatched."
"But why didn't they let us know?" she insisted. "Instead of tangling it up in this round-about way?"
"Bill Harris had a soft spot in his heart for the old Three Bar the same as your daddy had," Waddles said. "They knew there was hard times and changes ahead and both hated to think of the old brand going under or changing hands. They was afraid that if both you and the boy knew your path was going to be carpeted soft in any event that you might sell out if things got to breaking wrong. This way it looked like you'd be sure to stick. But they both knew too that when old folks go mixing into young folks' affairs without consulting them, things are liable to get all snarled. So they hedged it for both of you."
"How?" she asked. "What if either or both of us should have refused to abide by the terms?"
"Then both properties would have been split between the two of you, the same as if you'd carried them out," he said. "You didn't go and think now, Pet, that them two wise old heads was going to leave the youngsters in the lurch! They was planning the best they knew. Your dad told me to keep an eye on the general lay. And Judge Colton sent me that copy to have on hand to sort of iron things out when I thought best. I'm telling you because I know you wouldn't quit the Three Bar as long as there's two cows left."
"Does Cal know?" she asked.
"Not a word," Waddles asserted. "He's likely considerable puzzled himself. But he's of a optimistic turn of mind, Cal is, and white folks too. He surmises things will break right some day, knowing his own dad and havin' visited round a day or two with yours. 'I don't know what they're at,' he says to me. 'But they was both square shooters, those old boys, and whatever it was they didn't aim to cook up any misery for either the little girl or me, so what's the use to fret?' You drop the Judge a line, girl, and turn Harris loose to rip up the Three Bar flat and seed it down to hay."
She nodded and slipped from the end-gate of the wagon, taking the paper with her. Harris was soaking a flannel shirt in the little stream, flattening it in a riffle and weighting it down with rocks. She went straight to him and sat on the bank, motioning him to a seat by her side. He dried his hands and took the paper she held out to him.
"What's in the wind?" he asked.
She nodded to indicate the document and he sat down to look over it. His quizzical expression was erased as he saw his father's name and the girl watched his face for some evidence of resentment as he read on. Their status was now reversed, for Bill Harris's holdings had been easily double those of her own parent. She saw the sun wrinkles deepen at the corners of his eyes as he grasped the text of it and he looked up at her and laughed.
"Now we're resting easy," he said. "An even trade."
"Uneven," she dissented. "Of course you know that I'll not take advantage of that."
"Accounts are all squared off between us now," he said. "And of course you'll do just what it says." He held up his hand as she started to dissent. "Don't you!" he reproved. "Let's let that end of it slide—rest for a while. Maybe some day we'll lump both into one and the two of us boss the whole job."
She rested a hand on his arm.
"Of course you know I'm sorry for a number of things I've said to you," she said. "But I want to thank you for being too decent to return them in kind. You're real folks, Cal."
"Good girl, Billie," he thanked her. "As to what you said, it's remarkable that you didn't say more. I knew you weren't crabbing over what you might lose for yourself but over the thought that your father had been tricked. I tried to put myself in your place and if I'd been you I know I'd have kicked me off the place, or told Waddles to turn loose his wolf."
He switched abruptly away from the topic in hand and reverted to the subject they had discussed an hour past.
"We've a clear field now with nothing on our minds but the job of putting the Three Bar on its feet," he said. "The Three Bar is a pretty small outfit the way things are to-day but in a few more years the brand that runs three thousand head will be almost in the class of cattle kings. The range will be settled with an outfit roosting on every available site. The big fellows will find their range cut up and then they're through. If the Three Bar files on all the water out of Crazy Loop and covers the flat with hay we'll control all the range for a number of miles each way. There's not another site short of Brandon's place west of us—twelve miles or so; about the same to the east; still farther off south of us. We'll be riding the crest."
"If we can only hold on against Slade," she agreed. "But can we?"
"Watch us!" he said. "The Brandons would file on their home basin and put the V L bottoms in hay to-morrow if they could. McVey's been wanting to do it on the Halfmoon D ever since he bought out the brand five years back. They're all afraid to start. But they'll be for us—and follow us as soon as we show them it can be done. Art Brandon is repping with us and I've been sounding him out. You talk to him. In the meantime you try and get a letter off to the Judge to-day."
The girl nodded.
"We'll try it," she said. "I know that Cal Warren would rather see the Three Bar go to pieces from its own pressure, fighting from the inside to grow, than to see it whittled down from the outside without our fighting back."
