The Settling of the Sage Part 8

"Thanks, Billie," he said. "That was real white of you."

He rose and sauntered toward the wagon and Billie Warren felt a sudden clutch of fear as he halted before Harper and she realized that he had taken her words literally and intended ordering them off.

"I've been made temporary foreman of the Three Bar--just so the boss could try me out on that job for an hour or two," he remarked conversationally. "So I'm putting in a new rule that goes into effect right off. When you boys ride away, in a few minutes from now, you can tell folks that the grub line is closed as far as the Three Bar is concerned."

Lang took a half-step toward him, his face reflecting his gathering rage as his slow brain comprehended the fact that this speech was but another way of announcing that he and his men would find no welcome at the Three Bar from that moment on. Harper caught his arm and jerked him back. The albino was an old hand and could rightly read the signs.

"The gentleman was remarking to me," he said to Lang; "not you." He turned to Harris, noting as he did so that every Three Bar man, excepting those asleep, had suddenly evidenced keen interest in what was transpiring there; several carelessly shifted their positions.

"There's no law to make you feed any man," he said to Harris. "From now on we'll pay our way--as far as the Three Bar is concerned."

His tones were casual; only his pale eyes, fastened unblinkingly on Harris's face, betrayed his real feeling toward the man who, notwithstanding the roundabout nature of his announcement, had practically ordered him to stay away from the Three Bar for all time.

"But even in the face of that," he resumed, "we'll welcome you any time you happen to ride down our way."

Every man within earshot understood the threat that lay beneath the casual words.

"Then I'll likely drop in some time," Harris said. "If you'll send word where it is. And I'll bring fifty men along."

The albino motioned his men toward their horses and they mounted and rode off down the bottoms. Harris walked back and resumed his seat near the girl, who sat looking at him as if she could not believe what she had just witnessed.

"You see it was just as easy as I'd counted on," he said. "It'll be a considerable saving on food."

"But how did you know?" she asked. "Why is Harper afraid of you?"

"He's not," Harris said. "Not for a single second. But he's an old hand and has left a few places on the jump before he came out here."

"And he thinks you know it!" she guessed.

"He don't care what I know; it's what he knows himself--that the wild bunch is always roosting on the powder can even when it appears like they're sitting pretty--that counts with him. You thought I was taking a fool chance of out-gaming him. In reality I was taking almost an unfair advantage of him, providing he had the brains he must possess to have lived to his age."

She could find no ready-made answer to this surprising statement. He sprawled comfortably on the gra.s.s, turning over in his mind the conditions that were but a repet.i.tion of the history of so many frontiers; first the earliest settlers resenting the intrusion of the later ones and resorting to lawless means of protecting their priority; then the strengthening of the outlaw element, half the countryside in league with the wild bunch, the two opposing factions secretly hiring the predatory cla.s.s to prey upon rival interests; then, inevitably, the clean split, usually occasioned by the outlaws having increased in power until they felt competent to defy both sides, to play both ends against the middle, to commit atrocities that opened the eyes of those who, believing they had subsidized the lawless, suddenly woke to the fact that they had subsidized themselves; then the outlaws, in their turn, discovering that every man's hand was against them; the ruthless establishing of a definite line between those inside and those outside the law, replacing the vague middle ground of semi-lawlessness. Always their friends fell away from them, those secretly leagued with them fearing to be seen in their company, and those not too definitely known to belong to their ranks invariably quitting them cold, often joining forces against them and developing into more or less substantial citizens, according to the standards of their day.

"Don't you know that the albino will kill you for that?" the girl asked at length.

"Not unless he can stage it as a personal quarrel," he said. "He'll never follow it up as coming out of what happened to-day by taking it out on me as temporary foreman of the Three Bar--for ordering him off."

"Why?" she puzzled. "What possible difference would that make to a man like him?"

"Just this," he said: "There's a good majority of folks that don't relish seeing Harper's bunch ride up--that feed them through policy.

But whenever you make it plain to a man that he's compelled to do a thing whether he likes it or not it's ten to one he'll balk out of sheer human pride. If Harper kills the Three Bar foreman on the grounds that he refused to feed all his men--why then, right off, every other foreman and owner within a hundred miles starts to resenting the possibility that maybe the albino feels the same way toward him.

Harper knows that."

"But if your theory had been wrong?" she persisted. "What then?"

"Then," he said, "then there'd have been h.e.l.l and repeat. I wasn't just acting as me, a personal affair, but, as I took pains to remark aloud, as the foreman of the Three Bar. Every Three Bar man would have gone into action the second Harper made a move at me. You know that--and Harper knew it."

She realized the soundness of this statement. The one unalterable code of the country, a code that had been fostered till it eclipsed all others, decreed that a man should be loyal to the brand for which he rode. The whole fabric of the cow business was based on that one point.

