She could find no ready-made answer to this surprising statement. He sprawled comfortably on the grass, turning over in his mind the conditions that were but a repetition of the history of so many frontiers; first the earliest settlers resenting the intrusion of the later ones and resorting to lawless means of protecting their priority; then the strengthening of the outlaw element, half the countryside in league with the wild bunch, the two opposing factions secretly hiring the predatory class to prey upon rival interests; then, inevitably, the clean split, usually occasioned by the outlaws having increased in power until they felt competent to defy both sides, to play both ends against the middle, to commit atrocities that opened the eyes of those who, believing they had subsidized the lawless, suddenly woke to the fact that they had subsidized themselves; then the outlaws, in their turn, discovering that every man's hand was against them; the ruthless establishing of a definite line between those inside and those outside the law, replacing the vague middle ground of semi-lawlessness. Always their friends fell away from them, those secretly leagued with them fearing to be seen in their company, and those not too definitely known to belong to their ranks invariably quitting them cold, often joining forces against them and developing into more or less substantial citizens, according to the standards of their day.

"Don't you know that the albino will kill you for that?" the girl asked at length.

"Not unless he can stage it as a personal quarrel," he said. "He'll never follow it up as coming out of what happened to-day by taking it out on me as temporary foreman of the Three Bar—for ordering him off."

"Why?" she puzzled. "What possible difference would that make to a man like him?"

"Just this," he said: "There's a good majority of folks that don't relish seeing Harper's bunch ride up—that feed them through policy. But whenever you make it plain to a man that he's compelled to do a thing whether he likes it or not it's ten to one he'll balk out of sheer human pride. If Harper kills the Three Bar foreman on the grounds that he refused to feed all his men—why then, right off, every other foreman and owner within a hundred miles starts to resenting the possibility that maybe the albino feels the same way toward him. Harper knows that."

"But if your theory had been wrong?" she persisted. "What then?"

"Then," he said, "then there'd have been hell and repeat. I wasn't just acting as me, a personal affair, but, as I took pains to remark aloud, as the foreman of the Three Bar. Every Three Bar man would have gone into action the second Harper made a move at me. You know that—and Harper knew it."

She realized the soundness of this statement. The one unalterable code of the country, a code that had been fostered till it eclipsed all others, decreed that a man should be loyal to the brand for which he rode. The whole fabric of the cow business was based on that one point.

"And a wrangle of that magnitude was something he couldn't risk," Harris said. "It would stir folks up, and any time they're stirred a mite too far Harper has come to the end of his rope. Any other brand could have done the same—only folks fall into a set habit of mind and figure they must do what others do just because it's custom."

"But now they'll work their deviltry all the stronger against the Three Bar," she predicted. "They could wreck us if they tried. You couldn't get a conviction in five years. Not a man would testify against one of Harper's outfit."

"Then we'll put on a fighting crew and hold them off," he said. "But that's not the layout that will be hardest to handle in the long run. Slade is the one real hard nut for the Three Bar to crack. He can work it a dozen different ways and you couldn't prove one of them on him to save your soul. He's one smooth hombre—Slade."

Harris rose and headed for his bed roll and the girl sought the shelter of her teepee for a rest. All was quiet near the wagon till Waddles boomed the summons to feed. After the meal a youth named Moore mounted a saddled horse that was picketed nearby and rode up a branching gulch, returning with a dry cedar log which he snaked to the wagon at the end of his rope. After a few hours' rest and the prospects of a full night's sleep ahead the hands snatched an hour for play.

They sat cross-legged round the fire kindled from the cedar and raised their voices in song. Waddles drew forth a guitar and picked a few chords. Bentley, the man who repped for Slade, carried the air and the rest joined in. The voices were untrained but from long experience in rendering every song each man carried his part without a discordant note. Evans sang a perfect bass. Bangs a clear tenor; Moore faked a baritone that satisfied all hands and Waddles wagged his head in unison with the picking of his guitar and hummed, occasionally accenting the air with a musical, drumlike boom. They rambled through all the old familiar songs of the range. The Texan herded his little dogie from the Staked Plains to Abilene; the herd was soothed on the old bed ground—bed down my dogie, bed down—and the poor cowboy was many times buried far out on the lone prair-ee.

Bangs had stationed himself so that he could see the girl and throughout the evening his surprised eyes never once strayed from Billie Warren's face.

She leaned back against the wagon wheel, enjoying it all, but her complacence was jarred as she half-turned and noted Morrow's face, drawn and bleak, unsoftened by the music. Again the feeling of dislike for him rose within her; but he was an efficient hand and she had nothing definite against him. At the end of an hour Waddles rose and returned his instrument to the wagon. The group broke up and every man turned in.

Billie Warren lay in her teepee, her mind busily going over the events of the day. The night sounds of the range drifted to her. A bull-bat rasped a note or two from above. A picketed horse stamped restlessly just outside and a range cow bawled from an adjacent slope. The night-hawk had relieved the wrangler and she could half-hear, half-feel the low jar of many hoofs as he grazed the remuda slowly up the valley, singing to while away the time.

