VIII

Three heavy wagons, each drawn by four big mules, traveled north along the Coldriver stage trail. Every wagon was loaded to the brim of the triple box. Two men were mounted on each wagon seat, the man beside the driver balancing a rifle across his knees. The butt of another protruded from a saddle scabbard that was lashed to each wagon within easy reach of the man who handled the reins.

"Nice place to camp, Tiny," said the guard on the lead wagon. He pointed off across a flat beside the road toward a sign that loomed in the center. The black-browed giant designated as Tiny swung the mules off the road and headed for the sign. The three wagons were drawn up some fifteen yards apart in the shape of a triangle, the mules unhitched and given a feed of grain from nose-bags, tied to the wagons and supplied with baled hay. Tiny walked over and viewed the sign.

"Squatter don't let sunset find you here," he read.

"It's about that time now," he observed, squinting over his shoulder. "It'd be a mistake to leave evidence like that around." He tore down the sign and worked it into firewood with an axe. "Now they can't do nothing to us for drifting in here by error," he remarked to his companions. "It wouldn't be fair."

While four of them slept the other two remained awake, rousing a second pair after a three-hour period. In the morning the three wagons lumbered on. Near sunset they passed another sign where the Three Bar road branched off to the left. Tiny pulled up the mules.

"Uproot that little beauty, Russet," he advised. "We're getting close to home."

The carrot-haired guard descended and threw his weight against the sign, working it from side to side until the posts were loosened in the ground, pried it up and loaded it on the wagon.

"Quick work, Russ," the big man complimented. "For a little sawed-off runt, you're real spry and active." He clucked to the mules and they settled steadily into the collars and moved on to the Three Bar. As they rolled up the lane the freighters could see the chuck wagon drawn up before the house, the remuda milling round the big pasture lot and a number of men moving among the buildings. The calf round-up was over.

The Three Bar men viewed the freighters curiously as they swung the mule teams in front of the blacksmith shop, noted the rifle in the hands of each guard and the second one in easy reach of each driver. They knew what this portended.

The freighters had stripped off the wagon-sheet lashed across the top of each load and the Three Bar men moved casually toward the wagons, curious to view the contents.

"You boys get to knowing each other," Harris said. "These mule-skinners will be hanging out at the Three Bar from now on."

The short man, known as Russet, removed his hat and scratched his head reflectively as he studied the first move in unloading his wagon. Moore promptly uncovered his own head and revealed his brilliant red shock of hair, his freckled face breaking into a genial grin.

"Hello, you red-hot little devil," he greeted. "I'm glad some one has turned up with redder hair than mine. Brother—shake!"

Russ looked him over carefully.

"Don't you claim no relationship with me, you sorrel hyena," he said. "I won't stand it for a holy second. Get a move on and help me snatch off this load."

All down the line the Three Bar men were getting acquainted with the freighters, introductions effected in much the same manner as that between Russet and Moore. A thousand pounds of oats were tossed from the top of the first wagon and when the concealing sacks were cleared away there were three heavy plows showing underneath, the spaces between them filled with shining coils of fence wire. The second load consisted of a dismantled drill, a crate of long-handled shovels, and more barbed wire; the third held a rake and a mowing machine, more wire, kegs of fence staples and a dozen forks.

"The Three Bar will be the middle point of a cyclone," Moore prophesied as he viewed the implements. "Just as soon as this leaks out."

"We fetched our cyclone openers with us," Russ assured him. "Let her buck."

From the cook-shack door the girl viewed these preparations, then turned her eyes to the flat and visioned it with a carpet of rippling hay.

There was a clatter of hoofs and a rattling of gravel as five horsemen put their sure-footed mounts down the steep slope two hundred yards back of the house and followed along the fence of the corral. The five Brandons had cut across the shoulder of the mountain. The girl wondered at this visit as she heard Lafe Brandon, the father and head of the tribe, ask Harris to put them up for the night.

An hour later Harris and Lafe came to her door and she let them in.

"The Brandons are riding down to file on a quarter apiece," Harris said. "Art quit the wagon below their place as we came in and told the rest that we're going to farm the Three Bar."

"Then you're doing the same?" she asked Lafe with sudden hope that her brand would have company in the move.

Old man Brandon shook his head.

"Not right off," he said. "Until we see how you folks pan out. We can't fix to handle it the way you do. We're filing to protect ourselves before some nester outfit turns up at our front door."

The old man explained his views. There was enough flow in the stream that cut their home valley to water something over a section of land. With that filed on they would control their home range. They could grade up their cows and increase a hundred per cent. with a section under hay. He hoped the Three Bar would win, but he feared to start in the face of the wave of opposition he was sure would rise against the move.

"We're not fixed for it," he explained again.

"But the other small outfits feel the same way," Harris said. "If two of us start the rest will join in."

"Maybe so," the old man said doubtfully. "But noways likely. They're too set on the other side." The thought was deep-rooted and he could not be moved.

"We'll let it out it's only for protection that we all are filing," he said. "And that we don't aim to prove up. The outfits that don't file now will lose out. This will always be open range, more than ninety per cent. of it, and those who file on their water will control the grass. As soon as the squatters see one outfit starting, they'll take out papers on every piece of dirt they can get water to. They'll have six months to move on, then a six months' stay. They'll hang round waiting for things to open up so they can rush in here. The brand owners who haven't hedged theirselves beforehand will run down to file and find that nesters have had papers on all the good pieces right in their dooryard for months. They'll have only the plots left that their home ranch sets on, and likely no water even for that."

The Brandons stayed for the night and rode off at daylight the next morning, while the Three Bar men prepared for a trip to Brill's. As the rest were saddling for the start Harris saw old Rile Foster seated by himself, gazing off across the hills.

"Better come and ride over with us, Rile," he urged. "Bangs would want you to try and forget."

The old man shook his head.

"I'm drifting to-day," he said. "I'll likely be back before long. I back-tracked Blue to their camp and trailed them twenty miles to where they joined another bunch. It was some of Harper's devils—I don't know which four. One way or another, whether I get the right four or not, I'm going to play even for Bangs."

When the rest of the men rode off the old man was still leaning against the shop.

There were less than a dozen others in Brill's store when the Three Bar men crowded through the door. Five men sat at one of the tables in the big room and indulged in a casual game of stud. Harper and Lang were among them. Two of them Harris knew as men named Hopkins and Wade. The fifth was unknown to him.

The albino's eyes met Harris's steadily as he entered at the head of the Three Bar men. Those among the hands who had formerly fraternized as freely with Harper's men as with those who rode for legitimate outfits now held way from them since their foreman had ordered Harper from the Three Bar wagon. They merely nodded as they filed past to the bar.

"Who is the man dealing now?" Harris inquired of Moore.

The freckled youth turned to the card players.

"Magill," he said. "Same breed as the rest."

The news that the Three Bar had turned into a squatter outfit had been widely noised abroad. Carpenter had stopped at Brill's late the night before and announced the fact. Others had seemed already aware of it.

From behind the bar Brill covertly studied the man who was responsible for this change. Four men from the Halfmoon D stood grouped at one end of the room. They split up and mingled among the others. Brill moved up and down behind the bar, polishing it with a towel. One after another he drew each of the men from the Halfmoon D into conversation with the Three Bar foreman to determine whether or not they resented his move. There was no evidence of it in their speech. They had all been present when Harris rode the blue horse and had heard his subsequent remark to Morrow. There was but one reference to the state of affairs at the Three Bar.

"Now you've gone and raised hell," one boy from the Halfmoon D remarked to Harris. "You'll have folks out looking for your scalp." He lowered his voice and Brill moved nearer to wipe away an imaginary spot on the bar. "It's Slade you'll have to buck," the boy warned. "There's likely to be some excitement over in your neighborhood. I'd like right well to ride for the Three Bar next year. Hold a job for me in the spring."

The men from the two outfits mingled as unrestrainedly as before and at last Harris smiled across at Brill.

"Well, have you sized it all up?" he asked.

The storekeeper looked up quickly, knowing that Harris had read his purpose in drawing him into conversation with the four men. He polished the bar thoughtfully, then nodded.

