The Settling of the Sage Part 31

The homestead cabins smoked but still stood intact.

"Look!" he urged cheerfully. "Those logs were too green to burn. We won't even have to rebuild. They'll look a little charred round the edges maybe, but otherwise as good as new."

Behind her sounded a gurgling roar as the roof of the main house fell but Harris did not even look back.

"We can restring that fence in a right short while," he a.s.serted.

"We've lost one crop of oat-hay--which we didn't much need, anyhow.

That young alfalfa is too deep rooted to be much hurt. Next spring it'll come out thick, a heavy stand of hay; and we'll cut a thousand tons."

They rode across fields trampled flat by thousands of churning hoofs and reached the spot where the head gate had been, a yawning hole at which the water sucked and tore. A section of the bank caved and was washed away. And through it all he planned the work of reconstruction and the transformation which would be effected inside a year,--while behind them the home ranch was ablaze.

"We're not bad hurt," he said. "They can't hurt our land. I'd rather have this flat right now--the way it stands--than three thousand head of cows on the range and no land at all. We can rebuild the place this winter while work is slack. Build better than before. Those buildings were pretty old, at best. There'll be enough hungry cowhands riding grub-line at the Three Bar to rebuild it in two months. Every man that feeds on us this winter will have to work."

His enthusiasm failed to touch her. For her the Three Bar was wrecked, the old home gone, and her gaze kept straying back to the eddying black smoke-cloud at the foot of the hills.

XV

They rode from the devastated fields and angled southwest across the range. Harris pointed out the calves along their course.

"Look at those chunky little youngsters," he said. "Nearly every one is good red stock. Only a scattering few that threw back to off-color shades. This grading-up process doesn't take long to show."

When some ten miles from the Three Bar he dismounted on a ridge and she joined him, listening with entire indifference to his optimistic plans.

"We're only scratched," he said. "It won't matter in the end."

"This is the end," she dissented. "The Three Bar is done."

"It's just the start," he returned. "It's the end for them! Don't you see? They staked everything on one big raid that would smash the Three Bar and discourage the rest from duplicating our move. That would give Slade a new lease of life--delay the inevitable for a few more years.

They made one final attempt and lost."

"Did they lose?" she inquired. "I thought they'd won."

"They're through!" he a.s.serted positively. "Slade is locked up.

Inside of a week the sheriff would have cleaned out the Breaks. It was my fault this happened. With Slade locked up and Morrow dead it didn't occur to me that anything was planned ahead. If the albino had lived he'd never have run his neck into a noose by a raid like this. But Lang was born without brains. Slade could hire him for anything."

"Can you prove this on Slade?" she demanded. It was the first sign of interest she had shown. Deep under her numbed indifference a thought persisted,--a hope that Slade, the man who had brought about the raid, should be made to pay. Harris shook his head.

"As usual, Slade's in the clear," he said. "There's been a rumor afloat which would be considered sufficient cause for Lang's men to raid the Three Bar without other incentive."

He resumed his glowing plans for reconstruction.

"That's their last shot," he said. "We're only delayed--that's all.

We lost a few fences. Posts are free for the cutting and most of the wire can be restrung. New wire is cheap. The corral poles are scattered right on the spot; only the posts broken off. We can set more posts and throw up the new corrals in two days. The homestead cabins are only charred. The old buildings at the ranch are gone.

I'll put a crew in the hills getting out new logs and there'll be enough out-of-job peelers riding grub-line to rebuild the whole place.

We can put up a few tents for the hands till the new bunk house is built. We've got our land. The hay is tramped flat right now but the roots aren't hurt. Next spring will show the whole flat coming up with a heavy stand of hay."

"You're a good partner, Cal," she said. "You've done your best. But the whole thing would only happen over again. Slade's too strong for us."

"Slade's through!" he a.s.serted again. "He's locked up and when he gets out his hands will be tied. Inside of a month the law will be in the saddle for the first time in years. Public sentiment is running that way. All it ever needed was a start. Once Alden gets a grip on things, with folks behind him, he'll never lose it again. From now on you'll see every wild one cut short in his career. Folks will be busy pointing them out instead of helping them cover it up."

He painted the future of the Three Bar as the foremost outfit within a hundred miles, but her mind was busy with a future so entirely different from the one he portrayed that she scarcely grasped his words. She felt a vague sense of relief that there was no decision for her to make. It had been made for her and against her will, but it was done. Always she had heard her parents speak of the day when they should go back home; and she had always felt that the day would come when she too would live in the place from which they had come,--with frequent trips back to the range. The love for the ranch had delayed her departure from year to year. But now the old familiar buildings were gone and there were no ties to hold her here, or even to call her back once she was gone.

