The Settling of the Sage

  XI

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

  The acreage of plowed ground increased day by day and would continuetill frost claimed the ground. As soon as the brush was burnt the muleteams pulled heavy log drags across the field, pulverizing the lumpsand leveling inequalities of the surface.

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

  After covering two-thirds of the distance along the foot of the hillsto the V L she saw a rider dip over a ridge two miles away. Sheunslung Harris's glasses and dismounted to watch for his reappearance.When he came again into her field of view another man was with him andthey were driving a few head of cows before them. They angled into avalley that led off to the south, dropping into it some three milesfrom her.

  She mounted Papoose and headed him on a parallel course, keeping wellout of sight behind the intervening waves of ground. After holding herdirection at a stiff lope till satisfied that she had passed the menshe angled across to intersect their course.

  As Papoose topped a low hogback that flanked the valley she saw the menriding toward her down the bottoms, driving twenty or more head ofcows. One of the horses threw up his head, his ears pricked sharplytoward her, and the swift upward tilt of the rider's hat, as swiftlylowered, informed her that she had been sighted. The other man did notlook up. They lifted their horses from a walk to a stiff trot andveered 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 spellso we sort of know the range," Bentley explained. "Slade sent us up todrift 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 passed.

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

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

  "The only way to convict a man on a case like this is to shoot him outof the saddle before he has a chance to pass the cows," she said."That's what will happen to the next Slade rider that gets noticed withany Three Bar cows moving out in front of him and headed south. Youcan carry that word to Slade."

  She whirled Papoose and headed back for the ranch, the intended visitto the Brandons postponed. Harris was piling brush in the lower fieldwhen 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 upjust that way. It's hard to tell. If Carp shows up here again we'llmake him a visit in the middle of the night--and he won't trouble usmuch after that."

  "We'd better pay Slade a night visit too," she said. Her feelingstoward Slade had undergone a complete revulsion. She knew beyond adoubt 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 itfrom any angle Slade was the only one man who could possibly derive anybenefit from that. She had come to see that Slade was fighting withhis back to the wall,--that he had run his course and come to the endof it if squatters secured a start in his range, and he considered theact of the Three Bar the opening wedge which would throw open the wayfor the nesters to crowd him out.

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

  There was none of the fast and varied work of the round-up; thetrail-herding of beef to market seeming a slow and monotonous procedurein comparison. The cows were drifted slowly south, well spread out andgrazing 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 choppycountry he detailed a third pair to skirt the middle flanks and preventleakage up any feathering coulees.

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

  Three hours out from the Three Bar some of the cows showed adisposition to rest and calmly bedded down; the forward drift of theherd was arrested. After a prolonged rest they rose in scatteringgroups to feed and once more they were moved slowly to the south. Themen not on active duty with the herd rode in knots and whiled away thetime as best they could. It was the habit to cover less than twentymiles a day with the beef herd as any strenuous exertion would reducethe weight of the grass-fattened steers.

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

  Harris pointed to the bunch.

  "Look that assortment over well, Billie," he advised. "A few seasonsmore, with fair luck, and you won't see one of these rainbow droveswith every color from brindle to strawberry roan; none of thosehumpbacked runts; they'll all be gone. That's almost the last mongrelherd that will ever wear your brand. They'll run better every yearuntil we have all big flat-backed beef stock--a straight white-facerun."

  The third morning out from the home ranch broke stormy. Gray, leadenskies and low scudding, drab clouds drifted over the foothills andobscured the view of the peaks. A nasty drizzle dampened the face ofthe world and laid its clammy touch on all living things. Thiscondition prevailed all through the day and shortly after the cows hadbeen milled and bedded for the night the drizzle turned to rain, nowfalling straight and soft, again in fierce squalls whipped by varyingshifts of wind. A saddled night horse was picketed for every man. Thewagon stood close under a hill while the herd was bedded on a broadflat at the mouth of a valley.