"A man in my business has to keep posted—both ways," he said. "I just wanted to make sure. Five years ago every man would have quit the Three Bar like a snake—feeling was that strong. But the boys drift from place to place and they've seen both ends of it. They don't give a damn one way or the other now. Why should they? They've got nothing at stake. Five years ago you couldn't have hired a man to ride for you. Now they'll be pouring in asking for jobs—just because they figure there'll be some excitement on tap."

The men from the Halfmoon D were due back and inside of an hour they rode off, leaving only Harris's men and the five card-players in the place. Harris walked over to the table and the Three Bar men shifted positions, slouching sidewise at the bar or leaning with their backs to it, alertly watching this unexpected move as the foreman spoke to the albino.

"Let's you and I draw off and have a little talk," he said. "If you can spare the time."

Harper looked up at him in silence. He carefully tilted up the corner of his hole-card and peeked at it, then turned his other cards face down on the table.

"Pass," he said, and rose to face Harris. "Lead the way."

Harris moved over to another table and the two men sat down, facing each other across it. He motioned to Evans and Lanky joined them. Harris plunged abruptly into what he had to say.

"First off, Harper, I want you to get it straight that I'm not fool enough to threaten you—for I know you're not any more afraid of me than I am of you. This is just a little explaining, a business talk, so we'll both know where we stand. It's up to you whether we let each other alone or fight."

"Good start," the albino commented. "Go right on."

"All right—it's like this," Harris resumed. "I'm going to have my hands full without you hiring out to pester us. I'm not out to reform the country. They set the fashion of dog eat dog and every man for himself; so the Three Bar is all that interests me. You keep out of my affairs and I'll let you go your own gait. If you mix in I'll have your men hunted down like rats."

Harper glanced toward the group at the bar.

"You were prudent enough to pick a time when you're three to one to tell me about that," he said. "If I'd kill you in your chair I might have some trouble getting out the door."

"Of course I'd take every chance to play safe," Harris admitted. "But that is beside the point. I'd have told you the same thing if the odds had been reversed."

"Would you?" the albino pondered. "I wonder."

"You know I would," Harris stated. "You've got brains, or you'd have been dead for twenty years. If I thought you were a haphazard homicide I wouldn't be sitting here. But you wouldn't kill a man without looking a few weeks ahead and making sure it was safe."

"Go ahead—Let's hear the rest of it," Harper urged. "You've got an original line of talk."

"You're playing one game and I'm playing mine," Harris said. "You're in the saddle now—like you have been once or twice before. But you know that the sentiment of a community reverses almost overnight. You've stepped out just ahead of a clean-up a time or two in the past. You know how it goes—your friends drop off like you had the plague. Every man's out after your scalp. I've got a hard bunch of terriers over at the Three Bar and you couldn't raid us without a battle big enough to go down in history as the Three Bar war. Either way you'd lose for it would stir folks up—and when they're stirred you're through. Do you remember what Al Moody did up on the Gallatin and what old Con Ristine sprung on the Nations Trail? That will happen again right here."

The two men were leaning toward each other, elbows resting on the table. Harper relaxed and leaned back comfortably in his chair as he twisted a smoke. Evans propped his feet on the table and Harris hung one knee over the arm of his chair. The men at the bar knew that some crisis had been safely passed.

"You talk as if I was running an outfit of my own and had a bunch of riders that could swarm down on you," Harper objected. "I don't even run a brand of my own or have one man riding for me."

"The wild bunch is riding for you," Harris stated.

"Suppose that was true," Harper said. "Then what?"

"In one country after the next they've hit the toboggan whenever they got to feeling too strong. If you line up against me that time has come again. If I get potted from the brush I've hedged it so that those boys that filed over there won't be left in the lurch. There'll be a reward of a thousand dollars hung up for the scalp of each of fifteen men whose names I gathered while I was prowling round—reliable men to carry on what I've begun; and marshals thicker than flies to protect the homestead filings on the Three Bar."

"Then it might be bad policy to bushwhack you," Harper observed.

"You can go your own gait," Harris said. "As long as you lay off Three Bar cows. You invited me one time to come down to your hangout in the Breaks. I won't ever make that visit unless you call on the Three Bar first; then, just out of politeness, I'll ride over at the head of a hundred men."

"Then it don't look as if we'd get anywhere, visiting back and forth," Harper said.

"Now don't think I'm throwing a bluff or threatening; I'm just telling you. You could recite a number of things that could happen to me in return—all of 'em true. I'm just counting that you've got brains and can see it's not going to help either one of us to get lined up wrong. What do you say—shall we call it hands off between the Three Bar and you?"

The albino half-closed his eyes, the pale eyeballs glittering through the slit of his lids as he reflected on this proposition, tapping a careless finger on his knee. He glanced absent-mindedly toward the bar, his thoughts wholly occupied with the matter in hand. A pair of eyes that gazed back at him drew his own and he found himself looking at Bentley, the man who repped with the Three Bar for Slade. The albino's suspicions were as fluid and easily roused as those of a beast of prey in a dangerous neighborhood. With one of those quick shifts of which his mind was capable he concentrated every mental effort toward linking Bentley with some unpleasant episode of the past. The man had turned away and Harper could only sense a vague feeling that he was dangerous to him, without definite point upon which to base his suspicions. At the sound of Harris's voice his mind made another lightning shift back to the present.

"Well?" Harris asked.

"Why, if I had anything to do with it, like you seem to think, I'd advise against our bucking each other," Harper said. "I'd try to get along—and declare hands off." He rose, nodded to the two men and returned to the stud game.

"He'll do it too," Evans predicted. "There's that much fixed anyway—not a bad piece of work."

The two men returned to the bar and Brill moved close to Harris. For fifteen years he had stood behind that bar and observed the men of the whole countryside at their worst—and best; and he knew men. As well as if he had heard the words of the three at the table he knew that Harris and Harper had reached an agreement of some sort that was satisfactory to both.

"Take the boys over a drink on me," Harris said, and Brill slid a bottle and five whisky glasses on to a tray and moved over to the table.

"Here's a drink on the Three Bar boss," he announced.

Lang scowled, remembering the recent occasion when Harris had ordered them off.

"To hell with——" he commenced, but the albino cut him short.

"Drink it," he said.

Ten minutes later the five men rose to go. Harris looked at his watch.

"I'm off," he said to Evans. "Try and get the boys home by to-morrow morning if it's possible."

He went outside and mounted as the five rustlers swung to their saddles.

"I'm going your way as far as the forks," he said to Harper.

The Three Bar men were treated to the sight of their foreman riding down the road beside Harper at the head of four of the worst ruffians in the State.

And behind the bar Brill moved softly back and forth when not serving drinks, pausing opposite first one group and then the next to dab at the polished wood with his cloth, listening carefully to the conversation and gauging it to determine whether the apparent sentiment toward the squatter foreman was sincere or would prove different when the men, flushed with undiluted rye, were unrestrained by his presence. At one end of the bar Evans and Bentley conversed together in low tones but whenever Brill strolled casually to their end the conference lagged. The few sentences which reached his ears were of trivial concern.



IX

There was a new contentment in the eyes of the Three Bar girl as she sat her horse beside Carlos Deane and looked off down the bottoms. A haze of smoke drifted above the little valley of the Crazy Loop. Three mule outfits were steadily ripping up the sage flats. Men lifted the uprooted brush on forks and piled it for the burning. The two rode down to the fields with the pungent sage smoke drifting in their faces. Harris joined them, a smudge of fire-black across his forehead, and swept his arm across the stretch of plowed ground.

"Can you picture that covered with a stand of alfalfa hay?" he asked.

The girl nodded.

"Yes—and cut and cured and in the stack yards," she said. "And a straight red run of Three Bar cows wintering under fence."

Harris wondered if her new contentment came wholly from the progress the Three Bar was making or was derived partly from the presence of Carlos Deane. Each man had recognized the other as a contender for the love of the Three Bar girl and during the two days of Deane's stay each one had been covertly sizing and estimating the caliber of the other man.

"The opposite faction hasn't succeeded in wrecking the Three Bar up to date," Deane said. "It's probable they see you're too strong for them."