She crossed to her teepee to write the letter asking Judge Colton's advice on this matter which would mean the turning point in Three Bar affairs. An hour later a man rode away from the wagon, his bed roll packed on a led horse, heading for Brill's with the message that meant so much to the Three Bar. As he left Harris handed him two letters he had written weeks past, before leaving the ranch.
Presumably only the three of them knew of the intended move but in the course of the next few days it had become rumored among the men that the Three Bar was to turn into a farming outfit. The girl learned that Carpenter was the source of these whispers. Hanson, the rep from the Halfmoon D, apprised her of this fact.
Ever since the departure of Morrow Carp had been sullen. Twice he had taken exceptions to some order of Harris's but the new foreman had patiently overlooked the fact. However on the fifth day after the departure of Horne with the letter to Judge Colton, Harris whirled on the man as he made an anti-squatter remark when the hands were gathered for the noon meal.
"That'll be all," he said. "I'll figure out your time. You took things up where Morrow left off. Now you can go hunt him up and compare notes."
"Can't a man speak his mind?" Carp demanded.
"He can talk his head off," Harris said. "But he can't overlook any Three Bar calves on his circle while I'm running the layout. Morrow tried that on while he was breaking you in."
Carp surveyed the faces of the men and started to speak but changed his mind and headed for the rope corral.
"He's a cringing sort of miscreant," Moore said as Carp rode off. "He was even afraid to speak up for himself—thought maybe the boys would pass sentence on him before he could get out of sight. I expect Carp is poor sort of folks."
"That's going to leave us short-handed," Harris said to the girl. "Morrow, Carp and Bangs—three short. Horne ought to get back from Brill's to-day. We've only one more week out so I guess we can worry through."
"How did you know?" she asked. "About Carp, I mean."
"Lanky caught him overlooking a bunch of cows with calves," Harris explained. "Lanky is worth double pay."
The Three Bar girl had noted that Carpenter had been much with Bentley, Slade's rep, since Morrow had gone. She had come to be suspicious of all things connected with Slade.
"Are you watching Bentley?" she asked.
Harris shook his head.
"No use," he said. "Slade wouldn't work that way. Bentley is his known representative and anything Bent might do would reflect on Slade. Slade only works through one or two others who arrange for all the rest. Morrow is likely one of his right-hand men. He'd fix it for Carp without Slade's name even coming into it at all. Carp might have a good idea where the money came from but he'd draw it from Morrow and never get to the man behind. We'll never get anything on Bentley for that reason—because he's known to draw Slade's pay."
"Then how can we ever prove anything on Slade?" she insisted.
"It's ten to one we can't," he said. "Even if one of his chief fixers should turn him up it wouldn't work. It would be the same old story—the word of an owner against that of a self-confessed thief. We may have to handle Slade without proof."
Horne came back from Brill's in the early evening and another man rode with him.
"Alden," Billie said. "I wonder what the sheriff is doing out in here."
The sheriff stripped the saddle from his horse and the wrangler swooped down to haze the animal in with the remuda as Alden joined Harris and the girl. He was a tall, gaunt man with a slight stoop. His keen gray eyes peered forth from a maze of sun-wrinkles surmounted by bushy eyebrows, the drooping gray mustache accentuating rather than detracting from the hawk-like strength of countenance. He dropped a hand on the girl's shoulder and looked down at her.
"How are things breaking this season, Billie?" he asked. "Everything running smooth?"
"About the same," she said. They were old friends and the girl knew that Alden would help her in any possible way.
The sheriff turned to Harris.
"I see you've settled down to a steady job, Cal, instead of browsing round the hills alone. I run across Horne at Brill's and he was telling me about some one gunning for you from the brush. Morrow, he says. Do you want me to pick Morrow up?"
"It would only waste your time," Harris said. "We couldn't prove it on him—the way things are."
"Fact," Alden agreed. "But I could hold him till after you're back at the ranch. Some day folks may wake up and need a sheriff. It's hard to say."
The men had finished working the herd and were crowding around the wagon for their meal.
"You go ahead and eat, Billie," Alden said. "Cal and I'll feed a little later on. I've got a fuss to pick with Cal."
Billie left them together and the sheriff squatted on his heels.
"What's this rumor about your farming the Three Bar?" he asked. "Horne said all the hands were guessing, but I haven't heard anything about it outside."
