The Settling of the Sage Part 5

For her own peace of mind she had tried to smother her dislike of him and he was very careful to avoid any topic that would rekindle it.

They washed the dishes together, and from that hour their relations, to all outward appearance, were friendly or at least devoid of open hostility. They no longer ate separately; she did not avoid him during the day, and the second evening she prepared two places at her own table in the big living room before the fireplace.

"It's so empty out there," she explained.

"With only the two of us at a table built for twenty."

He lingered for an hour's chat before her fire and each evening thereafter was the same. But he knew that she was merely struggling to make the best of a matter that was distasteful, that her opinion of him was unaltered. Her bitterness could not be entirely concealed, and she frequently touched on some fresh point that added to her distrust of his present motives and confirmed her belief in his double-dealing in the past. There were so many of these points; his refusal to accept her offer to give him his half-interest if he would stay off the place; his weak insinuations that there was some reason why he must spend two years on the Three Bar; his prowling the country for a year spying on the methods she followed in running the outfit, half of which would soon be his; his buying the school section and filing on a quarter of land, the location blocking the lower end of the Three Bar valley.

Whenever she mentioned one of these he refused to take issue with her.

And one night she touched on still another point.

"What was the reason for your first idea--of coming here under another name?" she demanded.

"I thought maybe others knew I'd been left a part interest," he said, "and it might be embarra.s.sing. The way it is, with only the two of us knowing the inside, I can stay on as a regular hand until the time is up."

"You're so plausible," she said. "You put it as a favor to me. Did it ever strike you that if the truth were known it might also be uncomfortable for you?"

He smiled across at her and once more she frowned as she discovered that he was likeable for all his underhandedness.

"Worse than that--suicidal," he admitted.

"If you mentioned what you think of me, that I've framed to rob you by law, you wouldn't be bothered with me for long." He laughed softly and stretched his feet toward the fire. "Look at it any way you like and I'm in bad shape to deal you any misery," he pointed out. "If you'd drop a hint that I'm an unwelcome addition it would only be a matter of days until I'd fail to show up for meals. If you view it from that angle you can see I'm setting on the powder can."

She did see it, but had not so clearly realized it till he pointed it out, and for the first time she wavered in her conviction that he had come simply to deprive her of her rights. But the thought that her father would not easily have willed away the home place to another without being unduly influenced served to reinstate her distrust along with a vague resentment for his having shaken it by throwing himself so openly on her mercy.

"You probably thought to overcome that by reaching the point the whole thing so patently aims for," she said. "And you calculated well--arriving at a time when we'd be alone for a week. The whole scheme was based on that idea and I've been patiently wondering why you don't rush matters and invite me to marry you."

He rose and flicked the ash from his cigarette into the fireplace.

"I do invite you--right now," he said, and in her surprise she left her chair and stood facing him. "I'd like real well to have you, Billie."

"That's the final proof," she said. "I'm surprised that you didn't tell me the first day."

"So am I," he said.

She found no answer for this but stood silent, knowing that she had suddenly become afraid of him.

"And that's the living truth," he affirmed. "Other men have loved you the first day. You know men well enough to be certain that I wouldn't be tied to one woman for the sake of owning a few head of cows--not if I didn't want her for herself." He waved an arm toward the door.

"There's millions of miles of sage just outside," he said. "And millions of cows--and girls."

He moved across to her and stood almost touching her, looking down into her face. When Slade had stood so a few days past she had been coldly indifferent except for a shiver of distaste at the thought of his touching her. Before Harris she felt a weakening, a need of support, and she leaned back from him and placed one hand behind her on the table.

"You judge for yourself whether a man wouldn't be right foolish--with all those things I mentioned being right outside to call him--to marry a woman he didn't want for herself, because she had a few hundred head of cows." He smiled down at her. "Don't pull back from me, Billie; I won't lay a finger on you. But now do you think it's you I want--or the little old Three Bar?"

"You can prove it," she said at last. "Prove it by going away for six months--or three."

He shook his head.

"Not that," he said. "I've told you I was sewed up in a right peculiar way myself--which wouldn't matter a d.a.m.n if it wasn't for this. I'd have tossed it off in a second if the girl on the Three Bar had turned out to be any other than you. Now I'm going to see it through. The Three Bar is going under--the brand both our folks helped to found--unless some one pulls it out of the hole. Believe me if you can and if you can't--why, you know that one remark about my being unwelcome here will clear the road for you, like I mentioned a few minutes back."

He turned away without touching her and she had not moved when the door closed behind him.

