The Settling of the Sage Part 24

Rea.s.sured 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 supposit.i.tious 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 pa.s.sing 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 hara.s.sing 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 a.s.surance.

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.

"They'll be satisfied for another two months," he said. "Then we'll have to call them in for another spree."

This evening conference before the fire had come to be a nightly occurrence. Together they went over the details of the work accomplished during the day and mapped out those for the next. From outside came the crunch of hoofs and the screech of logs on the frozen trail as the last mule team came down with its load.

Most of the logs had been skidded down and the men now worked in pairs, erecting the cabins on each filing. The cedar posts had been hauled and strung out along the prospective fence lines. The wagons, under heavy guard, had made two trips to the railroad to freight in more implements and supplies. Thousands of pounds of seed oats and alfalfa seed were stored at the Three Bar along with sixty hundred of cement.

"Another two months and the cabins will be roofed and finished," Harris said. "Then we'll be through till the frost is out of the ground.

We'll start building fence as soon as you can sink a post hole; and we'll have time to break out another two hundred acres of ground before time to seed it down."

The girl nodded without comment, content to leave him to his thoughts, her mind pleasantly occupied with her own. For long her evenings had been lonely but now she had come to look forward to the conferences before the blazing logs. She had made no attempt to a.n.a.lyze the reasons for the new contentment which had transformed her evenings, formerly periods of drab reflections, into the most pleasant portion of each day.

Harris gazed about the familiar room and wondered what the future held out to him if he should be forced to spend his evenings alone after having shared them for six months with the Three Bar girl. The weekly letters still came from Deane. The girl valued Harris as a friend and partner without apparent trace of more intimate regard. He wondered which would prevail, the ties which bound her to the life she had always known or the lure of the new life which beckoned.

Suddenly, without having sought it, the explanation of her recent contentment bubbled to the surface of the girl's consciousness, and she turned and gazed at Harris. Night after night she had sat here with old Cal Warren and discussed the details of their work and after his pa.s.sing her evenings had been hours of restlessness. Now Harris, the partner, had crept into the father's place,--had in a measure filled the void.

Harris rose and flicked the ash from his cigarette, suppressing the desire to take her in his arms, for he knew that time had not yet come.

As he opened the door to leave an eddy of steam curled in at the opening as the warm air of the room battled on the threshold with the thirty-below temperature of the outside world. She heard the hissing crunch of his boots on the frozen crust--and reached for Deane's Christmas letter to reread it for perhaps the fifth time.

During the night a chinook poured its warm breath over the hills and morning found the snow crumpling before it. The surface was a pulpy ma.s.s intersected by rivulets. Water trickled from the eaves of the buildings and there was a breath of spring in the air; false a.s.surance for those who knew, for it was inevitable that, once the chinook had pa.s.sed, bitter frost would clamp down once more.

Such days, however, inspire plans for spring and Billie rode with Harris through the lower field as he pointed out the various fence lines and the lay of the ditches and laterals which would carry water to irrigate the meadow, all these to be installed as soon as winter should lose its grip.

As Harris outlined his plans his words were tinged with optimism and he allowed no hint of possible disaster to creep into his speech. But the girl was conscious of that hovering uncertainty, the feeling that the months of peace were but to lure her into a false sense of security and that Slade would pounce on the Three Bar from all angles at once whenever the time was right.

She found some consolation in the fact that Lang's men no longer rode through her range at will, but skirted it in their trips to and from the Breaks. She attributed this solely to Harris's precautions in the matter of outguards, for of all those within a hundred miles she was perhaps the single one who had not heard of the sinister rumor that was cutting Lang and his men off from the rest of the world.

Men were discussing it wherever they met; in Coldriver they were speculating on the possible results, the same in the railroad towns; across the Idaho line and south into Utah it was the topic of the day.

And the single patron of Brill's store found the same question uppermost in his mind.

Carson was one of the many who were neither wholly good nor hopelessly bad, one who had drifted with the easy current of the middle course.

And he was wondering if that middle course would continue to prove safe. He played solitaire to pa.s.s the time. His horse and saddle had been lost in a stud-poker game just prior to his catching the stage to Brill's, where his credit had always been good. He rose, stretched and accosted Brill.

"Put me down for a quart," he said.

"Whenever you put down the cash," Brill returned.

"What's the matter with my credit?" Carson demanded. "I've always paid."

Brill reached for a book, opened it and slid it on to the bar. He flipped the pages and indicated a number of accounts ruled off with red ink.

"So did Harper," he said. "He always paid; and Canfield--and Magill; these others too. Their credit was good but they've all gone somewheres I can't follow to collect. And they was owing me." He tapped a double account.

"Bangs was into me a little. Old Rile paid up for him and then got it in his turn--with his name down for a hundred on my books. Harris and Billie Warren paid up for Rile. Now just whoever do you surmise will pay up for you?"

"Me?" Carson inquired. "Why, I ain't dead. I'm clear alive."

"So was they when I charged those accounts," Brill said. "But it looks like stormy days ahead. I sell for cash."

"I'm not on this death list, if that's what you're referring to,"

Carson announced.