"And I don't want it leaking out before we start," Harris said. "But we're going to break out the flat. I had the plans all laid and sent word off. Things are moving toward the start right now."
"It'll stir things up," Alden predicted. With one forefinger he traced a design in the dust, then blotted it out. "I'll play in with you the best I can."
"We've got to make a clean split," Harris said. "Get the wild ones definitely set apart. Then they can be handled." When he spoke again it was apparently as if to himself. "Al Moody sprung it in the Gallatin country a few years back," he said reflectively. "And old Con Ristine worked it on the Nations Cow-trail twenty years ago. It always brings the split."
"That kind of thing is dead against the law," the sheriff said. "But it works right well—that backfire stuff. And it's never been proved on either Al Moody or old Con Ristine, so I hear."
"But of course I wouldn't have a hand in anything like that," Harris stated.
"No. Neither would I," said the sheriff. "Nothing like that."
Alden was regarding old Rile Foster who had drawn apart from the rest and was eating his meal in solitude. The old man had taken a boot heel from his pocket and was studying it as if fascinated by the somber reflections it roused in him. Alden shook his head as he rose and moved toward the wagon.
"Horne was telling me about Bangs too," he said. "Pretty tough for Rile. They was as close as father and son, those two."
Harris and the sheriff joined the rest at the wagon and held out plates and cups to Waddles. The girl was oddly excited, anxious for the start, now that the decision had been made.
"How long will it take to get things moving after we get back?" she asked.
"Not more than a week at the outside," Harris said. "Probably less."
"You don't mean that," she stated. "I want to know the truth."
"You have it," he assured her. "I had the plans all laid. Our crew is already headed for the Three Bar. Before they get there every man will have filed on a quarter I designated for him. Inside a week we'll have covered the flat."
Long after the hands had turned in for the night she heard a faint murmur of voices and looked from her teepee. The brilliant moonlight showed Harris and the sheriff sitting off by themselves. For no apparent reason she thought of Carlos Deane and, point by point, she contrasted him with the man who sat talking to the sheriff. Each was almost super-efficient in his own chosen line and she caught herself wondering what each one would do if suddenly transplanted to the environment of the other. Then her mind occupied itself with Harris who would soon break out the first plow furrow that had ever scarred the range within a radius of fifty miles and she pictured again a sign she had seen that day: "Squatter let your wagon wheels keep turning."
Three heavy wagons, each drawn by four big mules, traveled north along the Coldriver stage trail. Every wagon was loaded to the brim of the triple box. Two men were mounted on each wagon seat, the man beside the driver balancing a rifle across his knees. The butt of another protruded from a saddle scabbard that was lashed to each wagon within easy reach of the man who handled the reins.
"Nice place to camp, Tiny," said the guard on the lead wagon. He pointed off across a flat beside the road toward a sign that loomed in the center. The black-browed giant designated as Tiny swung the mules off the road and headed for the sign. The three wagons were drawn up some fifteen yards apart in the shape of a triangle, the mules unhitched and given a feed of grain from nose-bags, tied to the wagons and supplied with baled hay. Tiny walked over and viewed the sign.
"Squatter don't let sunset find you here," he read.
"It's about that time now," he observed, squinting over his shoulder. "It'd be a mistake to leave evidence like that around." He tore down the sign and worked it into firewood with an axe. "Now they can't do nothing to us for drifting in here by error," he remarked to his companions. "It wouldn't be fair."
While four of them slept the other two remained awake, rousing a second pair after a three-hour period. In the morning the three wagons lumbered on. Near sunset they passed another sign where the Three Bar road branched off to the left. Tiny pulled up the mules.
"Uproot that little beauty, Russet," he advised. "We're getting close to home."
The carrot-haired guard descended and threw his weight against the sign, working it from side to side until the posts were loosened in the ground, pried it up and loaded it on the wagon.
"Quick work, Russ," the big man complimented. "For a little sawed-off runt, you're real spry and active." He clucked to the mules and they settled steadily into the collars and moved on to the Three Bar. As they rolled up the lane the freighters could see the chuck wagon drawn up before the house, the remuda milling round the big pasture lot and a number of men moving among the buildings. The calf round-up was over.
The Three Bar men viewed the freighters curiously as they swung the mule teams in front of the blacksmith shop, noted the rifle in the hands of each guard and the second one in easy reach of each driver. They knew what this portended.
The freighters had stripped off the wagon-sheet lashed across the top of each load and the Three Bar men moved casually toward the wagons, curious to view the contents.