Harris rose and pointed, rousing her from her abstraction. Down in the valley below them filed a long line of dusty hors.e.m.e.n. Behind them came two men wrangling a pack string carrying equipment for a long campaign.

"There is the law!" he said. "That's what I brought you here to see.

It's what we've been waiting for. That is the first outfit of its sort ever to ride these hills. There have been gangs organized by one brand or another that rode out and imposed justice of their own, according to their own ideas--and the next day perpetrated some injustice against men whose ideas were opposed to theirs. But that little procession stands for organized law!"

She turned and looked behind her as her ear caught the thud of hoofs and jangle of equipment. The Three Bar men were just topping the ridge.

They had caught up a number of the horses released from the pasture lot by the stampede. Calico and her own little horse, Papoose, were among them. Waddles and Moore brought up the rear with a pack train loaded with the bed rolls saved from the bunk-house fire.

Harris knew that action, not inaction was the best outlet for her energies, temporarily smothered by the shock of the raid. It was not in her nature to sit with folded hands among the ruins of the ranch and patiently wait for news.

"I thought maybe you'd like to go," he said. "The jaunt will do you good."

She showed the first sign of interest she had evidenced.

"And we're going to the Breaks," she stated.

"That's where," he said. "We'll order them to give up and stand trial.

They won't. Then we'll clean them out. Hunt them down like rats!

We've only been waiting for folks to wake up to the fact that they were sick of having the country run by men like Slade and hara.s.sed by the wild bunch--and till after we'd picked up Slade. The way it's transpired we'd maybe have done better to ride over a week ago."

The little band in the valley was drawing near. She recognized Carp, Bentley and another Slade man riding with the sheriff at their head.

"What's Bentley doing there?" she asked.

"One of Carp's men," Harris said. "If any of them get away from us Carp will hound them down. He wears the U. S. badge and won't be stopped by any feeling about crossing the Utah or Idaho lines.

Rustling is of no interest to him. That's the sheriff's job. But Carp will round them up for obstructing the homestead laws."

The Three Bar men came up and halted. Harris and the girl changed mounts and led their men down to join the file of riders below. As she rode she speculated as to Carlos Deane's sensations if he could but know that she rode at the head of thirty men to raid the stronghold Harris had once pointed out to him from the rims.

For hours they rode at a shuffling trot that covered the miles. It was well after sundown when they halted in a sheltered valley. Waddles cooked a meal over an open fire. Bed rolls were spread and the men were instantly asleep. Three hours before sunup the cook was once more busy round a fire. The men slept on, undisturbed by the sounds, but when he issued the summons to rise they rolled out. In a s.p.a.ce of five minutes every man was eating his meal; for they were possessed of that characteristic which marks only the men who live strenuously and much in the open,--the ability to fall instantly asleep after a hard day and to wake as abruptly, every faculty alert with the opening of their eyes.

The meal was bolted. The men detailed to guard the horses hazed them into a rope corral. Saddles were hastily cinched on and the men rode off through the gloom, leaving Waddles and three others to pack and follow later in the day. Each man lashed a generous lunch on his saddle before riding off.

They held a stiff trot and in an hour out from camp they struck rough going, the choppy nature of the country announcing that they were in the edge of the Breaks. The horses slid down into cut-bank washes and bad-land cracks, following the bottoms to some feasible point of ascent in the opposite wall. Daylight found them twenty miles from camp and the horses were breathing hard. They turned into a coulee threaded by a well-worn trail. Three miles along this Bentley turned to the right up a branching gulch with eight men. Another mile and Carp led a similar detachment off to the left. Billie rode with the sheriff and Harris at the head of the rest, holding to the beaten trail.

"They had hours the start of us," Harris said. "They'd catch up fresh horses on the range and keep on till they got in sometime in the night."

He motioned to Billie.

"You fall back," he said. The men had drawn their rifles from the scabbards. "They never did post a guard. It wouldn't occur to Lang that such a force could be mustered and start out short of a month. If he thought so they'd be out of here and scattered instead of having a lookout along the trail. But there's just a chance. So for a little piece you'd better bring up the rear."

She started to dissent but the sheriff seconded Harris's advice.