The Settling of the Sage Part 33

She wanted but to get away from it all.

Harris pointed as they rode down the slope. The little cabin that old Bill Harris had first erected on the Three Bar, and which had later sheltered the Warrens when they came into possession of the brand, stood solid and unharmed among the blackened ruins which hemmed it in on all sides.

"Look, girl!" he exclaimed triumphantly.

"Look at that little house. The Three Bar was started with that! We have as much as our folks started with--and more. They even had to build that. We'll start where our folks did and grow."

XVI

Harris sat on a baggage truck and regarded the heap of luggage somberly. Way off in the distance a dark blot of smoke marked the location of the onrushing train which would take the Three Bar girl away.

"Some day you'll be wanting to come back, old partner," he predicted hopefully.

Billie shook her head. There is a certain relief which floods the heart when the worst has pa.s.sed. Looking forward and antic.i.p.ating the possible ruin of the Three Bar, she had thought such a contingency would end her interest in life and she had resolutely refused to look beyond it into the future. Now that it was wrecked in reality she found that she looked forward with a faint interest to what the future held in store for her,--that it was the past in which her interest was dead.

"Not dead, girl; only dormant," Harris said, when she remarked upon this fact. "Like a seed in frozen ground. In the spring it will come to life and sprout. The Three Bar isn't hurt. We're in better shape than ever before and a clear field out in front; for the country is cleaned up and the law is clamped on top."

She honestly tried to rouse a spark of interest deep within her, some ray of enthusiasm for the future of the Three Bar. But there was no response. She a.s.sured herself again that the old brand which had meant so much to her meant less than nothing now. That part of her was dead.

The trail of smoke was drawing near and there was a rhythmic clicking along the rails. Harris leaned and kissed her.

"Just once for luck," he said, and slipped from his seat on the truck as the train roared in. It halted with a screech of brakes and he handed her up the steps.

"Good-by, little fellow," he said. "I'll see you next round-up time."

As the train slid away from the station she looked from her window and saw him riding up the single street on the big paint-horse. The train cleared the edge of the little town and pa.s.sed the cattle chute. A long white line through the sage marked the course of the Coldriver Trail. Three wagons, each drawn by four big mules, moved toward the cl.u.s.ter of buildings which comprised the town, the freighters on their way to haul out materials for the rebuilding of the ranch.

The work was going on but she no longer had a share in it. She was looking ahead and planning a future in which the Three Bar played no part.

Deane was with Judge Colton, her father's old friend, to meet her at the station. The news of the Three Bar fight had preceded her and the press had given it to the world, including her part of it. As they rode toward the Colton home she told the Judge she had come to stay and Deane was content. After the strenuous days she had just pa.s.sed through she needed a long period of rest, he reflected; but the older man smiled when he suggested this.

"What she needs now is action," he said. "And no rest at all. If it was me I'd try to wear her down instead of resting her up--keep her busy from first to last. Cal Warren's girl isn't the sit-around type."

Deane acted on this and no day pa.s.sed without his having planned a part of it to help fill her time. Her interest in the new life was genuine and she was conscious of no active regret at parting from the old. It was so different as to seem part of another world. The people she met, their mode of life, their manner of speech; all were foreign to the customs of the range. And this very dissimilarity kept her interest alive until she grew to feel that she belonged.

All through the fall and early winter she had scarcely an idle hour.

Her days here were almost as fully occupied as they had been before.

And in the late winter, after having visited other school friends who lived farther east, she found herself antic.i.p.ating the return to the Colton home as eagerly as always in the past she had looked forward to seeing the Three Bar after a long period away from it.

The grip of winter was receding and a few of the hardier trees were putting out buds when she returned. Every evening Deane was with her and together they planned the next, as once she and Harris had planned before her fireplace in the old ranch house. For the first time in her life she was glad to be sheltered and pampered as were other girls.

Gliding servants antic.i.p.ated her wishes and carried them out. But with it all there was a growing restlessness within her,--a vague dissatisfaction for which she could not account. She groped for an answer but the a.n.a.lysis could not be expressed or definitely cleared in her mind.

She sat in the Colton library waiting for Deane to come and take her to a lakeside clubhouse for the evening. Tiny leaves showed on the trees and the lawn was a smooth velvet green.

Slade's words of the long ago recurred to her.

"A soft front lawn to range in," she quoted aloud. The reason for her restlessness came with the words.

Deane planned with her of evenings but the planning was all of play.

No word of work crept into it. If only he would accept her as wholly into that part of his life as he did into the rest. She suddenly felt that he was excluding her from something it was her right to share.

Their planning together was not constructive but something which led nowhere, a restless, hectic rush for amus.e.m.e.nts which she enjoyed but which could not make up the whole of her life. Always she had said that men went to extremes and made of their wives either drudges or little tinsel queens. They never followed the middle course and made them full partners through thick and thin.

