The Settling of the Sage Part 14

"Morrow hasn't a brand of his own," Harris said. "He wouldn't lose a dollar if the whole range was under fence. He's drawing down money to keep that feeling alive. You'll find one with every outfit in this country. And the chances are you'll find every one of them overlooking a few calves on his circle--same as Morrow did. There's a persistent rumor to the effect that any man who burns out a squatter can drop in at Slade's and get five hundred dollars in cash. The wild bunch will handle every case that turns up if that rumor is true."

"The sheriff has never been able to pick up a single one of the men who have burned those squatters out," she said.

"And he never will without some help," Harris agreed. "Alden's hands are tied. He's only an ornament right now and folks have come to believe he's real harmless. But Alden is playing his own game single-handed the best he can. One day he'll get his hooks into some of these torch-bearers so deep they'll never shake them out. The homestead laws can't be defied indefinitely. The government will take a hand and send marshals in here thicker than flies. Then the outfits that have hedged themselves in advance are on top. The rest are through."

"But what can the Three Bar do against Slade until those marshals come?" she asked.

"There's a difference between sacking an established outfit with a big force of hands and burning out some isolated squatter roosting in a wagon," Harris said. "I've filed on water out of the Crazy Loop to cover the section I bought in the flats. We can pick men and give them a job with the Three Bar between spells of doing prove-up work. We can put in a company ditch to cover all the filings, pay them for working on it and charge their pro-rata share of improvements up against each man's final settlement. When they've made final proof we can buy out those who want to sell."

"The cost of a project like that would be too big for the Three Bar to stand," she objected.

"I'll put it up," he offered. "The money from the sale of the little old Box L. I want to see this go through. We can square accounts when the Three Bar makes the top of the hill."

He pointed to a bunch of cows that fed in a bottom below them.

"Look at that. Every color under the sun--and every shape. Let's put the flats in hay, girl, and start grading the Three Bar up. We'll weed out the runty humpbacked critters and all off-color she-stuff; keep only straight red cows. It doesn't take much more feed to turn out a real beef steer than one of those knife-backed brothers down in the flat. We'll gather our own cows close to the home ranch and shove other brands off our range, throw forty white-face bulls out close round the place and start building up real beef; steers that will bring fifty a head where those runts bring twenty-five. And big red she-stock will bring more money too. In five years we'll have a straight red brand and the Three Bar will be rated at thirty dollars a head, come as they run on the range, instead of round ten or twelve as they'd figure us now. We'll have good hay land that will be worth more by itself than the whole brand is to-day. Say the word, girl, and we'll build up the old outfit that both of our folks helped to found."

The girl had closed her eyes as he painted this picture of possibilities and except for the difference of voice it might well have been old Cal Warren speaking; the views and sentiments were the same she had so often heard her father express. Next to the longed-for partners.h.i.+p with old Bill Harris the dream of his life had been to see the Three Bar flats a smooth meadow of alfalfa.

"I'll put a bunch of terriers in there that will be hard for Slade to uproot," Harris said. "What do you say, Billie? Let's give it a try."

"I'd like to see it done," she said. "But so much depends on the outcome. I'll have to write Judge Colton first. He has all my affairs in charge."

Harris smiled across at her.

"That's right peculiar," he observed. "The Judge is holding the reins over my little prospects too. They've tangled your interests and mine up all along the line it seems. You drop a line to Judge Colton and sort of outline the plan. Maybe he'll see it our way."

They mounted and rode back to the wagon and the girl went straight to Waddles with the proposition Harris had urged. The big man had fallen asleep with the paper he had been perusing still clutched in his hand.

"Tell him to go his best," Waddles advised, when she had outlined Harris's scheme. "He'll put a bunch of terriers on the Three Bar that will cut Slade's claws. If they burn out the boys Cal Harris puts on the place then there'll be one real war staged at the old Three Bar."

"He's been telling you," she accused.

"He did sort of mention it," Waddles confessed.

"Then his idea is to import a bunch of gun-fighters," she said. "I won't have a bunch of hired killers living at the Three Bar."

"These boys will just be the sort that's handy at knowing how to avoid getting killed themselves," Waddles evaded. "You can't rightly blame any man for that. And besides, Slade has to be met on his own ground."

"Do you think Slade is at the bottom of the Three Bar losses every year?" she asked.

"Every hoof," Waddles stated. "Every last head! Maybe the albino's layout rustles an odd bunch on and off. But Slade is the man that's out to wreck your brand." The big cook heaved a sigh as he reached a decision on a matter which had been troubling him for days. "That's what Cal Warren was afraid of--Slade's branching out our way like he had already toward the south. And that's one reason he left things tied up the way he did."

He tapped the much-thumbed doc.u.ment on his knee and handed it to the girl.

"You and Young Cal have been sort of half-hostile," he said. "Cast an eye over that and maybe it'll help you two youngsters to get along."