  The men lay in the open, their bed-tarps folded to shed as muchmoisture as possible. The soggy patter of the rain on her teepeelulled the girl to sleep but she was frequently roused. A dullmuttering materialized suddenly into a sharp thunderstorm and thecanvas walls of her teepee were almost continuously illuminated bysuccessive flashes. The picketed horses fretted and stamped. Betweenpeals she heard the voices of the night guards singing to soothe theirrestless charges on the bed ground. One of the men shifted his bedroll from a gathering puddle to some higher point of ground.

  She dropped to sleep again but was roused by voices outside as theguards changed shifts and she estimated that it must be near morning,the fourth change of guards.

  The sounds ceased as the men who had just been relieved turned in fortheir sleep. A horse neighed shrilly within a few yards of her teepee.Another took it up and an answer sounded from the flats. There was acrash of pistol shots, a rumble of hoofs and the instant command ofHarris.

  "Roll out! Roll out!" he called. "Saddles! On your horses."
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  Even as he shouted there came the swish of wet canvas as the mentumbled from their bed rolls, the imprecations of the suddenlyawakened. Billie thrust her head from the teepee flap, the watercascading down her neck. The successive flashes showed the men tuggingdesperately at boots and chaps, their grotesque, froglike leaps fortheir tethered mounts. She saw Harris, buckling his belt as he ran,and the next flash showed him vaulting to Calico's back.

  The thunder of hoofs drew her eyes to the bed ground where a black masssurged, then bore off up the valley. A scattered line of riders boredown on the herd, two ghostly apparitions among them throwing the cowsinto a panic of fear. She knew these for riders flapping yellowslickers in the wind. As the light faded she saw three horizontal redstreaks cut the obscurity and knew that one of her guards was in themidst of the rustlers, doing his single-handed best. The red splashesof answering shots showed on all sides of him. She tugged on her chapsand boots, slipped Papoose's picket rope and vaulted to his back.

  The scene was once more illuminated as she rode from the wagon. A bigpinto horse was strung out and running his best, the other Three Barmen pounding after him. A riderless horse circled in the flat, a darkshape sprawled near him, and she wondered which one of her men had gonedown. A knot of horsemen were turning up an opening gulch on the farside of the valley. A half-dozen Three Bar riders veered their horsesfor the spot. Harris turned in his saddle and his voice reached herabove the tumult.

  "Let 'em go!" he shouted. "Let 'em go! Hold the herd!"

  Far off on the opposite side she made out a lone horseman riding at afull run along the sidehill above the cows as he made a supreme effortto reach the head of the run. The Three Bar men split and streamed upboth sides of the bottoms. The flashes had ceased except for brief,quivering plays of less than a second's duration. She hung her spursinto Papoose and trusted to his footwork. The swift little horsepassed one rider, then another. There were only the rumble of hoofsand the crazed bawling of cows to guide her as she drew near the rearof the herd. A half-flare showed the pinto a bare twenty yards ahead,with Harris putting him at the slope to pass the cows. She swung herown horse after him and she felt the frequent skid of his feet on thetreacherous sidehill. Papoose braced on his haunches and slid down aprecipitous bank, buckled up the far side and down again, then swoopedacross a long flat bench. Three times she felt the heaving plunge andjar as the little horse skimmed over cut-bank coulees and washes whichher own eyes could not see in the dripping velvet black.

  From the sounds below she knew they were well up on the flanks of therun and nearing the peak. The stampede seemed slowing. A long,wavering flash revealed Harris a dozen jumps ahead. Papoose followedthe paint-horse as Harris put Calico down the slippery sidehill andlifted him round the point of the herd. In the same flash Billie hadseen two slickers out before the peaks of the run, flapping weirdly inthe faces of the foremost cows. This accounted for the slowing-up shehad sensed. Two of her men were before them and she wondered how thishad come to pass.

  The lightning-play broke forth once more. She saw two riders swinginground the opposite point. The two slickers were working in the center.Harris's gun flashed six times. She jerked her own and rolled it. Thetwo riders who had just rounded the far point joined in. Cows in thefront ranks held back from this fearsome commotion out in front.Others, driven by the pressure behind, forged past them, only to holdback in their turn as the guns flashed before their eyes.