And suddenly she longed to sit for just one evening before the fire and plan real work with Cal Harris. He had been the one man she had known who had asked that she work with him, instead of insisting that she work for him,--or that he should work for her. She had drifted along, expecting that that same state of affairs would go on indefinitely, believing that he filled the void left by old Cal Warren. But now she knew he held that place he had created for himself. They had worked together and she had deserted the sinking ship to play the part of the tinsel queen.

The men would be just in from the horse round-up and breaking out the remuda, preparatory to starting after the calves. She pictured Waddles bawling the summons to feed from the cook-house door. She was conscious of a flare--half of resentment, half of apprehension--toward Harris for not having sent a word of affairs at the ranch.

"There's millions of miles of sage just outside," she quoted. "And millions of cows--and girls." Perhaps he had gone in search of them.

Perhaps, after all, he had found that the road to the outside was not really closed as he had once told her it was.

Judge Colton entered the room and interrupted her reverie by handing her a paper. In the first black headline she saw Slade's name and Harris's; an announcement of the last chapter of the Three Bar war.

The first line of the article stated that Slade, the cattle king, had been released. There was insufficient proof to convict on any count.

She felt a curious little shiver of fear for Harris with Slade once more at large. The article retold the old tale of the fight and portrayed Slade, on his release, viewing the range which he had once controlled and finding a squatter family on every available ranch site.

She had a flash of sympathy for Slade as she thought his sensations must have been similar to her own when she had looked upon the ruins of the Three Bar. But this was blotted out by the knowledge that he had only met the same treatment he had handed to so many others; that he had dropped into the trap he had built for her. She found no real sympathy for Slade,--only fear for Harris since Slade was freed. The old sense of responsibility for her brand had been worn too long to be shed at will. She knew that now.

"I suppose you'll be surprised to hear that I'm going back," she said.

Her father's old friend smiled across at her and puffed his pipe.

"Surprised!" he said. "Why, I've known all along you'd be going back before long. I could have told you that when you stepped off the train."

He left her alone with Deane when the younger man arrived. She plunged into her subject at once.

"I'm sorry," she said. "But I'm going home. I'm not cut out for this--not for long at one time. In ten days they'll be rounding up the calves and I'll have to be there. I want to smell the round-up fire and slip my twine on a Three Bar calf; to throw my leg across a horse and ride, and feel the wind tearing past. I'm longing to watch the boys topping off bad ones in the big corral and jerking Three Bar steers. It will always be like that with me. So this is good-by."

Four days later, in the early evening, the stage pulled into Coldriver with a single pa.s.senger. The boys were in from a hundred miles around for one last spree before round-up time. As the stage rolled down the single street the festivities were in full swing. From one lighted doorway came the blare of a mechanical piano accompanied by the sc.r.a.pe of feet; the sound of drunken voices raised in song issued from the next; the shrill laughter of a dance-hall girl, the purr of the ivory ball and the soft clatter of chips, the ponies drowsing at the hitch rails the full length of the street, the pealing yelp of some over-enthusiastic citizen whose night it was to howl; all these were evidences of the wide difference between her present surroundings and those of the last eight months. She gazed eagerly out of the stage window. It was good to get back.

Both the driver and the shotgun guard who rode beside him were new men on the job since she had left and neither of them knew the ident.i.ty of their pa.s.senger. As the stage neared the rambling log hotel where she would put up for the night a compact group of riders swung down the street. Her heart seemed to stop as she recognized the big paint-horse at their head. She had not fully realized how much she longed to see Cal Harris. As they swept past she recognized man after man in the light that streamed from the doorways and dimly illuminated the wide street.

Instead of dismounting in a group they suddenly split up, as if at a given signal, scattering the length of the block and dismounting singly. There was something purposeful in this act and a vague apprehension superseded the rush of gladness she had experienced with the first unexpected view of the Three Bar crew. Men who stood on the board sidewalks turned hastily inside the open doors as they glimpsed the riders, spreading the news that the Three Bar had come to town.

The driver pulled up in front of the one hotel.

"It'll come off right now," he said. "Slade's in town."

"Sure," the guard replied. "Why else would Harris ride in at night like this unless in answer to Slade's threat to shoot him down on sight? Get the girl inside."

The reason for the scattering was now clear to her. Slade, on his release, had announced that he would kill Harris on sight whenever he appeared in town. Slade had many friends. The Three Bar men were scattered the length of the street to enforce fair play.

The guard opened the door and motioned her out but she shook her head.

"I'm going to stay here," she a.s.serted.

Her answer informed him of the fact that she was no casual visitor but one who knew the signs and would insist on seeing it through. He nodded and shut the door.

Harris had dismounted at the far end of the block and was strolling slowly down the board sidewalk on the opposite side. Groups of men packed the doorways, each one striving to appear unconcerned, as if his presence there was an accident instead of being occasioned by knowledge that something of interest would soon transpire. A man she knew for a Slade rider moved out to the edge of the sidewalk across the street from Harris. She saw the lumbering form of Waddles edging up beside him. Other Three Bar boys were watching every man who showed a disposition to detach himself from the groups in the doors. The blare of the piano and all sounds of revelry had hushed.