Three times the girl read every word of the paper while Waddles smoked his pipe in silence. Then she sat on the gate of the wagon and gazed off across the sage; and she was picturing again the long trail of the Three Bar cows; but this time she was reconstructing the scene at the end of it. Instead of one man scheming to trick an old friend at the last crossing of their trails she now visioned two old men regretting that the life-long hope of a partners.h.i.+p had never been fulfilled and planning to cement that arrangement in the next generation. For old Bill Harris had left her a full half-interest in everything he owned on earth with the single stipulation that she retain her half of the Three Bar for five years after her father's death.

"But why?" she asked presently. "Why did he do that for me? He'd never seen me since I was three years old."

"He did it for the girl of old Cal Warren, the best friend he had topside of ground," Waddles said. "Your dad and Bill Harris had been pals since they was hatched."

"But why didn't they let us know?" she insisted. "Instead of tangling it up in this round-about way?"

"Bill Harris had a soft spot in his heart for the old Three Bar the same as your daddy had," Waddles said. "They knew there was hard times and changes ahead and both hated to think of the old brand going under or changing hands. They was afraid that if both you and the boy knew your path was going to be carpeted soft in any event that you might sell out if things got to breaking wrong. This way it looked like you'd be sure to stick. But they both knew too that when old folks go mixing into young folks' affairs without consulting them, things are liable to get all snarled. So they hedged it for both of you."

"How?" she asked. "What if either or both of us should have refused to abide by the terms?"

"Then both properties would have been split between the two of you, the same as if you'd carried them out," he said. "You didn't go and think now, Pet, that them two wise old heads was going to leave the youngsters in the lurch! They was planning the best they knew. Your dad told me to keep an eye on the general lay. And Judge Colton sent me that copy to have on hand to sort of iron things out when I thought best. I'm telling you because I know you wouldn't quit the Three Bar as long as there's two cows left."

"Does Cal know?" she asked.

"Not a word," Waddles a.s.serted. "He's likely considerable puzzled himself. But he's of a optimistic turn of mind, Cal is, and white folks too. He surmises things will break right some day, knowing his own dad and havin' visited round a day or two with yours. 'I don't know what they're at,' he says to me. 'But they was both square shooters, those old boys, and whatever it was they didn't aim to cook up any misery for either the little girl or me, so what's the use to fret?' You drop the Judge a line, girl, and turn Harris loose to rip up the Three Bar flat and seed it down to hay."

She nodded and slipped from the end-gate of the wagon, taking the paper with her. Harris was soaking a flannel s.h.i.+rt in the little stream, flattening it in a riffle and weighting it down with rocks. She went straight to him and sat on the bank, motioning him to a seat by her side. He dried his hands and took the paper she held out to him.

"What's in the wind?" he asked.

She nodded to indicate the doc.u.ment and he sat down to look over it.

His quizzical expression was erased as he saw his father's name and the girl watched his face for some evidence of resentment as he read on.

Their status was now reversed, for Bill Harris's holdings had been easily double those of her own parent. She saw the sun wrinkles deepen at the corners of his eyes as he grasped the text of it and he looked up at her and laughed.

"Now we're resting easy," he said. "An even trade."

"Uneven," she dissented. "Of course you know that I'll not take advantage of that."

"Accounts are all squared off between us now," he said. "And of course you'll do just what it says." He held up his hand as she started to dissent. "Don't you!" he reproved. "Let's let that end of it slide--rest for a while. Maybe some day we'll lump both into one and the two of us boss the whole job."

She rested a hand on his arm.

"Of course you know I'm sorry for a number of things I've said to you,"

she said. "But I want to thank you for being too decent to return them in kind. You're real folks, Cal."

"Good girl, Billie," he thanked her. "As to what you said, it's remarkable that you didn't say more. I knew you weren't crabbing over what you might lose for yourself but over the thought that your father had been tricked. I tried to put myself in your place and if I'd been you I know I'd have kicked me off the place, or told Waddles to turn loose his wolf."

He switched abruptly away from the topic in hand and reverted to the subject they had discussed an hour past.

"We've a clear field now with nothing on our minds but the job of putting the Three Bar on its feet," he said. "The Three Bar is a pretty small outfit the way things are to-day but in a few more years the brand that runs three thousand head will be almost in the cla.s.s of cattle kings. The range will be settled with an outfit roosting on every available site. The big fellows will find their range cut up and then they're through. If the Three Bar files on all the water out of Crazy Loop and covers the flat with hay we'll control all the range for a number of miles each way. There's not another site short of Brandon's place west of us--twelve miles or so; about the same to the east; still farther off south of us. We'll be riding the crest."

"If we can only hold on against Slade," she agreed. "But can we?"

"Watch us!" he said. "The Brandons would file on their home basin and put the V L bottoms in hay to-morrow if they could. McVey's been wanting to do it on the Halfmoon D ever since he bought out the brand five years back. They're all afraid to start. But they'll be for us--and follow us as soon as we show them it can be done. Art Brandon is repping with us and I've been sounding him out. You talk to him.

In the meantime you try and get a letter off to the Judge to-day."

The girl nodded.

"We'll try it," she said. "I know that Cal Warren would rather see the Three Bar go to pieces from its own pressure, fighting from the inside to grow, than to see it whittled down from the outside without our fighting back."