"It's hard to wreck plowed ground," Harris pointed out. "And that's all they have to work on right now; not a fence to tear up, a stack to fire or any growing crops to trample down. All they can do right now is to wait. It must be wearing. But sooner or later they'll show their teeth."

For a month prior to Deane's arrival Harris had been occupied from dawn till dark with the details of the new work. The wagons had made a week's trip to the railroad to freight in more implements and supplies. A hundred acres of plowed ground lay mellowing under the sun. Five miles back up the slope of the hills two men worked in a valley of lodgepole pine, felling, trimming and peeling sets of matched logs for the cabins that must be erected on each filing. The cowhands were out working the range in pairs, branding late-dropped calves and moving drifted stock back to the home range. Forty white-face bulls had been trail-herded from the railroad and thrown out along the foot of the hills to replace the other bulls that had been rounded up and brought in. These old stags now grazed in the big pasture lot until such time as the beef herd should be gathered and shipped. In a few more days the boys would come in from the range and gather at the home ranch, preparatory to going out once more on the beef round-up.

"I'm about to take a vacation," Harris said. "The ranger is coming over to mark out some more trees for us and to run the U. S. brand on the logs we've already cut. I'm going back up in the hills with him to sort out a valley or two for summer range."

"We don't need any extra range now," Billie said. "Why pay grazing fees before we need the room."

"Just to get our wedge in first," Harris explained. "We can get grazing permits on the Forest now—right in the best grass valleys. Each year we'll throw some cows up there to hold our rights. There'll always be good grass on the Forest Reserves for they won't permit overstocking. The day will come when we'll be glad to have permits to summer-feed a thousand or so head on the Forest. I was thinking maybe you and Deane would like to make the jaunt."

"We'll go," the girl decided.

"It's a question of time," Deane said. "How long will we be gone?"

"We'll start in an hour or two," Harris said. "Just as soon as Wilton turns up. We'll only be gone five days at the most."

"Then I'll stretch my stay to cover it," Deane accepted. "I'd certainly hate to pass up a chance for a trip in the hills."

"We'll ride back and make up an extra bed roll," Harris said. "Then we'll be all set to start when Wilton shows up."

Calico had sidled off the plowing and was cropping the grass at the edge of it. As Harris moved toward him Evans rode down the right-hand slope and the three waited for him.

"Moore and I were working in close and I thought I'd ride over to tell you that the wild bunch has lost a veteran," he said. "Some one put Barton out over in the Breaks."

Barton, whose name was linked with that of Harper, had been found with a rifle ball through his chest. His own gun, found by his out-stretched hand, had showed one blackened cylinder, the empty shell sufficient proof that he had fired a single shot at his assailant.

"Anyway, he had a chance to see who got him," Lanky philosophized. "He was likely ordered to turn round—given a fighting chance maybe."

The girl could find no sorrow in her heart over the passing of Barton but there was an uneasy feeling deep within her,—a vague suspicion that she should be able to pronounce the killer's name. This elusive thought was crowded from her mind when the ranger rode up to the Three Bar accompanied by Slade, each man leading a pack horse.

"Slade's going to look over a little territory up on the Forest," Wilton explained. "So we can get it all done on one trip."

There was no way to avoid this unexpected addition to their party. Harris and the ranger packed the three bed rolls and Billie's teepee along with the necessary equipment and in half an hour the little cavalcade filed up a gulch back of the Three Bar, the ranger in the lead with his pack horse. The other pack animals followed and the three other men and the girl brought up the rear in single file. By noon they made the first rims and followed over into a rolling country, heavily timbered in the main. In the early evening they rode out on to a low divide and Blind Valley showed below them, a broad expanse of open grassland. A little stream threaded the bottoms and its winding course was marked by thickets of birch. In places it disappeared under the leafy tunnels of aspen groves, their pale silvery trunks and leaves contrasting with the heavy blue-green of an occasional water-spruce. In a narrowing of the valley it was choked from wall to wall by a cottonwood jungle, opening out once more into wide meadows immediately below the neck. Long open parks extended their tongues well back up the timbered sidehills.

"Feed!" Harris said. "Feed. Worlds of it."

They angled down the slope and struck the rank grass of the bottoms,—mountain hay in which the horses stood knee-deep. They made camp at the mouth of a branching canyon, just within the timber. The ranger threw the horses up this side gulch while Harris felled a dead pine and kindled a fire. When the ranger returned he picketed one horse in the heavy grass while Slade pitched Billie's teepee under a spruce. The meal was finished, dishes washed and the five sat round a fire.

Harris sensed Deane's attitude toward it all for he knew something of the other man's way of life. Those with whom Deane was thrown most in contact were careful of appearances. It was unheard-of in his code that a girl should jaunt for days accompanied by four men. Here appearances seemed entirely disregarded and no one gave the matter a thought.

The moon swung over the ridges and shed its radiance over Blind Valley. Deane motioned to Billie and the girl rose and followed him to the edge of the timber where they sat on a blow-down.

"Billie, let me take you away from all this," he urged. "All this hard riding and rough man's work. Let me give you the things that will shut out all the hardships. What's the use of going on like this?"

The girl was conscious of a vague sense of disappointment. Deane was an active figure in the business life of his own community and she had felt some pride in the fact that when he should come to the Three Bar he would find that she too was doing real work in the world. She reflected that his attitude was that of so many other men, his idea of love synonymous with shelter for the object of it, and his main plea was that of providing her with shelter against all the rough corners of life. Shelter! And what she wanted was to be part of things—to have a hand in running her own affairs. It came to her that of all men perhaps Slade understood her the best.

"I don't want shelter!" she said. "And I can't think of anything else till after the Three Bar is a going concern."

The voices of the three men round the fire drifted to them.

"Listen," she urged.

"Blind Valley ought to summer-feed three hundred head," the ranger was saying. "I'll recommend permits for that many cows."

"That'll suit me," Slade nodded. "I'll put in application through you?"

"Not if I can help it you won't," Harris said. "Why should you have permits right in the back yard of the Three Bar with all the rest of the hills open to you? There's a natural lead right down to the corrals; divides to form wings. It's up to Wilton, of course, but I'm going to make application to graze Blind Valley myself. They'll allow whichever one he recommends."

"Harris has first call," the ranger stated mildly. "This is the logical range for his stuff—this and one or two others right close. We can fix you up in a dozen other good grass countries further on, Slade, if it's all the same."

Slade nodded agreement. The ranger had authority to recommend the issuing of permits and his superiors would not go contrary to his suggestions in any but exceptional cases—certainly not in this matter. Slade's eyes turned frequently toward the two figures on the log, silhouetted against the white of the moonlit meadow, and his slashed mouth set in disapproval. Harris noted this and smiled as it occurred to him that Slade's views on the subject of Deane's appropriating the girl for himself were about on a par with Deane's ideas relative to her touring the hills with four men.

The two came back and sat with the others round the dying fire, then all turned in for the night, Billie in her teepee and the men in their bed rolls with no other overhead shelter than the trees. In less than an hour Harris raised on one elbow. The ranger woke just as Harris slipped from his bed roll and tugged on his chaps. The steady thud of hoofs had penetrated each man's consciousness and apprised him of the fact that the horses were coming down.

Wilton closed his eyes as Harris departed to head them back. Three times during the night Deane was roused as one or the other of the three men left his bed roll to frustrate an attempt of the horses to make a break for home. Near morning he was once more wakened by a clammy dampness on his face. A fine drizzle was falling. Slade was on his feet, shoving a few sticks of wood inside the flap of Billie's teepee.

In the first gray light of morning Harris was up and slicing shavings from the few dry sticks Slade had so thoughtfully tucked away. Breakfast was cooked under the dripping trees. The ranger was soaked to the knees as he waded through the tall grass to the picketed horse. He saddled him and went up-country after the other horses. The outfit was packed up and the little procession filed away toward the next valley—and Carlos Deane proved his real caliber to Harris.

Throughout the day they rode in a fine drizzle; in the timber the wet branches whipped them and sprayed water down the necks of their slickers; in the boggy meadows of the bottoms the mosquitoes hovered round them in humming swarms. The horses stamped, shook their heads angrily and switched their tortured flanks with dripping tails till at last the men greased their noses, eyes and flanks to protect the animals from the singing horde. When they dismounted to lead their horses up precipitous game trails leading to the crest of some divide Deane's Angora chaps flapped like dead weights and seemed to drag him back. From the lofty ridges they gazed down upon white clouds floating in the valleys; and at night they made camp and slept in damp bed rolls with the clammy mist chilling them. The next day was the same.