"And a wrangle of that magnitude was something he couldn't risk,"

Harris said. "It would stir folks up, and any time they're stirred a mite too far Harper has come to the end of his rope. Any other brand could have done the same--only folks fall into a set habit of mind and figure they must do what others do just because it's custom."

"But now they'll work their deviltry all the stronger against the Three Bar," she predicted. "They could wreck us if they tried. You couldn't get a conviction in five years. Not a man would testify against one of Harper's outfit."

"Then we'll put on a fighting crew and hold them off," he said. "But that's not the layout that will be hardest to handle in the long run.

Slade is the one real hard nut for the Three Bar to crack. He can work it a dozen different ways and you couldn't prove one of them on him to save your soul. He's one smooth hombre--Slade."

Harris rose and headed for his bed roll and the girl sought the shelter of her teepee for a rest. All was quiet near the wagon till Waddles boomed the summons to feed. After the meal a youth named Moore mounted a saddled horse that was picketed nearby and rode up a branching gulch, returning with a dry cedar log which he snaked to the wagon at the end of his rope. After a few hours' rest and the prospects of a full night's sleep ahead the hands s.n.a.t.c.hed an hour for play.

They sat cross-legged round the fire kindled from the cedar and raised their voices in song. Waddles drew forth a guitar and picked a few chords. Bentley, the man who repped for Slade, carried the air and the rest joined in. The voices were untrained but from long experience in rendering every song each man carried his part without a discordant note. Evans sang a perfect ba.s.s. Bangs a clear tenor; Moore faked a baritone that satisfied all hands and Waddles wagged his head in unison with the picking of his guitar and hummed, occasionally accenting the air with a musical, drumlike boom. They rambled through all the old familiar songs of the range. The Texan herded his little dogie from the Staked Plains to Abilene; the herd was soothed on the old bed ground--bed down my dogie, bed down--and the poor cowboy was many times buried far out on the lone prair-ee.

Bangs had stationed himself so that he could see the girl and throughout the evening his surprised eyes never once strayed from Billie Warren's face.

She leaned back against the wagon wheel, enjoying it all, but her complacence was jarred as she half-turned and noted Morrow's face, drawn and bleak, unsoftened by the music. Again the feeling of dislike for him rose within her; but he was an efficient hand and she had nothing definite against him. At the end of an hour Waddles rose and returned his instrument to the wagon. The group broke up and every man turned in.

Billie Warren lay in her teepee, her mind busily going over the events of the day. The night sounds of the range drifted to her. A bull-bat rasped a note or two from above. A picketed horse stamped restlessly just outside and a range cow bawled from an adjacent slope. The night-hawk had relieved the wrangler and she could half-hear, half-feel the low jar of many hoofs as he grazed the remuda slowly up the valley, singing to while away the time.

She reflected that Cal Harris was at least possessed of self-confidence and that procrastination was certainly not to be numbered among his failings. It came to her that his interests, for the present, were identical with her own. As half-owner in the Three Bar it would be as much to his advantage as to her own to build it up. Waddles's warped legs prevented his acting as foreman on the job and it might be that the other man would find some way to prevent the leak that was sapping the life from the Three Bar. His half-ownership ent.i.tled him to the place. Billie Warren loved her brand and her personal distrust of Harris was submerged in the hope that his sharing the full responsibility with herself might be a step toward putting it back on the old-time plane of prosperity.

The jar of hoofs had ceased and she knew that the remuda had bedded down; and having at last reached a decision she fell asleep with the crooning voice of the nighthawk drifting to her ears.

V

It seemed but a few fleeting moments before Waddles's voice roused her.

"Roll out!" he bawled. "Feet in the trough!"

There was instant activity, the jingle of belts and spurs and in five minutes every man was fully clothed and splashing at the creek. It was showing rose and gray in the east when the meal was finished and the cook's voice was once more raised.

"All set! Ru-un-n 'em in!" he called, and there came the rumble of hoofs as the nighthawk acted on this order and headed the remuda toward the wagon. Two men mounted the horses that had been picketed close at hand throughout the night and stationed themselves on either side of the open end of the rope corral to guide the horse herd into it.

The horses could not be seen until almost upon them, looming suddenly out of the dim gray of early morning and surging into the corral. The nighthawk and the two men already mounted rode around it, driving back any horse that showed a disposition to leave the corral by a downward slash of a doubled rope across his face and ears. The men went in and scattered through the milling herd, each one watching his chance to put his noose on a circle horse of his own string.

When most of the men were mounted Billie urged Papoose over near Harris's horse.

"Do you know how to throw a circle?" she asked.

"After a fashion," he said. "I've bossed one or two in the past."

"Then we'd better be off," she suggested. "Since you're the Three Bar foreman it's for you to say when."

"I only preempted that job for ten minutes or so," he explained with evident embarra.s.sment. "You surely didn't think I was trying to boost myself into the foreman's job for keeps?"

"No," she said. "But you're half-owner--and you can handle men. I'm giving you free rein to show what you can do."

Harris straightened in his saddle and motioned to the men.