An hour past noon on the following day a drove of horses appeared at the lower extremity of the valley and swept on toward the ranch. As Harris threw open the gates of the big corral he saw her standing in the door of the cookhouse watching the oncoming drove. Riders flanked the bunch well out to each side to steady it. There was a roar of hoofs and a stifling cloud of dust as three hundred half-wild horses clattered past and crowded through the gates, scattering swiftly across the pasture lot back of the corral. A dozen sweat-streaked riders swung from their saddles. There was no chance to distinguish color or kind among them through the dust caked in the week-old growth of beard that covered every face.

One man remained on his mount and followed the horses into the pasture lot, cutting out fifty or more and heading them back into the corral; for Waddles had decreed that they could have the rest of the afternoon off for a jaunt to Brill's Store and they waited only to change mounts before the start.

Calico stood drooping sleepily in one of the smaller corrals and Harris moved toward him, intending to ride over with the rest of the men.

"The boss said for you to ride Blue," Morrow stated as Harris pa.s.sed the group at the gates of the corral. "He's clear gentle-broke, Blue is."

The men looked up in surprise. Morrow had not been near the house to receive instructions from the girl. The lie had been so apparent as to const.i.tute a direct challenge to the other man.

Harris stood looking at him, then shrugged his shoulders.

"Whatever the boss says goes with me," he returned evenly.

A rangy blue roan swept past with the fifty or so others. At least once every round of the corral he laid back his ears and squealed as he scored some other horse with his teeth, then lashed out with wicked heels.

"I reckon that'll be Blue?" Harris asked of Evans and the lanky one nodded. The men scattered round the corral and each watched his chance to put his rope on some chosen horse. The roan kept others always between himself and any man with a rope but at last he pa.s.sed Harris with but one horse between. Harris nipped his noose across the back of the intervening horse and over the blue roan's head.

Blue stopped the instant the rope tightened on his neck.

"You've been busted and rope-burnt a time or two," Harris remarked, and he led the horse out to saddle him. The big blue leaned back, crouching on his haunches as the man put on the hackamore. His eyes rolled wickedly as Harris smoothed the saddle blanket and he flinched away with a whistling snort of fear, his nostrils flaring, as the heavy saddle was thrown on his back.

Harris tightened the front cinch and the blue horse braced himself and drew in a long, deep breath.

"That's right, Blue, you swell up and inflate yourself," Harris said.

"I'll have to squeeze it out of you." He fastened the hind cinch loosely, then returned to the front and hauled on the latigo until the pressure forced the horse to release the indrawn breath and it leaked out of him with a groaning sigh.

"I wonder now why Morrow is whetting his tommyhawk for me," Harris remarked as he inspected the big roan. "You're a hard one, Blue. I'll let that saddle warm up on you before I top you off."

Every horse pitched a few jumps from force of habit when first mounted, some of them indifferently, others viciously, then moved restlessly around, anxious for the start.

"Well, step up on him and let's be going," Morrow ordered surlily.

Harris took a short hold on the rope reins of the hackamore with his left hand, cramped the horse's head toward him and gripped the mane, his right hand on the horn, and swung gently to the saddle, easing into it without a jar.

"Easy, Blue!" he said, holding up the big roan's head. "Don't you hang your head with me." He eased the horse to a jerky start and they were off for Brill's at a shuffling trot. Three times in the first mile Blue bunched himself nervously and made a few stiff jumps but each time Harris held him steady. The pace was increased to a long, swinging trot and he felt the play of powerful muscles under him as the blue horse seemed to reach out for distance at every stride.

"You'd have made one good little horse, Blue," he said, "if some sport hadn't spoiled you on the start."

"Don't speak loud or the blue horse might shy and spill his pack,"

Morrow remarked in a tone loud enough for Harris to overhear. Evans turned in his saddle and eyed the dark man curiously.

"He won't upset his load to-day," he prophesied. "Harris is just past the colt stage, round twenty-seven or eight somewheres, and has out-growed his longing to show off. But he'll be able to sit up in the middle of anything that starts to move out from under him."

They left the horses drooping at the several hitch rails before the post and crowded in. A few paused along the counters of merchandise that flanked the left side of the big room while the rest headed straight for the long bar that extended the full length of the opposite side. The Three Bar men had scarcely tossed off their first drink before there sounded a clatter of hoofs outside and twelve men from the Halfmoon D trooped in.

"Out of the way!" the foremost youth shouted. "Back off from the pine slab, you Three Bar soaks, and give parched folks a chance. Two hours'

play and six months' work--so don't delay me."