Harris knew that a man might evidence great courage in the face of danger, risk his life in the heat of excitement, but that the true test of iron control is to experience grinding discomfort and smile. Deane's neck was raw and chafed from the wet neckband of his flannel shirt and his hands and cheeks were puffed with the bites of the buzzing pests. But Deane had been cheerful throughout and had uttered no complaint.

Toward evening of the second gloomy day Harris rode up beside him.

"You'll do," he said.

"How's that?" Deane asked.

"There's maybe one man out of every two hundred that can go along like this and not get to blaming every one in sight for what's happening to him. I don't know as I'd have blamed you any if you'd been cussing us all out for the past two days."

Deane laughed and shook his head.

"I've been rather enjoying it," he said.

"You're just a plain, old-fashioned liar, Deane," Harris returned. "You haven't been enjoying it any more than the rest of us—which is mighty little; but you've got insides enough to let on like it's considerable sport—which is a whole lot."

"No one else has done any beefing," Deane said. "So why should I?"

"This is everyday business with us," Harris pointed out. "And right unusual for you. There's likely a number of things you do every day back your way, but that doesn't signify that I could amble back there and perform as well as you."

"I suspect you'd make out all right," Deane said. "Anyway—I'm much obliged for the endorsement."

They camped again in the drizzle but by noon of the following day the sun peeped through. In an hour every cloud and fog-bank had been dispersed with a rapidity which is seen only in the hill country. The ranger pulled up his horse as they struck a game trail in the saddle of a low divide. A bunch of shod horses had been over it a few hours past.

"Some of the albino's layout," Wilton surmised. "They cross through here to that camp of theirs down in the Breaks. I've run across their trails up here before."

They rode out on to a spur and looked down on the low country. Slade and the ranger were going on, the others returning to the Three Bar. Harris pointed to the country spread out below them.

"That's the Breaks," he told Deane. "I'll point out the albino's stronghold."

"While they're looking I want to talk to you," Slade said to Billie.

"Let's get together," he said, when the others had passed on. "Why are you so dead set on making a squatter outfit of the Three Bar? Don't you know the nesters will flock in here and cut the range all up as soon as they see a chance?"

"Not my range," she said. "Outside of the V L and the Halfmoon D there's not another site they can get water for, except maybe a couple of spring gulches where flood reservoirs will hold back enough to water a forty. So we'll still control our home range."

"But there's a dozen sites down in my range," he said.

"And a dozen small outfits wouldn't run any more cows than you do now," she said. "At least not on my range; so what difference will it make to me? Why don't you have men file on all those sites?"

"You can't make a contract that will hold a man to turn over his homestead after it's proved up," he said. "Half of them would keep their land."

"Of course," she agreed. "But then you'd have half instead of nothing at all. Do you want the world?"

"I want you!" he said. "Throw in with me, girl. I'm going to fight these nesters off—the Three Bar among the rest if you don't quit. I'll smash the Three Bar into mincemeat unless you run this damned Harris off and quit this game."

It was the first time Slade had ever threatened. Her spirits had soared over the prospects of the Three Bar and she was suddenly afraid for her brand if Slade, who had whittled down a dozen outfits at once, should suddenly turn his whole attention to the Three Bar.

"I've got it to do," Slade stated. "Since you've started this deal there's been nesters filed papers on every good site in my range, waiting to rush in as soon as I lose my grip. Do you think I'll let them crowd me out? Not in a thousand years! I'm telling you—I'll break the Three Bar if you keep it up."

"All right!" she said. "And what about the homestead laws?"

"I'm the law out here," he asserted.

It came to her that Slade was fighting on the defensive, that he feared to let the Three Bar succeed and set up a precedent in defiance of the signs that dotted the range.

"Then it's war!" she said. "And you'll go under yourself, from your own size, if you haven't the judgment to hedge yourself now like the rest. The Three Bar is going ahead—and we're going to win."

She turned her horse but Slade caught her arm and whirled her around. He jerked a thumb at the two men down the ridge.

"What can Deane, a half-baked boy, give you?" he demanded. "Money—and trinkets to hang all over you till you flash like a Mexican's bridle; a flower garden and a soft front lawn to range in—and after a year or two you'd give your soul to trade it off for an acre of raw sage. You'd trade a castle full of glittering chandeliers for one hour at the round-up fire—your box at the opera for a seat on the ground with your back against the chuck-wagon wheel while the boys sang just one old song. I know! You'd soon get fed up on too much of that. You want an outfit of your own. I'll give you that—the biggest in the State."

She shook her head without answering.

"Then I'll break you," he predicted a second time. He drew a folded slip of paper from his pocket and held it out to her. "That's the exchange slip," he said. "It calls for three hundred odd head of mixed stuff. You can send yours over any time." He turned his horse and followed after the ranger while the girl joined Harris and Deane.

Harris had slipped the strap of his glasses and handed them to Deane who had dismounted and was peering off at the spot Harris had pointed out. A few scattered shacks, showing as toy houses from the distance, stood in the center of a broad open basin, sheltered on all sides by the choppy mass of the Breaks. A solid corral, almost a stockade, stood near the buildings and a few white points indicated that a teepee or two had been pitched along its edge.

"That's Arnold's stockade," Harris explained to Deane. "Arnold was an old-time rustler that finished at the end of a rope fifteen years ago. Now all the drifters in the country stop over here if they want a place to hole up."

Deane had been striving to fathom the attitude of a community where the thieves were known as such, their headquarters a matter of common knowledge, and yet allowed to carry on their trade.

"Can't the sheriff clean them out of there?" he asked.

"He could," Harris said. "But no man will make a complaint. They can rustle every steer in the country and the losers are afraid to make a report. Every outfit is supposed to protect its own. If Alden should ride up to almost any ranch within a hundred miles and ask them if they'd missed any stock in the last three years they'd shake their heads and swear that they hadn't lost a hoof. But the Three Bar has a clean page; we're not afraid he'll get a line on us while we're having him round up some one else. The first time we get a scrap of real evidence on any man we'll call Alden in."

"You told me the Three Bar herds have been cut in half," Deane said. "How much evidence do you need?"

"It's like this:" Harris explained. "We'd have to make a specific charge against a few men—name them in connection with some raid. That nest down there is only a sort of stopping place. There's twenty or so that use it on and off. Maybe the very men we'd name would be in Coldriver or some other place and could prove it. Even if they couldn't we couldn't get a man to testify. Then too, rustling is about the hardest thing in the world to prove. There's a dozen ways they can work it. I could catch some of them driving a bunch of Three Bar cows toward the Idaho line. They'd look up and see me and calmly ride on past the cows. They could say the bunch was just drifting ahead of their horses—that they weren't driving them at all. Who can prove a case of rustling even if you see it, unless you actually catch one altering a brand—which they wouldn't do anywhere within a hundred miles of that brand's range."

"Then how will you ever convict one?" Deane asked.

"The only way to convict a rustler right now is to kill him and swear that you run up on him changing a brand," Harris said. "I expect that's what we'll have to do."

Deane looked at the girl to determine how she met this suggestion. Instead of the shiver of distaste which he rather expected her lips were pressed tight.

"A little of that would help Slade too," she said. "He told me just now that he'd smash the Three Bar."

The man reflected that this sort of a life could not help but wear off some of her natural fineness and harden her.

They followed the rims till they had cleared the Breaks, then angled down to the foothills and headed for the Three Bar. They held a steady gait until a half hour after sunset and camped in the open near a tiny spring. Again Deane was impressed with the impropriety of the girl's being out with two men who loved her and the thought was an ache that remained with him. It was a natural reaction,—the lifelong training to guard against appearances which were open to criticism as religiously as against the accomplished fact.

