The Settling of the Sage Part 22

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.

XI

The two loggers had finished cutting their quota of timber for the homestead cabins and the white peeled logs lay piled and ready to be snaked down to the Three Bar on the first heavy snows of fall. The choppers had transferred their operations to the lower broken slopes which they scoured for the scattered cedars of the foothills, cutting them for fence posts and piling them in spots accessible to the wagons to be hauled whenever the mule teams could be spared.

The acreage of plowed ground increased day by day and would continue till frost claimed the ground. As soon as the brush was burnt the mule teams pulled heavy log drags across the field, pulverizing the lumps and leveling inequalities of the surface.

Evans had been sent out as foreman of the beef round-up while Harris remained behind to direct the operations at the ranch. The details of the new work were unfamiliar ones for the girl and she was entirely absorbed in learning the reasons for every move; so much engrossed, in fact, that she had not left the Three Bar during the month which had elapsed since the dance at Brill's. A few days before Evans was due with the beef herd she rode Papoose away from the ranch, intending to make a long-deferred visit to the Brandons.

After covering two-thirds of the distance along the foot of the hills to the V L she saw a rider dip over a ridge two miles away. She unslung Harris's gla.s.ses and dismounted to watch for his reappearance.

When he came again into her field of view another man was with him and they were driving a few head of cows before them. They angled into a valley that led off to the south, dropping into it some three miles from her.

She mounted Papoose and headed him on a parallel course, keeping well out of sight behind the intervening waves of ground. After holding her direction at a stiff lope till satisfied that she had pa.s.sed the men she angled across to intersect their course.

As Papoose topped a low hogback that flanked the valley she saw the men riding toward her down the bottoms, driving twenty or more head of cows. One of the horses threw up his head, his ears p.r.i.c.ked sharply toward her, and the swift upward tilt of the rider's hat, as swiftly lowered, informed her that she had been sighted. The other man did not look up. They lifted their horses from a walk to a stiff trot and veered past the cows, then looked up as if just aware of her approach, and waited for her. The men were Bentley and Carp.

Bentley greeted her cheerily. Carp nodded without a word.

"What are you two doing up here?" she demanded without parley.

"I repped with the Three Bar wagon and Carp worked with you for a spell so we sort of know the range," Bentley explained. "Slade sent us up to drift any strays back south."

"Those you were driving are Three Bar stuff--every hoof," she said.

"All two-year-old she-stock."

Bentley turned and regarded the little herd they had just pa.s.sed.

"Them? Sho--we wasn't driving them," Bentley denied easily. "They just drifted ahead of us as we rode down the bottoms. A cow critter will always move on ahead of a man. We rode on past 'em as soon as we decided to amble along."

She knew that they were on safe ground. Any cow would drift on before a horseman.

"The only way to convict a man on a case like this is to shoot him out of the saddle before he has a chance to pa.s.s the cows," she said.

"That's what will happen to the next Slade rider that gets noticed with any Three Bar cows moving out in front of him and headed south. You can carry that word to Slade."

She whirled Papoose and headed back for the ranch, the intended visit to the Brandons postponed. Harris was piling brush in the lower field when she arrived and she informed him of the act of the two men.

"I wouldn't put it past Carp," he said. "But I hadn't sized Bentley up just that way. It's hard to tell. If Carp shows up here again we'll make him a visit in the middle of the night--and he won't trouble us much after that."

"We'd better pay Slade a night visit too," she said. Her feelings toward Slade had undergone a complete revulsion. She knew beyond a doubt that he had been responsible for the raid on Three Bar bulls.

The wild bunch would have had no object in such a foray. Figuring it from any angle Slade was the only one man who could possibly derive any benefit from that. She had come to see that Slade was fighting with his back to the wall,--that he had run his course and come to the end of it if squatters secured a start in his range, and he considered the act of the Three Bar the opening wedge which would throw open the way for the nesters to crowd him out.

The evening of the following day the beef herd trailed into the lower end of the Three Bar valley and bedded for the night. In the morning the trail herd was headed for the railroad under a full crew, for Harris had kept all hands on the job.

There was none of the fast and varied work of the round-up; the trail-herding of beef to market seeming a slow and monotonous procedure in comparison. The cows were drifted slowly south, well spread out and grazing as they moved. Harris detailed two men to ride the "points,"

the two forward extremities of the herd; two others rode the "drags,"

holding to either flank of the rear end of the drive. In choppy country he detailed a third pair to skirt the middle flanks and prevent leakage up any feathering coulees.

The chuck wagon followed a mile behind and the horse wrangler brought up the rear, bringing the remuda, much depleted in numbers from full round-up strength, for it now carried but three extra horses for each man.

Three hours out from the Three Bar some of the cows showed a disposition to rest and calmly bedded down; the forward drift of the herd was arrested. After a prolonged rest they rose in scattering groups to feed and once more they were moved slowly to the south. The men not on active duty with the herd rode in knots and whiled away the time as best they could. It was the habit to cover less than twenty miles a day with the beef herd as any strenuous exertion would reduce the weight of the gra.s.s-fattened steers.

The drove was a nondescript lot. In addition to the steers and older cows that comprised every trail herd, the off-color she-stock had been carefully culled from the range.

Harris pointed to the bunch.

"Look that a.s.sortment over well, Billie," he advised. "A few seasons more, with fair luck, and you won't see one of these rainbow droves with every color from brindle to strawberry roan; none of those humpbacked runts; they'll all be gone. That's almost the last mongrel herd that will ever wear your brand. They'll run better every year until we have all big flat-backed beef stock--a straight white-face run."