"You boys get to knowing each other," Harris said. "These mule-skinners will be hanging out at the Three Bar from now on."
The short man, known as Russet, removed his hat and scratched his head reflectively as he studied the first move in unloading his wagon. Moore promptly uncovered his own head and revealed his brilliant red shock of hair, his freckled face breaking into a genial grin.
"Hello, you red-hot little devil," he greeted. "I'm glad some one has turned up with redder hair than mine. Brother—shake!"
Russ looked him over carefully.
"Don't you claim no relationship with me, you sorrel hyena," he said. "I won't stand it for a holy second. Get a move on and help me snatch off this load."
All down the line the Three Bar men were getting acquainted with the freighters, introductions effected in much the same manner as that between Russet and Moore. A thousand pounds of oats were tossed from the top of the first wagon and when the concealing sacks were cleared away there were three heavy plows showing underneath, the spaces between them filled with shining coils of fence wire. The second load consisted of a dismantled drill, a crate of long-handled shovels, and more barbed wire; the third held a rake and a mowing machine, more wire, kegs of fence staples and a dozen forks.
"The Three Bar will be the middle point of a cyclone," Moore prophesied as he viewed the implements. "Just as soon as this leaks out."
"We fetched our cyclone openers with us," Russ assured him. "Let her buck."
From the cook-shack door the girl viewed these preparations, then turned her eyes to the flat and visioned it with a carpet of rippling hay.
There was a clatter of hoofs and a rattling of gravel as five horsemen put their sure-footed mounts down the steep slope two hundred yards back of the house and followed along the fence of the corral. The five Brandons had cut across the shoulder of the mountain. The girl wondered at this visit as she heard Lafe Brandon, the father and head of the tribe, ask Harris to put them up for the night.
An hour later Harris and Lafe came to her door and she let them in.
"The Brandons are riding down to file on a quarter apiece," Harris said. "Art quit the wagon below their place as we came in and told the rest that we're going to farm the Three Bar."
"Then you're doing the same?" she asked Lafe with sudden hope that her brand would have company in the move.
Old man Brandon shook his head.
"Not right off," he said. "Until we see how you folks pan out. We can't fix to handle it the way you do. We're filing to protect ourselves before some nester outfit turns up at our front door."
The old man explained his views. There was enough flow in the stream that cut their home valley to water something over a section of land. With that filed on they would control their home range. They could grade up their cows and increase a hundred per cent. with a section under hay. He hoped the Three Bar would win, but he feared to start in the face of the wave of opposition he was sure would rise against the move.
"We're not fixed for it," he explained again.
"But the other small outfits feel the same way," Harris said. "If two of us start the rest will join in."
"Maybe so," the old man said doubtfully. "But noways likely. They're too set on the other side." The thought was deep-rooted and he could not be moved.
"We'll let it out it's only for protection that we all are filing," he said. "And that we don't aim to prove up. The outfits that don't file now will lose out. This will always be open range, more than ninety per cent. of it, and those who file on their water will control the grass. As soon as the squatters see one outfit starting, they'll take out papers on every piece of dirt they can get water to. They'll have six months to move on, then a six months' stay. They'll hang round waiting for things to open up so they can rush in here. The brand owners who haven't hedged theirselves beforehand will run down to file and find that nesters have had papers on all the good pieces right in their dooryard for months. They'll have only the plots left that their home ranch sets on, and likely no water even for that."
The Brandons stayed for the night and rode off at daylight the next morning, while the Three Bar men prepared for a trip to Brill's. As the rest were saddling for the start Harris saw old Rile Foster seated by himself, gazing off across the hills.
"Better come and ride over with us, Rile," he urged. "Bangs would want you to try and forget."
The old man shook his head.
"I'm drifting to-day," he said. "I'll likely be back before long. I back-tracked Blue to their camp and trailed them twenty miles to where they joined another bunch. It was some of Harper's devils—I don't know which four. One way or another, whether I get the right four or not, I'm going to play even for Bangs."
When the rest of the men rode off the old man was still leaning against the shop.
There were less than a dozen others in Brill's store when the Three Bar men crowded through the door. Five men sat at one of the tables in the big room and indulged in a casual game of stud. Harper and Lang were among them. Two of them Harris knew as men named Hopkins and Wade. The fifth was unknown to him.