  The storm ceased as suddenly as it had begun and for two miles she rodein inky darkness. The last mile was slower. It was showing gray inthe east and the night run had spent its force. The herd stopped andthe cows gazed stupidly about, standing with drooping heads and heavingsides. Three Bar men showed on both flanks and in the rear. They hadheld the drove intact and prevented its splitting up in detachments andscattering through the night.

  Horne and Moore rode over to them and for the first time the girlnoticed that the two men who had wielded slickers out in front of therun were nowhere to be seen.

  "Who was the pair out ahead?" Moore asked. "And what swallowed 'em up?"

  Harris shook his head.

  "Billie and I were the first to make the front," he said.

  "Not any," Moore stated positively. "I saw 'em five minutes before youtwo swung round the point. I was wondering who had outrode thepaint-horse and Billie's little nag."

  Moore's left side was plastered with mud, as was the left side of hismount.

  "I was on guard and halfway up the far side," he said. "Split Ear tooka header with me and delayed me some."

  He pointed to the mud crusted on his clothes. Billie knew that he wasthe lone rider she had seen on the flanks of the herd as she rode awayfrom the wagon. The fall accounted for their Founding the point aheadof him. Moore was looking off across the country.

  "Do you mean to tell me you didn't see those two slickers flapping outin front?" he demanded.

  "I confess I didn't observe any," Harris said. "You're getting spooky,Moore. A couple of white cows, likely, out ahead of the rest."

  Moore regarded him curiously.

  "Maybe that's so," he said. "Waving their tails in the air, sort of."He grinned and turned his horse to head back a bunch that had driftedout of the herd.

  "The boys made a nice ride," Harris said to Horne. "You float roundfrom one to the next and tell 'em we'll soon have a feed. I'll rideback and send the wagon up."

  Billie rode with him as he skirted the herd and started on the returntrip. Her mind was occupied with the two riders who had slowed the runand disappeared. There had been something familiar about them, forevery man has his individual way of sitting a saddle as he has anindividuality of gait when on foot. As she had viewed them in thelightning's flash they had closely resembled Bentley and Carp. But shedecided that this resemblance had been but a fancied one, suggested bythe fact that the two men had been much on her mind of late.

  "We're not hurt bad," Harris said. "The boys held them bunched in goodshape. Maybe forty or so head down with broken legs--and ten pounds offat apiece run off the rest."

  A hatred of Slade was growing within her. Here, too, was a case whereno other would benefit by the senseless stampede. If the beef herdcould be broken up it would cause a delay to round it up in a strangerange with the certainty of many cows being missed,--a case ofweakening the Three Bar.

  She had been so absorbed in learning the details of the new work, soelated at its progress, that she had come to believe in its ultimatesuccess. And they had been unmolested for so long a time. Then hadcome the wanton slaughter of Three Bar bulls and now the stampede ofthe trail herd. It was conclusive proof that Slade had abandoned hisformer wearing-down process as too slow and was out to crush the ThreeBar in the speediest possible way and through any available means.

  There rose in her a flare of resentment against her neighbors, theBrandons of the V L and the McVeys of the Halfmoon D. Both had takenout papers on the best land in their respective localities as soon asforewarned of her intended move. Ostensibly this was done merely as aprotection against outsiders but in reality they were hoping that shewould win out, in which case they would go through with their filingsand prove up. But neither outfit would come out in the open and giveher their support, preferring to hold aloof and benefit by her successif it so transpired and lose nothing themselves if she shouldfail--part of the policy of every man for himself--in the meantimeletting her brand bear the brunt of the fight.

  Harris, too, was pondering over Slade's change of tactics. He feltassured that Slade's own men had not participated in starting the run.Slade would not let any considerable number of his boys know that muchabout him. Some of Lang's men had undoubtedly been hired to stampedethe Three Bar herd.