She reflected that Cal Harris was at least possessed of self-confidence and that procrastination was certainly not to be numbered among his failings. It came to her that his interests, for the present, were identical with her own. As half-owner in the Three Bar it would be as much to his advantage as to her own to build it up. Waddles's warped legs prevented his acting as foreman on the job and it might be that the other man would find some way to prevent the leak that was sapping the life from the Three Bar. His half-ownership entitled him to the place. Billie Warren loved her brand and her personal distrust of Harris was submerged in the hope that his sharing the full responsibility with herself might be a step toward putting it back on the old-time plane of prosperity.

The jar of hoofs had ceased and she knew that the remuda had bedded down; and having at last reached a decision she fell asleep with the crooning voice of the nighthawk drifting to her ears.



V

It seemed but a few fleeting moments before Waddles's voice roused her.

"Roll out!" he bawled. "Feet in the trough!"

There was instant activity, the jingle of belts and spurs and in five minutes every man was fully clothed and splashing at the creek. It was showing rose and gray in the east when the meal was finished and the cook's voice was once more raised.

"All set! Ru-un-n 'em in!" he called, and there came the rumble of hoofs as the nighthawk acted on this order and headed the remuda toward the wagon. Two men mounted the horses that had been picketed close at hand throughout the night and stationed themselves on either side of the open end of the rope corral to guide the horse herd into it.

The horses could not be seen until almost upon them, looming suddenly out of the dim gray of early morning and surging into the corral. The nighthawk and the two men already mounted rode around it, driving back any horse that showed a disposition to leave the corral by a downward slash of a doubled rope across his face and ears. The men went in and scattered through the milling herd, each one watching his chance to put his noose on a circle horse of his own string.

When most of the men were mounted Billie urged Papoose over near Harris's horse.

"Do you know how to throw a circle?" she asked.

"After a fashion," he said. "I've bossed one or two in the past."

"Then we'd better be off," she suggested. "Since you're the Three Bar foreman it's for you to say when."

"I only preempted that job for ten minutes or so," he explained with evident embarrassment. "You surely didn't think I was trying to boost myself into the foreman's job for keeps?"

"No," she said. "But you're half-owner—and you can handle men. I'm giving you free rein to show what you can do."

Harris straightened in his saddle and motioned to the men.

"Let's go!" he ordered, and headed his horse for the left-hand flank of the valley. They ascended the first slopes, picked a long ridge and followed it to the crest of the low divide between that valley and the next.

Harris increased the pace and they swept up-country along the divide at a steady lope. When traveling or making a long day's ride on a single horse the cowhand saves his mount and travels always at a trail-trot, but with work to be done, three circles to be thrown in a day and with a string of fresh horses for every hand, the paramount issue of the circle is the saving of time rather than the saving of mounts. As they reached the head of the first draw that led back down into the valley Harris waved an arm.

"Carp," he called, and a middle-aged man named Carpenter, abbreviated to Carp, wheeled his horse from the group and headed down the draw.

A half-mile farther on they reached the head of another gulch.

"Hanson!" the new foreman called, and the man who repped for the Halfmoon D dropped out. One man was detailed to work each draw and when some five miles up the divide there were but half the crew left. Harris dropped down a long ridge and crossed the bottoms. Far down the valley the wagon showed through the thin, clear air. The foreman led the way to the opposite divide and doubled back, sending a man down every gulch.

The girl rode with him. Down in the bottoms they could see the riders detailed on the opposite side hazing the cows out of their respective draws and heading them toward the wagon. The first few men left their cows in the flat and veered past them to station themselves near the wagon and block the valley, sitting their horses at hundred-yard intervals across it.

Harris and the girl worked the last draw themselves and when they drove their cows out of the mouth of it they found a herd already milled, two hundred yards above the wagon. Harris left her and circled the bunch, estimating it.

A few belated riders were bringing their quotas to swell the herds. Frequently a bunch of cows made a break to leave and many were allowed to make good their escape to the safety of the broken slopes. But these were only marked stuff previously branded and any attempt including a cow with an unbranded calf was instantly blocked. Each rider noted the brands of any cows which he let escape and more particularly still he scanned them with an eye for the presence of a "slick," an animal missed in previous round-ups and wearing no brand. Slick cows were fair prey for any man who first put his rope on them and he was entitled to run his own brand on a slick or to mark it with the brand for which he rode and draw down a certain scale of premiums at the end of the round-up season.

Harris changed mounts, throwing his saddle on the paint-horse. When the last rider appeared with his bunch and threw it into the herd Harris signaled all hands to change mounts. Half the men repaired to the rope corral and caught up cow horses while the balance of the crew held the herd, each one relieving some other as soon as he had saddled a fresh horse.

When the hands commenced working the herd the Three Bar girl watched the trained cow horses with an interest that was always fresh, for from long experience they thoroughly understood every move of the game.

A sagebrush fire was burning fifty yards above the wagon and each man rode past it, leaned from his saddle and dropped his running iron in the flame.

The men worked round the edge of the bunch and slipped a noose on every calf that was thrown to the edge of the constantly shifting mass. Morrow roped the first calf and dragged it to the fire. A cow darted away with her calf and Bangs's horse whirled to head her back. As Bangs shook out his rope the horse changed tactics and abandoned the course that would have carried him past to turn them, following in close behind them instead. After two preliminary swings Bangs made his throw and missed. The horse did not miss a step but kept on close behind the calf while his rider coiled the rope. The second throw fell fair and the horse set his feet and braced himself as the calf hit the end of the rope.