As they sat round the little fire the girl handed Harris the paper Slade had given her. It was a scrawled bill of sale calling for three hundred odd head of Circle P cows, listed in the exact numbers of all ages and sexes. In return she would send him an exchange slip for the same number of Three Bar stock. This exchange system was one of Slade's own devising, intended to eliminate the time and expense of sending riders to scour adjacent ranges in search of drifted stock. Each outfit exchanged slips based on the round-up tally with every other brand and so could show bill of sale for off-brand stuff in their beef shipments or for any rebrands on the range.

"This labor-saving device is Slade's trump card," Harris said. "It works all his way. We couldn't turn in a false report. But he has three crews covering his range, each under a different wagon foreman and no one of them wise to what the rest are doing. It's only the foremen that jot down the daily tallies and keep the final score. Even if they talked among themselves, why, they're all riding for Slade's brand—and there you are."

Deane was regarding the penciled memorandum signed by Slade.

"Not a very impressive document," he observed.

Harris laughed at the other's evident disapproval of such a slipshod method of property transfer.

"Not very," he agreed. "But it's absolutely good. You could borrow money against that at the bank. He doesn't get us that way but here's how he does: He's mapped out a rebrand system. His rebrand is Triangle on the hip. When he gets our exchange slip all he has to do is go on his range and run the Triangle on the hip of the number of Three Bar stock it calls for. There are Three Bar cows ranging a hundred miles from here, just as there's brands a hundred miles off whose stock turns up here—with a Triangle on the hip. Who's going to check Slade up? It would take three crews to cover his range and tally the fresh Three Bar rebrands of this one season—a few here and a few there. He ships trainloads of cows in a year. There's some old rebrands in each lot, say; maybe more than last year's exchange. Well he simply has been holding them over. He can easy explain that. It would break a small outfit to hire enough hands to cover his range and check him up—and he'd buy part of those. The albino's men are petty-larceny bandits compared with Slade."

Deane turned to the girl.

"Billie, why don't you get out of a game where everything is crooked—a game of who can steal the most and every man for himself?" he asked.

"Why don't you fold your hands and give up your business the first thing that goes wrong?" she countered. "Instead of trying to remedy it?"

"But you don't have to do it," he urged.

"Neither do you," she said. "I've the same pride in the Three Bar that you have in anything you've helped build up. You'd fight all the harder for one of your schemes that was hard-pressed—and so would I."

She turned to her teepee and ended the discussion, her pride a little hurt that Deane should so little appreciate her work—and the spirit that made her hold on instead of giving up.

That evening they rode up to the Three Bar just as Waddles announced the evening meal.

"She's hot!" the big voice wailed. "She's re-e-ed hot!"

The hands were gathering at the ranch, coming in from the range for a frolic before the beef round-up should keep out for another month. Deane's time was up and he had planned to leave on the following day.

"You can't do that," Harris said. "Two more days for you. I've given orders not to let you off the place till after the dance at Brill's. This is Tuesday and the big frolic will be staged Thursday night. Then you're free to go."

Deane shook his head and prepared to offer an excuse but Harris smilingly refused to consider it.

"No use to try," he said. "The boys won't let you go. We've had you out in the rain and now we'll try to make amends for it. Billie, don't let him leave the place. I'll detail you as guard."

"You hear the orders," she said. "You're stuck for two more days at the Three Bar whether you like it or not."

"That settles it," Deane said. "I do want to see that dance."

Horne strolled up to them as they reached the corral.

"Another of the wild bunch down," he said. "Magill this time. Got it just the same as Barton did last week. Shot from in front; one empty shell in his gun. The Breaks is getting to be a hard place to reside in."

Again the girl felt that queer sensation of having expected this to transpire, as if possibly she had helped plan the deed herself and had forgotten it. That night as she lay in bed her mind was concerned with it and at times the solution seemed almost to reach the surface of her consciousness. Two belated riders came up the lane. As they rode past her open window she heard the name of Magill.

"That's two for Bangs," said a voice she knew for Moore's.

The evasive sense of familiarity, of being in some way identified with the killings, was suddenly clear to her,—so clear that she marveled at not having known at once.

Old Rile Foster was haunting the Breaks near Arnold's, imposing grim and merciless justice on all those whom he suspected of having had a hand in the finish of Bangs.



X

Harris had left the ranch an hour before daylight, his ride occasioned by the reports of several of the men. In the last three days each couple that worked the range had found one or more of the new white-face bulls shot down in their territory. The evidence, as Harris pieced the scraps together, indicated that a lone rider had made a swift raid, riding for forty miles along the foot of the hills in a single day, shooting down every Three Bar bull that crossed his trail. A dozen dead animals marked his course. A few more such raids and the Three Bar calf crop would be extremely short the following spring. The near end of the foray had extended to within ten miles of the home ranch and Harris had gone out to have a look at some of the nearer victims. He located two by the flights of meat-eating birds but range stock had blotted out all possible signs. He rode back to the corrals in the early afternoon and joined Billie and Deane.

"Not a track," he said. "We must expect more or less of that. They'll cut in on us wherever there's a chance."

As Harris left them the girl pointed out a horseman riding up the lane.

"The sheriff," she volunteered, and Deane noted an odd tightening of her lips.

Alden dismounted and accosted Moore and Horne. From their grinning faces she knew that they were deliberately evading whatever questions the sheriff might be asking. Horne's voice reached them.

"Whoever it is seems to be doing a right neat job," he said. "Why not let him keep it up?"

The sheriff came over to Deane and the girl.

"Billie, I expect you can tell me who's doing this killing over in the Breaks," he said.

She was unaccustomed to the easy dissimulation that was second nature to the men of the whole countryside and her eyes fell under the sheriff's steady gaze. Deane was looking into her face and with a shock he realized that she could pronounce the name of the assassin but was deliberately withholding it. She raised her head with a trace of defiance.

"No. I can't tell you," she said.

Deane expected to hear the sheriff's curt demand that she divulge the name of the man he sought. It must be easily apparent to him, as it was to Deane, that she knew. But Alden only dropped a hand on her shoulder and stood looking down at her.

"All right, girl," he said mildly. "I reckon you can't tell. He can't be such a rotten sort; if you refuse to turn him up." He pushed back his hat and smiled at Deane. "We have to humor the womenfolks out here," he explained, as he turned toward the bunk house.

Deane, already at a loss to grasp the mental attitude of the range dwellers, was further mystified by a sheriff who spoke of humoring the ladies in a matter pertaining to a double killing.

"Billie, you know!" he accused; "why wouldn't you tell?"

"Because there's a good chance that he's a friend of mine," she stated simply. "Those men had it coming to them and some way I can't feel any regret."

"But if it was justified he should give himself up and stand trial," he said.

"Then let him do it of his own accord," she said. "I certainly won't." The memory of little Bangs, his adoring gaze fastened on her face, was uppermost in her mind and brought a lump to her throat. "I hope he gets them all."

"Billie, let me take you away from all this," Deane urged again. "Let me give you the things every girl should have—shut all the rough spots out of your path. I want to give you the things every girl needs to round out her life—a home and love and shelter."

Shelter! Slade's words recurred to her: "A soft front lawn to range in."

"This is what I need," she said and waved an arm in a comprehensive sweep. Two hands, recently arrived, were unpacking before the bunk house. A third was shoeing a horse near the blacksmith shop. The mule teams were plowing in the flats. A line of chap-clad men roosted as so many crows on the top bar of the corral, mildly interested in the performance of another who twirled a rope in a series of amazing tricks. "That's what I need; all that," she said. "And you're asking me to give it up."

"But it's not the life for a girl," he insisted.

"You've told me a hundred times that I was different from other girls. But now you're wanting me to be like all the rest. Where would the difference be then?" she asked a little wistfully. "Why can't you go on liking me the way I am, instead of making me over?"

But Carlos Deane could not see. It was his last evening alone with her and after the meal they rode across the hills through the moonlight. In that hour she was very near to doing as he wished. If only he had suggested that she come to him as soon as the Three Bar was once more a prosperous brand; had only pointed out how she could spend months of each year on the old home ranch,—then he might have won his point without waiting. But that is not the way of man toward woman. His plea was that she leave all this behind—for him. And his hold was not quite strong enough to induce her to give up every link of the life she had loved for long years before Carlos Deane had been even a part of it.