  "The very fact that Slade is so bald with it is proof that he sees thenecessity of crowding us fast," Harris said. "If we get too big astart he's blown up--and he hasn't had anything to work on but plowedground. He's out now to worry
us at odd ends. We can expect a steadyrun of mishaps now, for he'll work fast--but we'll win out in the end."

  She nodded a little wearily for she knew that with Slade throwing allhis forces against her the Three Bar would be hard pressed. Inaddition to this worry her mind was concerned with the riderless horseshe had seen as she rode away from the wagon, the huddled figuresprawled in the flat. Every Three Bar rider was a friend and shehesitated to hear which one of her men had gone down in the raid.

  "Who was it?" she asked at last, and Harris divined that she washarking back to the fallen night guard who had tried to head theraiders alone.

  "I've been trying not to think about that," he said. "Lanky was a goodpal of mine. I saw him go down, but I couldn't stop right then."

  Evans occupied a place in her regard that was perhaps a notch higherthan that of any other of the crew.

  "Can't we prove anything on Slade--do anything to stop him?" shedemanded. "If they've killed Lanky, I'll perjure myself if it's theonly way. I'll have Alden pick him up and I'll swear I saw him do thething himself. He's as guilty as if he actually had."

  "I've a bait or two out for Slade," Harris said. "But that way mayprove too slow. If Lanky's gone under, I expect I'll have to pick aquarrel with Slade and hurry things along."

  "Don't you!" she objected. For all of her confidence in Harris'sefficiency in most respects, her implicit belief in his courage, shecould not forget the awkward swing of his gun and she had a swiftvision of him facing Slade without a chance.

  A crash of wagon wheels and the voice of Waddles admonishing the horsesinterrupted her. The chuck wagon rolled round a bend as the big cookfollowed the trail of the night run. Every bed had been rolled andloaded to eliminate the necessity of a return. The remuda trailedbehind the wagon under the combined supervision of the nighthawk andthe wrangler.

  "How is Lanky?" was Harris's first query.

  Waddles jerked a thumb over his shoulder. Evans, shot once through thearm and a second time through the shoulder, reclined on thetriple-thickness bed roll the cook had spread for him on the floor ofthe wagon.

  "Only nicked--clean holes and no bones," Lanky said. "I'll be allright as soon as Waddles will let me out of this chariot and I get toriding comfortable on a horse."

  "He'll come round fine in a few days if we can keep him offen a horseand riding comfortable in the wagon," Waddles countered. "I've givehim orders to that effect."

  Evans groaned.

  "He drives over places I wouldn't cross afoot," he complained. "Didyou hold the run?"

  Reassured on this point he flattened out on his pallet and the wagonheld on toward the herd.

  The weary cows were held over for a day of rest. The night guards weredoubled and this precaution was maintained during the succeeding twostops before reaching the shipping point.

  Harris and Billie sat on the top rail of the loading chute while thelast few Three Bar steers were being prodded on board the cars.

  Harris slipped from his perch and motioned to Moore and Horne.

  "You can go up town now and take on a few drinks. Hunt up an oldfriend or two and wag your chins. Make it right secretive andconfidential and make each one promise faithful not to breathe asyllable to another living soul. That way the news is sure to travelrapid."

  He returned to the girl as the stock train pulled out. Two hands waveda joyous farewell from the top of the cars, delighted at the prospectof a trip to market with the steers.

  "I don't pretend to regret that old Rile played even for Bang's,"Harris said. "But I wish he'd sorted out some one else in the albino'splace. It was bad business for the Three Bar when Harper went down."

  "He was the head of the gang," she said. "The worst of the lot."

  "And for that reason he was able to hold them down," Harris explained."It was some of the outfit from over in the Breaks that stampeded us.Slade wouldn't let his own boys know that much about him so he'd hireLang. Harper had brains. He wouldn't have gone in for that. Lang hasthrown in against us. He's all bulk and no brains and as savage as anApache buck. He'll hang himself in the end but in the interim he mayhand us considerable grief."