As much as she loved the round-up, many times as she had seen it, Billie Warren had never become calloused to the brutalities perpetrated on the calves. She withdrew and sat in the shade of the wagon. She was downwind and the dust raised by the trampling hoofs floated down to her, mingled with the odor of steaming cows, the acrid smoke of the sage fire and the taint of scorched hair and flesh.

Some of the men handled their hot irons with makeshift tongs of split sage, which were soon burnt through and replaced. Others used slender, long-handled pliers for the work.

The horses held the calves helpless, moving just enough to keep the ropes taut. Evans loosed a fresh-branded calf and rode over to the wagon for a drink. Several cows raced wildly round at a distance from the fire.

"One of those old sisters will go on the prod and make a break for some one right soon," he predicted to the girl.

A calf bawled in pain and a cow, maddened by the appeal of her offspring, charged the group around the fire. The horses that stood there, holding calves, pricked their ears and watched her rush alertly but before it was necessary for any one of them to dodge, Slade's rep slipped his rope on her, jumped his horse off at an angle and brought her down.

Evans pointed to where Harris, seated on the big pinto, was working slowly through the center of the herd.

"He's gone in after another slick," Evans said. "Watch the paint-horse work."

Calico was moving after the animal Harris wanted, working easily and without a single sharp rush that would cause undue disturbance among the cows.

"A good cow horse is like a hound," Lanky observed. "Let him spot the critter you're wanting and nothing can shake him off."

Calico followed a serpentine course through the mass, crowded a three-year-old to the edge and cut him out. The animal attempted to dodge back among his fellows but the paint-horse turned as on a pivot and blocked him, then started him off in a straightaway run.

"There's a real rope-horse," Lanky said. "I've been noticing him work. Look!"

Calico had braced himself as the slick was roped, shoving his hind feet out ahead, squatting on his haunches and raising his forefeet almost clear of the ground.

"Cal broke him without shoes in front," Evans explained. "His feet got tender after he'd jerked a steer or two and he learned to sock his hind feet ahead and take the jar on them. He'll last two years longer that way. A horse that takes all the weight on his front feet in jerking heavy stuff soon gets stove up in the shoulders and has to be condemned. This Cal Harris has one whole bagful of knowing tricks."

He rode back to the work after this endorsement of her choice of a foreman.

Through all the turmoil the nighthawk slept peacefully in the shade of a sage-clump. Waddles dozed in the wagon but suddenly came to life with a start and signaled to the wrangler who, in his turn, waved an arm to the man nearest him. The four wagon horses were roped and harnessed while Waddles loaded the bed rolls on the tailgate and lashed them fast. The rope corral was dismantled and loaded. The chuck wagon veered past the herd and lumbered up the valley and the wrangler and one other followed with the horse herd.

In a short space of time the herd had been worked, the last calf branded, and Harris led the men up the bottoms. As they rode each one reported the brands of all stock which he had let break away from his bunch before reaching the herd. Each rep entered the number and kind of his own brand so reported to the former tally taken of the herd.

Five miles up the valley, at the spot where Harris had crossed it a few hours before, they found the wagon waiting at the new stand, the corral refashioned and the remuda inside it. It was but ten o'clock but the first circle had commenced at four. The noon meal on the round-up was served whenever the first circle was completed. The men fell ravenously on the hot meal, changed to fresh circle horses and started again.

It was falling dusk when the herd gathered in the third circle had been worked and the last calf branded for the day. The men had unsaddled and spread their bed rolls before Waddles had announced the meal. The nighthawk came riding up on the horse he had picketed prior to going to sleep before sunup at the first stand. His bed roll was lashed on a half-wild range horse he had roped and it sagged to one side, having no pack saddle to keep it from slipping, and he spoke in no gentle terms of an outfit that would pull out without troubling to throw his pack saddle from the wagon or taking pains to picket an extra horse. His fretfulness passed, however, as he smelled the hot coffee and he repaired to the wagon, his ill humor dissipated.

There was no music that night, every man retiring to his bed roll the instant he finished his meal.

At the end of the first week out from the ranch Harris pulled up his horse beside the girl's and showed her his tally book.

"We've run Slade's mark on more calves than we have our own," he said. "That's one way he works."

"But that's not his fault and it doesn't mean anything," she said. "His cows are sure to drift. This first strip we've worked is the southernmost edge of our range and his north wagon works the strip right south of us. We're sure to find a number of his cows. As we double back on our next lap we'll not find the same proportion."

"Not quite—but plenty," he predicted. "We've marked more calves for Slade in one week than all his three wagon crews will mark for the Three Bar in a year. The first three weeks of each season your men do a little more work for Slade than they do for you. It's a safe bet that the Halfmoon D does the same, and so on through every brand that joins his range. That puts him way off ahead."

"But that is pure accident," she said.

"It's pure design," he stated. "His boys are busy shoving his cows from the middle all ways so that when fall comes he has a good inside block that's only been lightly fed over. They fall back on that for winter feed. Last winter, when cows were dying like rats, his men were out drifting Slade's stuff back toward his middle range."

"That's true enough," she admitted. "But——"

"But you thought he was doing it as a favor to you—getting his surplus off your territory so your own cows would have a better chance. That's the same kind of talk he floated all round the line; playing the benevolent neighbor when in reality the old pirate had deliberately planned, year after year, to overcrowd your range and feed you out."