"I can't tell you now," she said as they rode back to the corrals. "Not now. It would take something out of me—the vital part—if I had to leave the old Three Bar in the shape it's in today. It's sort of like deserting a crippled child."

The next day her stand was unaltered and in the evening, when the whole Three Bar personnel swung to their saddles and headed for the frolic at Brill's, Deane had been unable to gain her promise. His luggage had been sent ahead in a buckboard, for the dance was to be an all-night affair and he would leave on the morning stage.

There were but few horses at the hitch rails when they reached the post but a dozen voices raised in song drifted faintly to their ears and apprised them of the fact that other arrivals were not far behind. As the Three Bar girl entered at the head of her men she saw Bentley and Carpenter leaning against the bar, well toward the rear of the room.

Within the last week she had heard that Carp, after being let off by Harris, had started up a brand of his own down in Slade's range. Harris's remarks about Slade's mode of acquiring new brands recurred to her,—that he fostered some small outfit for a few seasons, then bought it out. As the men scattered she commented on this to Harris. The Three Bar foreman nodded.

"Likely the same old move," he said. "I've been trying to get a line on Carp. He started off with a bill of sale from Slade for a hundred head of Three Bar rebrands. But it didn't come direct from Slade at that. Morrow engineered the deal. Said he came into the paper for two years' back pay from Slade; last year and the one before—had figured to start up for himself and was to draw his pay in cows. The paper is dated at the time Morrow quit Slade last year. What can we prove wrong with that? Morrow simply sells the paper to Carp. Of course it's a plant. All Carp has to do is to run Slade's Triangle on the hips of any number of Three Bar she-stock. Like I told you, there's no way to check Slade up on the number of our rebrands. If Carp gets caught it's his own hard luck."

A dozen men from the Halfmoon D swarmed in the door. Mrs. McVey, the owner's wife, stationed herself in one corner with the Three Bar girl while the men gravitated to the bar.

"I'll take Deane in tow for a while," Harris said. "And get him acquainted with folks." He led Deane to the bar and gave him scraps of the history of various neighbors as they arrived.

Harper's men came in, the albino standing half a head taller than any other on the floor, and they mingled with the rest as if their records were the most immaculate of the lot. Two of Slade's foremen arrived with their families. The wife of one was lean and bent, worn from years of drudgery. The other was an ample, red-cheeked woman of great self-confidence, her favorite pose that of planting both hands on her hips, elbows outspread, and nodding vigorously to emphasize her speech.

Bart Epperson, a trapper from far back in the hills, had brought his family to the frolic. Mrs. Epperson was a tiny, meek woman who had but little to say. Her two daughters, in their late teens, had glossy black hair, high cheek bones and faint olive tinge of skin which betrayed a trace of Indian ancestry.

Lafe Brandon came at the head of his tribe. Ma Brandon, white-haired and motherly and respected by all, was possessed of a queer past known to the whole community. Forty years before Lafe Brandon had stopped at a sod hut on the Republican and found a girl wife with both eyes discolored from blows of her heavy-handed spouse. Lafe had left the bearded ruffian unconscious, with a broken nose and three fractured ribs, and had ridden off with the girl. Five sons and a daughter had been born to them. Two years before, Kit Brandon, the daughter, had been wed to a merchant in Coldriver. The traveling parson who married them heard of the parents' queer case, learned that Ma Brandon's former mate was long since dead, and spoke earnestly to the pair. Both were willing to do anything which might prove of future benefit to Kit. The conference resulted in the old couple's standing before the parson and having the marriage service performed for them an hour before a like rite was rendered for the daughter.

Harris laughed as he informed Deane of this bit of history.

"They both considered it rather an unnecessary fuss," he said. "And it's rumored that they had their first quarrel of a lifetime on the way home from the service."

Two of the sons were married and living at the home ranch. They came to the dance with the rest of the family. Lou Brandon's wife, Dolly, was a former dance-hall girl of Coldriver, and Al Brandon's better half, Belle, was the daughter of a Utah cowman.

An extra stage-load rolled in from Coldriver and four couples joined the throng.

"Ex-school-teachers," Harris informed. "They marry them so fast that it's hard to keep one on the job instructing the rising generation in the Coldriver school."

Deane shrank from the thought of the Three Bar girl in such a mixture. Someway she seemed many shades finer than the rest.

"It couldn't be otherwise," Harris said, when Deane expressed this thought. "She was raised at the knee of one of the finest women in the world. I remember her mother myself—a little; and I've heard my own mother sing the praises of Elizabeth Warren a thousand times."

The albino interrupted them.

"Cal—how come?" he greeted. The three men conversed in the most casual, friendly fashion, as if there had never been a hint of friction between Harris and Harper in the past.

A great voice rose above the buzz of conversation, filling the big room to the very rafters.

"Choose your pardners for the dance!" Waddles bellowed from the makeshift platform at one end of the room. "Go get your ga-a-als!"

Deane moved across to the Three Bar girl. There was a general rush for the side opposite the bar where the ladies had gathered. Couples squared off for the Virginia reel, the shortage of ladies rectified by a handkerchief tied on the arm of many a chap-clad youth to signify that he was, for the moment, a girl. Waddles picked his guitar; two fiddles broke into "Turkey in the Straw" and the dance was on with Waddles calling the turns.

All through the room they shuffled and bowed, whirled partners, locked elbows and swung, the shriek of fiddles and scrape of feet punctuated by the caller's boom.

"Grab your gals for the grand right an' left!" the big voice wailed. "Swing, rattle and roar!" "Clutch all partners for a once and a half!" "Swing your gals and swing 'em high!" "Prance, scuffle and scrape!"

Slade came in alone as the first dance was ended.

A croupier and lookout, imported from Coldriver for the event, opened Brill's roulette layout in one corner, a game he usually operated himself on the occasions when his patrons chose to try their fortune against the bank. The rattle of chips, the whir of the ivory ball and the professional chant of lookout and croupier sounded between dances.

"Single ought in the green," the croupier droned.

"Single ought in the green," the lookout echoed. "The pea-green shade is the bank's per cent. The house wins and the gamblers lose. Place your bets for another turn."

"She's off," the croupier chanted. "Off again on the giddy whirl. The little ivory ball—she spins!"

"Ten in the black," the croupier called. "Ten in the black," the lookout seconded. "The black pays and the red falls off; the even beats the odd."

The full enjoyment of a novel scene was spoiled for Deane by the sickening realization that the Three Bar girl was part of it, rubbing elbows with the nondescript throng. He looked again at Harper, the rustler chief; at Slade, with his peculiar turtle-like face, Slade the cattle king—the killer. Billie Warren stood between the two Epperson girls whose faces betrayed the taint of Indian blood, an arm about the shoulders of each of them. The sheriff who had said that men must humor womenfolks was leaning against the bar. Deane turned to Harris but found him looking off across the room. He turned his own eyes that way and glimpsed a dark man with an overlong, thin face and a set bleak stare. Morrow had just come in.

Five minutes later Harris stepped out the back door and Deane followed him. At the sound of a footfall behind him Harris whirled on his heel and when he confronted Deane the dim light from the door glinted on something in his hand.

"Sho," Harris deprecated. "I'm getting spooky. I thought it was some one else." He slipped the gun back in its holster. "There's one or two that would like right well to run across me from behind."

"I followed you out to tell you it was decent of you to insist that I stay over a few days," Deane said. "It was a white thing to do, considering that we both want the same thing."

"We both want her to have what's best for her," Harris said. "And I don't know as she could do any better than to take up with you."

"It may sound rather trite—coming after that," Deane said. "But anyway, I'll have to say that I feel the same way about you."

"Then, if we're both right in our estimates, why she can't go very far wrong, either way she turns," Harris said. "So I reckon we're both content."

Harris moved on and motioned Deane to accompany him.

"I thought I glimpsed a man I knew a few minutes back," Harris said. "I'd like right well to have a talk with him."

They wandered completely round the post and looked in the shadows of the outbuildings but could find no trace of life.

"Likely I was mistaken," Harris said at last. "I saw a face just outside the door. He was more or less on my mind—the party I thought it was. Some one else I expect, and he's gone inside."

They returned to the hall. Morrow stood with two Halfmoon D men at the end of the bar. Harris motioned him aside and Morrow withdrew from the others.