The albino's eyes met Harris's steadily as he entered at the head of the Three Bar men. Those among the hands who had formerly fraternized as freely with Harper's men as with those who rode for legitimate outfits now held way from them since their foreman had ordered Harper from the Three Bar wagon. They merely nodded as they filed past to the bar.
"Who is the man dealing now?" Harris inquired of Moore.
The freckled youth turned to the card players.
"Magill," he said. "Same breed as the rest."
The news that the Three Bar had turned into a squatter outfit had been widely noised abroad. Carpenter had stopped at Brill's late the night before and announced the fact. Others had seemed already aware of it.
From behind the bar Brill covertly studied the man who was responsible for this change. Four men from the Halfmoon D stood grouped at one end of the room. They split up and mingled among the others. Brill moved up and down behind the bar, polishing it with a towel. One after another he drew each of the men from the Halfmoon D into conversation with the Three Bar foreman to determine whether or not they resented his move. There was no evidence of it in their speech. They had all been present when Harris rode the blue horse and had heard his subsequent remark to Morrow. There was but one reference to the state of affairs at the Three Bar.
"Now you've gone and raised hell," one boy from the Halfmoon D remarked to Harris. "You'll have folks out looking for your scalp." He lowered his voice and Brill moved nearer to wipe away an imaginary spot on the bar. "It's Slade you'll have to buck," the boy warned. "There's likely to be some excitement over in your neighborhood. I'd like right well to ride for the Three Bar next year. Hold a job for me in the spring."
The men from the two outfits mingled as unrestrainedly as before and at last Harris smiled across at Brill.
"Well, have you sized it all up?" he asked.
The storekeeper looked up quickly, knowing that Harris had read his purpose in drawing him into conversation with the four men. He polished the bar thoughtfully, then nodded.
"A man in my business has to keep posted—both ways," he said. "I just wanted to make sure. Five years ago every man would have quit the Three Bar like a snake—feeling was that strong. But the boys drift from place to place and they've seen both ends of it. They don't give a damn one way or the other now. Why should they? They've got nothing at stake. Five years ago you couldn't have hired a man to ride for you. Now they'll be pouring in asking for jobs—just because they figure there'll be some excitement on tap."
The men from the Halfmoon D were due back and inside of an hour they rode off, leaving only Harris's men and the five card-players in the place. Harris walked over to the table and the Three Bar men shifted positions, slouching sidewise at the bar or leaning with their backs to it, alertly watching this unexpected move as the foreman spoke to the albino.
"Let's you and I draw off and have a little talk," he said. "If you can spare the time."
Harper looked up at him in silence. He carefully tilted up the corner of his hole-card and peeked at it, then turned his other cards face down on the table.
"Pass," he said, and rose to face Harris. "Lead the way."
Harris moved over to another table and the two men sat down, facing each other across it. He motioned to Evans and Lanky joined them. Harris plunged abruptly into what he had to say.
"First off, Harper, I want you to get it straight that I'm not fool enough to threaten you—for I know you're not any more afraid of me than I am of you. This is just a little explaining, a business talk, so we'll both know where we stand. It's up to you whether we let each other alone or fight."
"Good start," the albino commented. "Go right on."
"All right—it's like this," Harris resumed. "I'm going to have my hands full without you hiring out to pester us. I'm not out to reform the country. They set the fashion of dog eat dog and every man for himself; so the Three Bar is all that interests me. You keep out of my affairs and I'll let you go your own gait. If you mix in I'll have your men hunted down like rats."
Harper glanced toward the group at the bar.
"You were prudent enough to pick a time when you're three to one to tell me about that," he said. "If I'd kill you in your chair I might have some trouble getting out the door."
"Of course I'd take every chance to play safe," Harris admitted. "But that is beside the point. I'd have told you the same thing if the odds had been reversed."
"Would you?" the albino pondered. "I wonder."
"You know I would," Harris stated. "You've got brains, or you'd have been dead for twenty years. If I thought you were a haphazard homicide I wouldn't be sitting here. But you wouldn't kill a man without looking a few weeks ahead and making sure it was safe."
"Go ahead—Let's hear the rest of it," Harper urged. "You've got an original line of talk."
"You're playing one game and I'm playing mine," Harris said. "You're in the saddle now—like you have been once or twice before. But you know that the sentiment of a community reverses almost overnight. You've stepped out just ahead of a clean-up a time or two in the past. You know how it goes—your friends drop off like you had the plague. Every man's out after your scalp. I've got a hard bunch of terriers over at the Three Bar and you couldn't raid us without a battle big enough to go down in history as the Three Bar war. Either way you'd lose for it would stir folks up—and when they're stirred you're through. Do you remember what Al Moody did up on the Gallatin and what old Con Ristine sprung on the Nations Trail? That will happen again right here."