"But his men would know," she objected.

"Not many of them would grasp the whole scheme of it," he said. "You hadn't thought of it yourself. He'd detail a pair of boys to shove a few hundred head way off to the south. A few days later another couple would be throwing a bunch off northeast. See? And what if a few of them did surmise? They're riding for his brand."

The girl nodded. That unalterable code again,—the religion of being loyal to one's brand. Not one of Slade's men would balk at doing it knowingly; each would do anything to advance his interests as long as he drew his pay from Slade.

"I doubt if there's a dozen men within two hundred miles that haven't lifted a few calves now and then for the brand they were riding for. That's the way it goes. A rule that was fine to start—loyalty to the hand that paid you; then carried too far until it's degenerated into a tool that's often abused," he said.

As they talked Harris detailed men for each draw but when they reached the point where they were due to drop down and cross the valley he pulled up his horse.

"You take the rest of the circle, Carp," he instructed Carpenter. "I'm going to ride off up the ridge a piece." The girl regarded him curiously. No less than three times in the last week he had stopped midway of the circle and asked her to complete it. Now he had turned it over to Carp and he signaled her to remain with him.

"Where are we going?" she asked as she watched the men ride down toward the bottoms. "And why?"

"Back the way we came," he said. "And maybe I can show you why."

He headed back the divide they had just followed until he came to the saddle at the head of a draw that led down to the valley. Far below them they could see a rider hazing a bunch of cows out into the bottoms. High on the right-hand slope of the gulch lay a notch, a little blind basin watered by the seepage from a sidehill spring, and there on the green bed of it a dozen cows with their calves grazed undisturbed. For perhaps five minutes Harris lolled sidewise in the saddle and watched them. Then a rider appeared on the ridge that divided that draw from the next, dropped in below the cows and headed them back over the ridge into the draw from which he had appeared. Even at that distance she recognized this last man as Lanky Evans. Harris resumed his way down the divide and she knew that he had discovered some irregularity for which he had been seeking.

"Who was the man that overlooked those cows?" she asked. "Who worked that draw?"

"Morrow," he said. "His eyesight is getting bad. That's the second time this week—and the last. I've detailed Lanky to work the gulch next to him every circle so that he could drop over the ridge and see what was going on. That's why he's always late coming in—not because he's lazy but because he's been working almost a double shift."

"Then Morrow is an inside man for Harper," she said. "Drawing Three Bar pay and working against us too."

"Yes," he said. "Only he's an inside man for Slade."

"But how could his leaving those calves behind benefit Slade?" she demanded.

"How could it benefit Harper?" he countered. "Can you tell me that?"

She could not and motioned for him to go on.

"None of Harper's men has a brand of his own," he said. "They're living on the move. They can't wait for calves to grow up. The way they work is to run a bunch of beef steers across into Idaho. They'll pick up another bunch there and shove them across the Utah line and repeat by moving a drove of some Utah brand up in here. Only beef steers—quick turning stuff. You know about the reputation of the O V and the Lazy H Four."

She knew all too well. There was a half-feud, a smoldering distrust displayed between cowmen on each side of the three State lines, a triangle of ill feeling. It was current rumor that the O V and the Lazy H Four, ranging far southwest of the Three Bar, would traffic in any steers that came from across either the Utah or Idaho line. In the corner of those States were similar outfits that were receiving stations for rustled stock from the opposite sides. But they were good neighbors and kept hands off so far as brands on their home range were concerned. It was part of the game, and as long as their own interests were not disturbed the adjacent outfits were blind. The triangular feud had been fostered to a point where the thieves were immune. Even if a direct complaint should be brought against them they had but to ride across into another State and a sheriff following them would be helpless, the inhabitants resenting this intrusion into their affairs by an officer from another State, truly having no right there, and refusing to aid him even if they did not actually oppose his passage.

"But how would it benefit Slade?" she repeated.

"Why, suppose that Morrow overlooked a nice bunch of Three Bar calves all along this first strip next to Slade's range," Harris said. "Then some Slade rider happens to drop along after our wagon has moved on and he hazes them off south. Later another picks them up and shoves them along another half-day's drive—way beyond where our boys ever work, even beyond the strip covered by Slade's north wagon, the only one that carries a Three Bar rep; what then?"

"The calves would still be with mothers wearing the Three Bar mark," she said. "After they leave the cows they're slicks, fair game for the first man that puts his rope on them—and Slade wouldn't risk running one of his own brands on them before they left the cows."

"Not one of his own, no," Harris said; "only one that's going to be his later on. Did it ever strike you as queer that Slade, whose way is to crush every new outfit, should suffer a soft-hearted streak every year or so and befriend some party that had elected to start up for himself right in the middle of Slade's range? And later buy him out? That's the way he came into nearly every brand he runs."

"He's impulsive in his friendships," she defended. "He has always been like that."

"And his impulses embrace some right queer folks," Harris remarked. "Several of those dinky little owners have moved out right sudden with a dozen riders from some other outfit fanning along close behind; McArthur didn't even get moved, for the Brandons went on the war trail before he had time to start. But it transpired that he was all set to go because Slade showed bill of sale for Mac's holdings, dated only the day before. That's how he came to own every one of those brands that match up so close with those of every outfit that overlaps his range."