"This is pretty far north for you, Morrow," Harris suggested.

"Is there any one restricting my range?" Morrow demanded. "If there is I'd like to know."

"Then I'll tell you," Harris answered. "The road is open—as long as you keep on the road. Any time you stray a foot off the beaten trail you're on the Three Bar range. I don't figure to get gunned up from the brush more than once by the same man. Every Three Bar boy has orders to shoot you down on sight any time you heave in view anywhere within twenty miles of the Three Bar; so I wouldn't stray off the main-traveled road any time you're going through."

Lanky Evans had detached himself from a group and Morrow looked up to find the tall man standing at his shoulder.

"So you hunt in pairs," Morrow remarked.

"And later in packs," Lanky returned. "Why don't you ever come up and visit us? Every time I'm riding north I keep looking back, expecting to see you come cantering up from the south. Harris been commenting about the little dead-line we've drawn on you?"

"What's the object of all this conversation?" Morrow flared. "If you've got anything to say to me why get it over with."

"Nothing special," Evans said. "I just thought maybe I could goad you into being imprudent enough to come up our way—which I'm sure hoping to observe you north of the line and somewhere within a thousand yards."

Evans turned away and Morrow rejoined the two men he had left at the bar. Deane looked about him. Apparently no one had noticed the little by-play.

"Evans didn't exactly mean quite all of that," Harris explained. "Of course if Morrow does come up our way Lanky would prefer to see him first—but he would rather he'd keep away. He staged that little talk as a safeguard for me. If Morrow acquires the idea that several folks are anxious to see him up there, he's apt to be real cautious how he prowls round the Three Bar neighborhood looking for me."

Deane looked again at Morrow and saw that Moore and Horne had drawn him aside from the rest. The two Three Bar men were grinning and Morrow's face was set and scowling.

"The boys must have framed it up among themselves," Harris said. "That's the third pair I've seen conversing with him. It's doubtful whether Morrow is deriving much pleasure out of the dance."

Deane crossed over to Billie. The music started but she shook her head as he would have led her to the floor.

"Sit down. I want to talk with you. Long time no see 'um after to-night," she said. "It'll be daylight soon and I've a long tale to tell."

As the others danced she gave him a dozen messages to impart to various friends.

"Tell Judge Colton that Three Bar stock is rising," she said. "And that as soon as things are all smoothed out, he can expect me for a boarder. I'm going to make him one nice long visit."

Practically all of her time away from the Three Bar had been spent with Judge Colton's family and she was accepted as part of the household. It was there she had met Deane and those others to whom her messages were sent.

Through an opening in the dancing throng Deane suddenly had a clear view of the open rear door—one brief glimpse before the crowd closed once more and shut off his view. He had an idea that he had seen a face, hazy and indistinct, a few feet outside the door. He wondered if it could be the friend for whom Harris had searched.

"Make the visit soon, Billie," he urged. "It's been a long month since we've had you with us. We thought maybe you'd deserted us back there. How soon will this visit start—and how long will it last?"

"It will start as soon as the Three Bar doesn't need me," she said. "And last a long time."

Again a lane opened through the crowd, affording a view of the door. Deane saw the face outside in the night, and a foot or more below if some bright object glinted in the dim light which filtered through. The music ceased and the chant of the roulette croupier began, mingling with the smooth purr of the ivory ball. There came a sudden hush from the vicinity of the rear door, a hush that spread rapidly throughout the room, so swift are the perceptions of a frontier gathering.

Old Rile Foster stood just inside, his gun half-raised before him. Canfield and Lang stood together in the center of the floor, apart from the rest and with no others in line beyond them. Rile tossed a boot heel on to the floor and as it rolled toward the two men he shot Canfield through the chest. Lang's gun crashed almost with his own. Rile's knees sagged under him and he pitched face down on the floor, his arms sprawled out before him.

The surge of the crowd, pressing back out of line, threw the albino on the edge of it, his big form towering alone.

The old man raised his head from the floor and crooked his wrist with the last of his ebbing strength.

"Four for Bangs," he said, and shot Harper between the eyes.



XI

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bentley greeted her cheerily. Carp nodded without a word.

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

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

"Those you were driving are Three Bar stuff—every hoof," she said. "All two-year-old she-stock."

Bentley turned and regarded the little herd they had just passed.

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

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

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

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

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

"We'd better pay Slade a night visit too," she said. Her feelings toward Slade had undergone a complete revulsion. She knew beyond a doubt that he had been responsible for the raid on Three Bar bulls. The wild bunch would have had no object in such a foray. Figuring it from any angle Slade was the only one man who could possibly derive any benefit from that. She had come to see that Slade was fighting with his back to the wall,—that he had run his course and come to the end of it if squatters secured a start in his range, and he considered the act of the Three Bar the opening wedge which would throw open the way for the nesters to crowd him out.

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

There was none of the fast and varied work of the round-up; the trail-herding of beef to market seeming a slow and monotonous procedure in comparison. The cows were drifted slowly south, well spread out and grazing as they moved. Harris detailed two men to ride the "points," the two forward extremities of the herd; two others rode the "drags," holding to either flank of the rear end of the drive. In choppy country he detailed a third pair to skirt the middle flanks and prevent leakage up any feathering coulees.

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

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

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

Harris pointed to the bunch.

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

The third morning out from the home ranch broke stormy. Gray, leaden skies and low scudding, drab clouds drifted over the foothills and obscured the view of the peaks. A nasty drizzle dampened the face of the world and laid its clammy touch on all living things. This condition prevailed all through the day and shortly after the cows had been milled and bedded for the night the drizzle turned to rain, now falling straight and soft, again in fierce squalls whipped by varying shifts of wind. A saddled night horse was picketed for every man. The wagon stood close under a hill while the herd was bedded on a broad flat at the mouth of a valley.

The men lay in the open, their bed-tarps folded to shed as much moisture as possible. The soggy patter of the rain on her teepee lulled the girl to sleep but she was frequently roused. A dull muttering materialized suddenly into a sharp thunderstorm and the canvas walls of her teepee were almost continuously illuminated by successive flashes. The picketed horses fretted and stamped. Between peals she heard the voices of the night guards singing to soothe their restless charges on the bed ground. One of the men shifted his bed roll from a gathering puddle to some higher point of ground.

She dropped to sleep again but was roused by voices outside as the guards 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 for their 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 a crash of pistol shots, a rumble of hoofs and the instant command of Harris.

"Roll out! Roll out!" he called. "Saddles! On your horses."

Even as he shouted there came the swish of wet canvas as the men tumbled from their bed rolls, the imprecations of the suddenly awakened. Billie thrust her head from the teepee flap, the water cascading down her neck. The successive flashes showed the men tugging desperately at boots and chaps, their grotesque, froglike leaps for their 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 mass surged, then bore off up the valley. A scattered line of riders bore down on the herd, two ghostly apparitions among them throwing the cows into a panic of fear. She knew these for riders flapping yellow slickers in the wind. As the light faded she saw three horizontal red streaks cut the obscurity and knew that one of her guards was in the midst of the rustlers, doing his single-handed best. The red splashes of answering shots showed on all sides of him. She tugged on her chaps and boots, slipped Papoose's picket rope and vaulted to his back.

The scene was once more illuminated as she rode from the wagon. A big pinto horse was strung out and running his best, the other Three Bar men pounding after him. A riderless horse circled in the flat, a dark shape sprawled near him, and she wondered which one of her men had gone down. A knot of horsemen were turning up an opening gulch on the far side of the valley. A half-dozen Three Bar riders veered their horses for the spot. Harris turned in his saddle and his voice reached her above 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 a full run along the sidehill above the cows as he made a supreme effort to reach the head of the run. The Three Bar men split and streamed up both sides of the bottoms. The flashes had ceased except for brief, quivering plays of less than a second's duration. She hung her spurs into Papoose and trusted to his footwork. The swift little horse passed one rider, then another. There were only the rumble of hoofs and the crazed bawling of cows to guide her as she drew near the rear of 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 her own horse after him and she felt the frequent skid of his feet on the treacherous sidehill. Papoose braced on his haunches and slid down a precipitous bank, buckled up the far side and down again, then swooped across a long flat bench. Three times she felt the heaving plunge and jar as the little horse skimmed over cut-bank coulees and washes which her own eyes could not see in the dripping velvet black.