The two men were leaning toward each other, elbows resting on the table. Harper relaxed and leaned back comfortably in his chair as he twisted a smoke. Evans propped his feet on the table and Harris hung one knee over the arm of his chair. The men at the bar knew that some crisis had been safely passed.
"You talk as if I was running an outfit of my own and had a bunch of riders that could swarm down on you," Harper objected. "I don't even run a brand of my own or have one man riding for me."
"The wild bunch is riding for you," Harris stated.
"Suppose that was true," Harper said. "Then what?"
"In one country after the next they've hit the toboggan whenever they got to feeling too strong. If you line up against me that time has come again. If I get potted from the brush I've hedged it so that those boys that filed over there won't be left in the lurch. There'll be a reward of a thousand dollars hung up for the scalp of each of fifteen men whose names I gathered while I was prowling round—reliable men to carry on what I've begun; and marshals thicker than flies to protect the homestead filings on the Three Bar."
"Then it might be bad policy to bushwhack you," Harper observed.
"You can go your own gait," Harris said. "As long as you lay off Three Bar cows. You invited me one time to come down to your hangout in the Breaks. I won't ever make that visit unless you call on the Three Bar first; then, just out of politeness, I'll ride over at the head of a hundred men."
"Then it don't look as if we'd get anywhere, visiting back and forth," Harper said.
"Now don't think I'm throwing a bluff or threatening; I'm just telling you. You could recite a number of things that could happen to me in return—all of 'em true. I'm just counting that you've got brains and can see it's not going to help either one of us to get lined up wrong. What do you say—shall we call it hands off between the Three Bar and you?"
The albino half-closed his eyes, the pale eyeballs glittering through the slit of his lids as he reflected on this proposition, tapping a careless finger on his knee. He glanced absent-mindedly toward the bar, his thoughts wholly occupied with the matter in hand. A pair of eyes that gazed back at him drew his own and he found himself looking at Bentley, the man who repped with the Three Bar for Slade. The albino's suspicions were as fluid and easily roused as those of a beast of prey in a dangerous neighborhood. With one of those quick shifts of which his mind was capable he concentrated every mental effort toward linking Bentley with some unpleasant episode of the past. The man had turned away and Harper could only sense a vague feeling that he was dangerous to him, without definite point upon which to base his suspicions. At the sound of Harris's voice his mind made another lightning shift back to the present.
"Well?" Harris asked.
"Why, if I had anything to do with it, like you seem to think, I'd advise against our bucking each other," Harper said. "I'd try to get along—and declare hands off." He rose, nodded to the two men and returned to the stud game.
"He'll do it too," Evans predicted. "There's that much fixed anyway—not a bad piece of work."
The two men returned to the bar and Brill moved close to Harris. For fifteen years he had stood behind that bar and observed the men of the whole countryside at their worst—and best; and he knew men. As well as if he had heard the words of the three at the table he knew that Harris and Harper had reached an agreement of some sort that was satisfactory to both.
"Take the boys over a drink on me," Harris said, and Brill slid a bottle and five whisky glasses on to a tray and moved over to the table.
"Here's a drink on the Three Bar boss," he announced.
Lang scowled, remembering the recent occasion when Harris had ordered them off.
"To hell with——" he commenced, but the albino cut him short.
"Drink it," he said.
Ten minutes later the five men rose to go. Harris looked at his watch.
"I'm off," he said to Evans. "Try and get the boys home by to-morrow morning if it's possible."
He went outside and mounted as the five rustlers swung to their saddles.
"I'm going your way as far as the forks," he said to Harper.
The Three Bar men were treated to the sight of their foreman riding down the road beside Harper at the head of four of the worst ruffians in the State.
And behind the bar Brill moved softly back and forth when not serving drinks, pausing opposite first one group and then the next to dab at the polished wood with his cloth, listening carefully to the conversation and gauging it to determine whether the apparent sentiment toward the squatter foreman was sincere or would prove different when the men, flushed with undiluted rye, were unrestrained by his presence. At one end of the bar Evans and Bentley conversed together in low tones but whenever Brill strolled casually to their end the conference lagged. The few sentences which reached his ears were of trivial concern.