"But if he actually dealt with so many as you believe, some one of them would be sure to have trouble later on and tell of it," she argued.

"And it would be the word of a self-confessed thief against that of the biggest owner within two hundred miles, and Slade would laugh at him—or kill him, according to whatever mood he happened to be in."

They had turned their horses down a long ridge that led to the wagon in the bottoms.

"I'll mention to the boys that Morrow sold out the interests of the Three Bar while he was drawing down your pay. They'll pass sentence on him right sudden. Four hours from now they'll have dry-gulched him so far from nowhere that even the coyotes can't find him."

"Not that," she said. "Turn him over to the sheriff. You caught him in the act."

"In the act of missing a few cows on his detail. The sheriff would hold him almost an hour before he let him go."

"Then give him his check and send him off the Three Bar range," she said.

Harris waited till the herd had been worked and the men had gathered round the wagon. Then he handed Morrow a check.

"Here's your time," he said. "You can be leaving almost any time now."

Every man knew that Morrow had been caught at some piece of work contrary to the interests of the Three Bar. The discharged hand gave a short ugly laugh.

"As soon as you pussyfooted into the foreman's job I knew it was only a question of time," he said.

"Exactly," Harris returned. "Pack your stuff."

"A foreman has a scattering of a dozen or so men to back him up," Morrow observed with a shrug of one shoulder toward the rest of the men.

Harris turned to the girl.

"I resign for about sixty seconds," he said and swung back toward Morrow; and again all hands noted his queer quartering stand. "I'm not foreman right at this minute," he said. "So if you had anything in particular to address to me in a personal vein you can start now. Otherwise you'd better be packing your stuff."

Morrow turned his back and headed for the rope corral. When he had saddled one horse and packed his effects on another he turned to Evans.

"You helped frame this on me," he said. "I thought I saw you messing over into my detail a few days back."

"Right on the first ballot," Lanky assented. "I'm only riding for one brand at a time."

"One day right soon I'll run across you again," Morrow prophesied.

"Then I'll take to riding with my head over my shoulder—surveying my back-track," Lanky promised. "Because we'll most likely meet from behind."

For the first time Morrow's bleak face changed expression, the lines deepening from the strain of holding himself steady in the face of the contemptuous insults with which Lanky casually replied to his threats.

He started to snarl an answer, his usual self-repression deserting him, but Harris waved an impatient hand.

"Drag it!" he snapped. "Get moving. If I had my own way we'd lead your horse out from under you—and we will if I ever hear of your turning up on the Three Bar range again."



VI

Billie Warren rode with Harris on the last lap of the circle. There were but two men remaining with them.

"Moore!" Harris called, and the man turned his horse down the head of a draw that would lead him out into the bottoms a trifle less than a mile above the wagon. Harris heard a shrill whistle behind him and turned sidewise in the saddle to look back, saw that Moore had regained the ridge and was signaling. They turned and rode back to him.

"There's another," Moore said, pointing down the gulch. "It's getting to be a habit."

A dead cow lay on a little flat a hundred yards below. For three consecutive days some rider had found a fresh-killed Three Bar cow. Every animal had been shot.

"I'll look this one over myself," Harris decided. "There's only two more gulches to work. Each one of you boys take one."

The girl followed him as he turned down the first steep pitch. They pulled up their horses and sat looking at the cow. A trickle of blood oozed out of a hole between her eyes. Harris rode in a circle round the spot.

"He downed her from some point above," he said. "Not a sign anywhere close at hand." He surveyed the ridges that flanked either side of the draw and the little saddle-like depression at the head of it from which they had just descended. From beyond this gap came the shrill nicker of a horse, the sound chopped short as if a man had clamped his hand on the animal's nostrils to silence it. Harris turned swiftly to the girl.

"It's a plant," he said. "Ride—hard!"

He suited his action to the words and jumped his horse off down the bottoms. He waved her over to one side.

"Keep well away from me!" he ordered. "They don't want you."

They hung their spurs into their mounts and the horses plunged down the steeply-pitching bottoms, vaulting sage clumps and bounding along the cow trails that threaded the brush. Two hundred yards below the cow the draw made an elbow bend. The girl rounded it and as Harris followed a jump behind he felt a jarring tug at the cantle of his saddle and the thin, sharp crack of a rifle reached him. The gulch made a reverse bend and as they swept around it Harris swung sidewise in the saddle and looked back. They were entirely sheltered from any point on the divide six hundred yards behind them. He pulled his horse to a swinging trot and they rode down the sloping meadow that led straight to the main valley.

"It was certainly stupid of me not to know right off that it was a decoy," he said. "A man just out to act spiteful would have piled up a dozen cows at one stand and left. He's downed one every day—in plain sight of the divide we'd follow on the circle, knowing that I'd soon ride down to look one over myself. All he had to do was to cache himself on the far side, watch for me to ride down, wait until the rest had gone on and climb to the divide and pot me. And it would have been so dead easy to turn the tables and bushwhack him," he added regretfully. "If only I'd have used my head in time."

A sick chill swept the girl as she thought of an enemy with the patience to kill a cow every day, use it for a decoy and wait for a chance at his human prey.

The cows that grazed on the meadow raced off ahead of them. A bunch of wild range horses swept up the broken slopes and wheeled to watch them pass.