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

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

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

Horne and Moore rode over to them and for the first time the girl noticed that the two men who had wielded slickers out in front of the run 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 you two swung round the point. I was wondering who had outrode the paint-horse and Billie's little nag."

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

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

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

"Do you mean to tell me you didn't see those two slickers flapping out in 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 drifted out of the herd.

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

Billie rode with him as he skirted the herd and started on the return trip. Her mind was occupied with the two riders who had slowed the run and disappeared. There had been something familiar about them, for every man has his individual way of sitting a saddle as he has an individuality of gait when on foot. As she had viewed them in the lightning's flash they had closely resembled Bentley and Carp. But she decided that this resemblance had been but a fancied one, suggested by the 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 good shape. Maybe forty or so head down with broken legs—and ten pounds of fat apiece run off the rest."

A hatred of Slade was growing within her. Here, too, was a case where no other would benefit by the senseless stampede. If the beef herd could be broken up it would cause a delay to round it up in a strange range with the certainty of many cows being missed,—a case of weakening the Three Bar.

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

There rose in her a flare of resentment against her neighbors, the Brandons of the V L and the McVeys of the Halfmoon D. Both had taken out papers on the best land in their respective localities as soon as forewarned of her intended move. Ostensibly this was done merely as a protection against outsiders but in reality they were hoping that she would win out, in which case they would go through with their filings and prove up. But neither outfit would come out in the open and give her their support, preferring to hold aloof and benefit by her success if it so transpired and lose nothing themselves if she should fail—part of the policy of every man for himself—in the meantime letting her brand bear the brunt of the fight.

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

"The very fact that Slade is so bald with it is proof that he sees the necessity of crowding us fast," Harris said. "If we get too big a start he's blown up—and he hasn't had anything to work on but plowed ground. He's out now to worry us at odd ends. We can expect a steady run 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 all his forces against her the Three Bar would be hard pressed. In addition to this worry her mind was concerned with the riderless horse she had seen as she rode away from the wagon, the huddled figure sprawled in the flat. Every Three Bar rider was a friend and she hesitated 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 was harking back to the fallen night guard who had tried to head the raiders alone.

"I've been trying not to think about that," he said. "Lanky was a good pal 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 higher than that of any other of the crew.

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

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

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

A crash of wagon wheels and the voice of Waddles admonishing the horses interrupted her. The chuck wagon rolled round a bend as the big cook followed the trail of the night run. Every bed had been rolled and loaded to eliminate the necessity of a return. The remuda trailed behind the wagon under the combined supervision of the nighthawk and the wrangler.

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

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

"Only nicked—clean holes and no bones," Lanky said. "I'll be all right as soon as Waddles will let me out of this chariot and I get to riding comfortable on a horse."

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

Evans groaned.

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

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

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

Harris and Billie sat on the top rail of the loading chute while the last 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 old friend or two and wag your chins. Make it right secretive and confidential and make each one promise faithful not to breathe a syllable to another living soul. That way the news is sure to travel rapid."

He returned to the girl as the stock train pulled out. Two hands waved a joyous farewell from the top of the cars, delighted at the prospect of 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's place. 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 hire Lang. Harper had brains. He wouldn't have gone in for that. Lang has thrown in against us. He's all bulk and no brains and as savage as an Apache buck. He'll hang himself in the end but in the interim he may hand us considerable grief."



XII

The wild riders of the Breaks no longer mingled with other men with the same freedom as of old. Some fifteen men throughout the country felt themselves marked and set apart from others. Friends no longer fraternized with them at the bars when they rode into the towns. Doors which had always been open in the past were now opened furtively if at all. Lukewarm adherents fell away from them and avoided them even more studiously than the rest. This swift transition had sprung apparently from no more than a whisper, a murderous rumor which persisted in the face of flat denials issued from its supposititious source.

All through the range and as far south as the railroad it was current gossip that the Three Bar would pay a thousand dollars reward for each of fifteen men, a fast saddle horse thrown in and no questions asked. The men were named, and if the rumor was based on truth it was virtually placing a bounty on the scalps of certain men the same as the State paid bounty on the scalps of wolves,—except that it was without the sanction of the law.

This backfire rumor had established a definite line with fifteen men outside, conspicuous and alone, and those who had once followed the hazy middle ground of semi-lawlessness with perfect security now hastened to become solid citizens whose every act would stand the light; for the whispers seemed all-embracing and it was intimated that new names would be added to the original list to include those who fraternized with the ones outside the pale.

Those not branded by this alleged bounty system were quick to grasp the beautiful simplicity of it all. Some recalled that a similar rumor, supposed to have originated with old Con Ristine, had wiped out the wild bunch that preyed on the Nations Cow-trail—that the Gallatin clean-up had resulted from a like report which Al Moody was reported to have launched.

It had the effect of causing the men so branded to view all others with suspicion, as possible aspirants out to collect the bounty on their heads. It sowed distrust among their own ranks for there was always the chance that one, in seeking safety for himself, might collect the blood-money posted for another. The reference to the fast saddle horse was guarantee that no questions would be asked before the price was paid and no questions answered after the recipient had ridden away from the Three Bar with his spoils.

Yet, if the thing were true, it was the most flagrant violation of the law ever launched, even in the Coldriver Strip where transgression was the rule. For the branded men were not wanted on any charge. It was merely the wholesale posting of rewards for the lives of some fifteen citizens whose standing in the community was legally the same as the rest,—prize money offered by an individual concern for its enemies without reference to the law. On every possible occasion Harris flatly denied that there was a shred of truth in the report. Al Moody, years before, had also denied his responsibility for the rumors on the Gallatin range; and Con Ristine had repudiated all knowledge of the whispers that traveled the Nations Trail. But in each case these very natural denials had served only to strengthen men's belief in the truth of the reports; and inevitably they had established a hard line that cut off the men so named from the rest of the countryside.

Harris knew that his own life was forfeit any time he chanced to ride alone. He had not a doubt but that Slade had put a price on his head and that perhaps a dozen men were patiently waiting for a chance at him. Any man whose name appeared on the black list which he was supposed to have sponsored would overlook no opportunity to retaliate in kind. In addition to this there was always the chance of a swift raid on the men who had filed their homestead rights in the valley.

As a consequence Harris had taken every possible precaution. Winter had claimed the range and hardened the ground with frost. The full force of Three Bar hands had been kept on the pay roll instead of being let off immediately after the beef was shipped. These riders were stationed in line camps out on the range, their ostensible purpose being to hold all Three Bar cows close to the home ranch but in reality they served two ends, acting as a cordon of guards as well. The two woodcutters were camped in the edge of the hills behind the ranch and daily patrolled the drifts that now lay deep in the timber for signs of skulkers who might have slipped down from behind and stationed themselves on some point overlooking the corrals.

Three times in as many weeks strangers drifting in from other localities stopped in Coldriver and profanely reported the fact that for no reason whatever, while passing through the Three Bar range, they had been held up and forced to state their business in that neighborhood.

Hostilities had ceased. The Three Bar girl had anticipated a series of raids against the cows wearing her brand, swift forays in isolated points of her range, but no stock losses were reported. On the surface it appeared that Slade had given up all thought of harassing the Three Bar. But the girl had come to know Slade. He would never recede from his former stand. She noted that Harris's vigilance was never for an instant relaxed and it was gradually impressed upon her that the cessation of petty annoyances held more of menace than of assurance. Slade had seen that the Three Bar was not to be discouraged in its course and he now waited for an opportunity to launch a blow that would cripple, striking simultaneously at every exposed point and delaying only for a propitious time. In the face of continued immunity she was filled with a growing conviction of impending trouble.

Christmas had found the range covered with a fresh tracking snow which precluded possibility of a raid and all hands had been summoned to the home ranch for a two-day rest. Harris knew that cowhands, no matter how loyal to the brand that pays them, are a restless lot and must have their periodical fling to break the monotony of lonely days; so he had provided food and drink in abundance. The frolic was over and the hands back on the range. Harris sat with Billie before her fire.