The Settling of the Sage Part 19

"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 endors.e.m.e.nt."

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 pa.s.sed 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 d.a.m.ned 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 a.s.serted.

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 gla.s.ses 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 ma.s.s 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 att.i.tude 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 sc.r.a.p 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 s.h.i.+ver 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 s.e.xes. 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 s.h.i.+pments 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 doc.u.ment," 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 s.h.i.+ps 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.