"We didn't get started any too soon," Harris said. "His horse wasn't more than a hundred feet beyond the notch when he blew off and warned us—not time for me to get cached and drop him as he topped the ridge."

The girl's eyes suddenly riveted on a small round hole in the cantle of his saddle where the ball had entered. On the inside and far to the left extremity of the cantle a ragged gash showed where if had passed out. The shot had been fired as he wheeled round the sharp bend, quartering away from the man above, but even then the ball had not missed his left hip to exceed an inch.

She started her horse so suddenly that before he realized her purpose she was well in the lead and going at a dead run toward the mouth of the gulch where it opened out into the main bottoms two hundred yards beyond.

From the opposite slope riders were hazing cows out of their respective draws; some had reached the wagon; others were coming down from above. The running horse caught every man's eye as the girl careened out into the center of the valley, rose in her stirrups and waved an arm in a circle above her head. In five seconds riders were whirling in behind her from all directions as she headed for the wagon.

She waved those already on the spot toward the rope corral.

"Change horses!" she called, and as each man rode in he caught up a fresh horse.

"Scatter out; some of you below where we came down, some above," she said. "Five hundred to the man that brings Morrow in."

"It's no use, Billie," Harris counseled mildly. "He's plum out of the country by now. It'll be dark in three hours—and it's right choppy country over there."

Waddles interposed and seconded her move.

"Let 'em rip," he said. "There's just a chance."

Bangs was the first to change mounts. The boy's physical qualifications were as sound as his mental ability was limited and it was his pride to have a string of mounts that included the worst horses in the lot. He rode from the corral on Blue, holding the big roan steady, and headed up the ridge a mile below where Harris and the girl had come down. Rile Foster chose the next; five riders were but a few jumps behind. Harris did not change horses but searched hastily in his war bag and slipped the strap of a binocular case across his shoulders and rode off with the girl as she finished cinching her saddle on a fresh horse.

In less than five minutes from the time she had reached the wagon the last Three Bar man had mounted and gone. Harris rode with her up a long ridge that led up to the divide; they followed another into the next bottoms and ascended the second divide. This was sharp and rocky, its crest a maze of ragged pinnacles. He chose the highest of these and dismounted to sweep the range with his glasses. The low country beyond them was broken and choppy, a succession of tiny box canyons and rough coulees. Off to the right he made out Rile Foster working through the tangle. Somewhere beyond him Bangs would be doing the same. Riders came into view off to the left, crossing some ridge, only to disappear once more. The high point afforded a view of every ridge for miles. After perhaps half an hour Harris caught five horsemen in the field of his glasses. They were riding in a knot.

"They've picked up his trail," he said. "But he'll have too long a lead. He'll be fanning right along and they'll have to work out a track. In less than two hours it will be dark—and by morning he'll be forty miles from here and up on a fresh horse."

He rested his elbows on the ground to steady the glasses as he trained them off in the direction the five men had gone. Twice he saw them cross over ridges. Then a tiny, swift-moving speck came into his field of view, traveling up the slope of a distant divide. The ant-like rider dipped over the crest of it and was gone.

"He's more than five miles in the lead of them," he said. "Across rough country too. There was just a chance that he would work back through these breaks below us instead of making a ride for it, and we could have spotted him from up here. We might as well be going."

They mounted and headed to the right along the divide.

"If Rile is in sight we can wait for him," he said. "And see if he's picked up any tracks."

A half-mile along the ridge they saw Foster off through the breaks and he was working back their way.

"Thanks, Billie," Harris said. "For losing a circle trying to run him down."

"I'd have done as much for any Three Bar man," she returned.

"Of course," he said. "I'd have expected that. But all the same I'd hardly looked to see you show much concern over what happened to me."

"I don't want to see even you shot in the back," she said. "Is that answer enough?"

"It shows that I'm progressing," he smiled. "Maybe my good qualities will grow on you until you get to thinking right well of me."

They waited till Foster joined them on the ridge.

"Bangs crossed over a mile below," Rile said. "We might pick him up."

"Any sign?" Harris asked as they moved down the divide.

"A bunch of shod horses went down through there a few days back," Rile said. "Three or four men likely, with a few pack horses along. There was a fresh track, made this morning, going up-country alone. He likely stayed at their camp all night, wherever it is. I worked across, thinking he might go back to it; but there was no down trail. He's pulled out."

"I saw him," Harris said. "He's gone."

They stopped in the saddle of the ridge where a fresh track showed the spot Bangs had crossed.

The girl was looking at Harris and saw a sudden pallor travel up under his tan and as she turned to see what had occasioned it he crowded his horse against her own.

"Don't look!" he ordered, and forced her horse over the far side of the ridge. "You'd better ride on back to the wagon," he urged. "There's been some sort of doings over across. Rile and I will ride down and look into it." Without a word she turned her horse toward the wagon.

"It's God's mercy she didn't see," Harris said, as the two crossed back over the ridge. "Isn't that a hell of a way for a man to die?"

But the girl had seen. Her one brief look had revealed a horse coming round a bend in a little box canyon below. A shapeless thing dragged from one stirrup and at every third or fourth jump the big blue horse side-slashed the limp bundle with his heels.

As the two men reached the bottoms the frenzied horse had stopped and was fighting to free himself of the thing that followed him. He moved away from it in a circle but it was always with him. He squealed and kicked it, then dashed off in a fresh panic, side-swiping his pursuer.

Harris's rope tightened on his neck and threw him. As he rolled over Foster's noose snared both hind feet and he was held stretched and helpless between two trained cow horses while the men disengaged the bundle that had once been Bangs. One boot heel was missing and his foot was jammed through the stirrup, evidence that the horse had pitched with him and the loosened heel had come off, allowing his foot to slip through as he was thrown.

Harris pointed to a burnt red streak across the right side of Bangs's neck. He unbuttoned his shirt and revealed a similar streak under his left armpit.

Old Rile cursed horribly and his face seemed to have aged ten years.

"They learned that from the albino," he said. "It's an old trick that always works. They dropped a rope on him and jerked him, pried off his heel, shoved his boot through and laid the quirt on his horse. Blue did the rest."

Both men knew well how it had happened. Bangs had run across the camp of some of the wild bunch, men he had known for long, and the slow-thinking youth had suspected no more danger from riding on up to them at this time than at any other. He had told them of the shot fired at Harris and they had known that some other Three Bar man would find the trail leading from the direction of their camp. And Bangs would mention having found them there, linking them with the bushwhacker.

When Bangs had left a pair of them had ridden a distance with him and accomplished their aim.

"It's coming dark," Harris said. "And by morning they'll be thirty miles away. That sort of a killing was never fastened on to any man yet."

The old man raised a doubled fist and his face was lined with sorrow.

"Bangs was almost a son to me," he said. "I taught him to ride—and we've rode together on every job since then. You hear me! Some one is going to die for this!"

It was an hour after sundown when they reached the wagon with all that was earthly of Bangs lashed across the blue horse and it was midnight before the five men who had followed the trail returned with the word that they had been unable to even sight the man they tracked.

During the next week the girl inwardly accused the men of heartlessness. They jested as carelessly as if nothing unusual had occurred and she heard no mention of Bangs. It seemed that it took but a day for them to forget a former comrade who had come to an untimely end. Rile Foster had disappeared but on the fifth day he turned up at the Three Bar wagon and resumed his work without the least explanation of his absence.

The old man was gloomy and silent, his face set in sorrowful lines as he went about his work, and it was evident that he was continually brooding over the fate of the youth he had loved. It seemed to the girl that the men were even more cheerful and thoughtless than usual, that they concerned their minds with every conceivable topic except that which was uppermost in her own. The death of Bangs had affected them not at all.

She could not shake off the remembrance of the boy's adoring gaze as his eyes had followed every move she made and in some vague way she felt that she was responsible for the accident. She often rode near Rile Foster, knowing what was in his mind. He spoke but little and, in common with the rest, he never once mentioned Bangs.

At the end of a week Slade rode up to the wagon as the men were working the cows gathered in the second circle of the day. He jerked his head to draw her aside out of range of Waddles's ears.

"How's the Three Bar showing up this spring?" he asked abruptly.

"Better than ever," she retorted and he caught a note of defiance in her voice.

"You're lying, Billie," he asserted calmly. "The Three Bar will show another shrinkage this year."

"How do you know?" she flashed; and the distrust of him that Harris had roused in her, lately submerged beneath the troubling thoughts of Bangs, was suddenly quickened and thrown uppermost in her mind. In gauging him from this new angle she sensed a ruthlessness in him that was not confined solely to business efficiency; he would crush her interests without a qualm if it would gain his end.

"I know," he asserted. "It's my business to know everything that goes on anywhere near my range. There's not another outfit within a hundred miles that's on the increase. They're just hanging on, some of them making a little, some of them not. You say you want to run the Three Bar brand yourself. There's not a man in this country that would touch a Three Bar cow if you was hooked up with me."

"And then the Three Bar would be only one out of a dozen or more Slade brands," she said. She pointed to the men that worked with the milling cows in the flat. "That's what I want," she said. "To run an outfit of my own—not one of yours."

For no reason at all she was suddenly convinced of the truth of Harris's suspicions concerning Slade. She noted that his eyes traveled from one man to the next till he had scrutinized every one that worked the herd.

"Are you looking for Morrow?" she demanded, and instantly regretted her remark. Slade's face did not change by so much as the bat of an eye and he failed to reply for a space—too long a space, she reflected—then turned to her.

"Morrow—who's he?" he asked. "And why should I look for him?"

"He rode for you last year," she said.

"Oh! That fellow. I recall him now. Bleak-looking citizen," he said. "And what about him?"

"You tell me," she countered.

"That new foreman of yours—the fellow that was scouting round alone for a few months—has been talking with his mouth," Slade said. "If he keeps that up I'll have to ask him to speak right out what's on his mind."

"He'll tell you," she prophesied. "What then?"

"Then I'll kill him," the man stated.

The girl motioned to Lanky Evans and he rode across to them.

"Lanky, I want you to remember this," she said. "Slade has just promised to kill Harris. And if he does I'll spend every dollar I own seeing that he's hung for it," she turned to Slade. "You might repeat what you just told me," she suggested.

Slade looked at her steadily.

"You misunderstood me," he stated. "I don't recall any remark to that effect or even to mentioning the name of Harris. Who is he, anyhow?"

Evans slouched easily in the saddle and twisted a smoke.

"Now let's get this straight what I'm to remember," he said. "Mr. Slade was saying that he planned to down Cal Harris the first time he caught him out alone. I heard him remark to that effect." He turned and grinned cheerfully at Slade. "That's his very words—and I'd swear to it as long as my breath held out. I'll sort of repeat it over to myself so that I can give it to the judge word for word when the time comes."

Slade favored him with a long stare which Lanky bore with unconcern, smiling back at him pleasantly.

"I've got my little piece memorized," Evans said; "and in parting let me remark that Cal Harris will prove a new sort of a victim for you to work on. If you tie into him he'll tear down your meat-house." He turned his horse and rode back to the herd.

"I'll play your own game," the girl told Slade. "If anything happens to another man who is riding for me and I have any reason to even suspect you were at the bottom of it I'll swear that I saw you do the thing yourself. The Three Bar is the only outfit with a clean enough record to drag anything up for an airing before the courts without taking a chance. This rule of every man for himself won't hold good with me."

She moved toward the wagon and Slade kept pace with her, leading his horse. There was no sign of life around the wagon and the jerky movement of a hat, barely visible through the tips of the sage, indicated that Waddles was washing out some clothing at the creek bank fifty yards away.

Slade leaned against the hind wheel on the far side from the herd and looked down at her.

"You're a real woman, Billie," he said. "You better throw in with a real man—me—and we'll own this country. I'll run the Three Bar on ten thousand head whenever you say the word."

"I'd rather see it on half as many through my own efforts," she said. "And some day I will."

"Some day you'll see it my way," he prophesied. "I know you better than any other man. You want an outfit of your own—and if the Three Bar gets crowded out you'll go to the man that can give you one in its place. That will be me. Some day we'll trade."

"Some day—right soon—you'll trade your present holdings for a nice little range in hell," a voice said in Slade's ear and at the same instant two huge paws were thrust from the little window of the cook-wagon and clamped on his arms above the crook of his elbows. Slade was a powerful man but he was an infant in the grip of the two great hands that raised him clear of the ground and shook him before he was slammed down on his face ten feet away by a straight-arm thrust. His deadly temper flared and the swift move for his gun was simultaneous with the twist which brought him to his feet, but his hand fell away from the butt of it as he looked into the twin muzzles of a sawed-off shotgun which menaced him from the window.

It occurred to him that the nighthawk must have been restless and had elected to wash at the creek bank instead of indulging in sleep, thus accounting for the bobbing hat he had seen, for assuredly it did not belong to the cook, as he had surmised. The face behind the gun was the face of Waddles.

"I'm about to touch off a pound of shot if you go acting up," Waddles said. "Any more talk like you was just handing out and you'll get smeared here and there."

"Are you running the Three Bar?" Slade asked.

"Only at times, when the notion strikes me," Waddles said. "And this is one. Whenever you've got any specific business to transact with us why come right along over and transact it—and then move on out."

Billie Warren laughed suddenly, a gurgle of sheer amusement at the sight of the most dreaded man within a hundred miles standing there under the muzzle of a shotgun, receiving instructions from the mouth of the Three Bar cook. For Slade was helpless and knew it. Even if he took a chance with Waddles and won out he would be in worse shape than before, for if he turned a finger against her old watchdog and friend he would gain only her deadly enmity.

"Waddles, you win," Slade said. "I'll be going before you change your mind."

As the man walked toward his horse which had sidled a few steps away the big cook gazed after him and fingered the riot gun regretfully.

The wagon did not move on when the men had finished working the herd as the rest of the day had been set aside for kill-time. An hour after Slade's departure the hands were rolling in for a sleep. The girl saw Rile Foster draw apart from the rest and sit with his back against a rock. He was regarding some small object held in his hand. As he turned it around she recognized it as a boot heel and the reason for Rile's absence was clear to her. He had back-tracked the blue horse to the scene of the mishap.

She was half asleep when a voice some distance from the teepee roused her by speaking the name of Bangs.

"I've a pretty elastic conscience myself," the voice went on. "I'm not above lifting a few calves for the brand I'm riding for or any little thing like that, but this deal sort of gorges up in me. They'll never cinch it on to any man—they never do. Old Rile is brooding over it. He'll likely run amuck. One way or another he'll try to break even for Bangs."

Billie recognized the voice as Moore's and knew that one of her men, at least, had not forgotten Bangs. It was the first time an intimation that the affair was other than an accident had reached her ears.

In the evening, after resting, the men once more gathered round a fire for an hour's play. They had evidently blotted out the memory of a friend who had raised his voice with theirs on the last such event, for they sang mostly the rollicking airs with even more than the usual amount of chaff between songs. But there was one old favorite that they did not sing. At last Waddles swung into the tune of it and as they buried the poor cowboy far out on the lone prair-ee she noted the difference at once, and more clearly than ever before she divined the reason why cowhands were apparently so devoid of sentiment, refusing to be serious on any topic, passing off those things nearest to their hearts with a callous jest. It was only that there were so many rough spots in the hard life they led that they avoided dwelling too seriously on matters that could not be rectified lest they become gloomy and morose. There were warm hearts under the indifferent exteriors. For now the voices were soft and hushed and she knew that every man was thinking of the lonely mound of rocks that marked the last resting place of Bangs.



VII

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."