Hal G. Evarts

“ 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 assured herself again that the old brand which had meant so much to her meant less than nothing now. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A man that's not above doing a little fixing up! A cowhand is the most overworked and underpaid saphead that ever lost three nights' sleep hand running and worked seventy-two hours on end; sleep in the rain or not at all—to hold a job at forty per for six months in the year. The other six he's throwed loose like a range horse to rustle or starve. Hardest work in the world—but he don't know it, or money wouldn't hire him to lift his hand. He thinks it's play. Not one out of ten but what prides himself that he can't be browbeat into doing a tap of work. ”

“ The memory of little Bangs, his adoring gaze fastened on her face, was uppermost in her mind and brought a lump to her throat. "I hope he gets them all."
"Billie, let me take you away from all this," Deane urged again. "Let me give you the things every girl should have—shut all the rough spots out of your path. I want to give you the things every girl needs to round out her life—a home and love and shelter."
Shelter! Slade's words recurred to her: "A soft front lawn to range in." ”

“ If only he had suggested that she come to him as soon as the Three Bar was once more a prosperous brand; had only pointed out how she could spend months of each year on the old home ranch,—then he might have won his point without waiting. But that is not the way of man toward woman. His plea was that she leave all this behind—for him. And his hold was not quite strong enough to induce her to give up every link of the life she had loved for long years before Carlos Deane had been even a part of it. ”

“ Far off on the opposite side she made out a lone horseman riding at a full run along the sidehill above the cows as he made a supreme effort to reach the head of the run. The Three Bar men split and streamed up both sides of the bottoms. The flashes had ceased except for brief, quivering plays of less than a second's duration. She hung her spurs into Papoose and trusted to his footwork. The swift little horse passed one rider, then another. There were only the rumble of hoofs and the crazed bawling of cows to guide her as she drew near the rear of the herd. ”

“ The full enjoyment of a novel scene was spoiled for Deane by the sickening realization that the Three Bar girl was part of it, rubbing elbows with the nondescript throng. He looked again at Harper, the rustler chief; at Slade, with his peculiar turtle-like face, Slade the cattle king—the killer. Billie Warren stood between the two Epperson girls whose faces betrayed the taint of Indian blood, an arm about the shoulders of each of them. The sheriff who had said that men must humor womenfolks was leaning against the bar. Deane turned to Harris but found him looking off across the room. ”

“ He waved her over to one side.
"Keep well away from me!" he ordered. "They don't want you."
They hung their spurs into their mounts and the horses plunged down the steeply-pitching bottoms, vaulting sage clumps and bounding along the cow trails that threaded the brush. Two hundred yards below the cow the draw made an elbow bend. The girl rounded it and as Harris followed a jump behind he felt a jarring tug at the cantle of his saddle and the thin, sharp crack of a rifle reached him. ”

“ Each man was as stubbornly set in his new views as he had been in the old. The Harrises came into possession of the Warrens' prairie schooner and drove off to the east. The Warrens took over the Three Bar brand and the little Williamette Ann slept in the tiny bunk built for the son of the Harris household.
For a space of minutes these old pictures occupied the mind of the man on the pinto horse. The led buckskin moved fretfully and tugged on the lead rope, rousing the man from his abstraction. ”

“ Waddles swung back the door and sprang outside as Morrow vaulted to the saddle. The big man lunged and tackled both horse and man as a grizzly would seek to batter down his prey.
The frightened horse struck at him, numbing one leg with the blow of an iron-shod forefoot, then reared and wheeled away from the thing which sprang at him, but Waddles retained his grip in the animal's mane, his other hand clamped on Morrow's ankle. ”

“ The surface was a pulpy mass intersected by rivulets. Water trickled from the eaves of the buildings and there was a breath of spring in the air; false assurance for those who knew, for it was inevitable that, once the chinook had passed, 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. ”

“ Far below them they could see a rider hazing a bunch of cows out into the bottoms. High on the right-hand slope of the gulch lay a notch, a little blind basin watered by the seepage from a sidehill spring, and there on the green bed of it a dozen cows with their calves grazed undisturbed. For perhaps five minutes Harris lolled sidewise in the saddle and watched them. Then a rider appeared on the ridge that divided that draw from the next, dropped in below the cows and headed them back over the ridge into the draw from which he had appeared. ”

“ I've always felt that it would kill me to leave with the idea that I'd never see the Three Bar range again. But now the country has changed. At times it seems as if it would be a vast relief to me to leave it all behind."
"It's the people that have changed," he said. "It's only the history of all frontiers. The first settlers win it for themselves. Then clashing elements creep in; sheep and cattle wars; stockmen and squatter quarrels; later the weeding out of the wild bunch—parasites like Harper's crew: still later there'll be squabbles between the nesters themselves ”

“ 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. ”

“ The boy's face was small and quizzical, a shaggy mop of tawny hair hanging so low upon his forehead that his mild blue eyes peered forth from under the fringe of it and gave him the air of a surprised terrier, which effect had gained him the title of Bangs.
"I bet the little paint-horse could make a man swing and rattle to set up in his middle, once he started to act up," he said.
"Calico wouldn't know how to start," Harris said. "A horse, inside his limitations, is what his breaker makes him. I never favored the idea of breaking a horse to fight you every time you climb him. ”

“ 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 bass. 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. ”

“ Harris said. "He wouldn't lose a dollar if the whole range was under fence. He's drawing down money to keep that feeling alive. You'll find one with every outfit in this country. And the chances are you'll find every one of them overlooking a few calves on his circle—same as Morrow did. There's a persistent rumor to the effect that any man who burns out a squatter can drop in at Slade's and get five hundred dollars in cash. The wild bunch will handle every case that turns up if that rumor is true." ”

“ Slade nodded agreement. The ranger had authority to recommend the issuing of permits and his superiors would not go contrary to his suggestions in any but exceptional cases—certainly not in this matter. Slade's eyes turned frequently toward the two figures on the log, silhouetted against the white of the moonlit meadow, and his slashed mouth set in disapproval. Harris noted this and smiled as it occurred to him that Slade's views on the subject of Deane's appropriating the girl for himself were about on a par with Deane's ideas relative to her touring the hills with four men. ”

“ Morrow's face wore none of the active malignancy that stamps the features of those uncontrolled desperadoes who kill in a flare of passion; rather it seemed that the urge to kill was always with him, had been born with him, his face drawn and over-lengthened from the inner effort to render his homicidal tendencies submissive to his brain, not through desire for regeneration, for he had none, but as a mere matter of expediency. ”

“ Harris increased the pace and they swept up-country along the divide at a steady lope. When traveling or making a long day's ride on a single horse the cowhand saves his mount and travels always at a trail-trot, but with work to be done, three circles to be thrown in a day and with a string of fresh horses for every hand, the paramount issue of the circle is the saving of time rather than the saving of mounts. As they reached the head of the first draw that led back down into the valley Harris waved an arm. ”

“ The two came back and sat with the others round the dying fire, then all turned in for the night, Billie in her teepee and the men in their bed rolls with no other overhead shelter than the trees. In less than an hour Harris raised on one elbow. The ranger woke just as Harris slipped from his bed roll and tugged on his chaps. The steady thud of hoofs had penetrated each man's consciousness and apprised him of the fact that the horses were coming down. ”

“ We'll gather our own cows close to the home ranch and shove other brands off our range, throw forty white-face bulls out close round the place and start building up real beef; steers that will bring fifty a head where those runts bring twenty-five. And big red she-stock will bring more money too. In five years we'll have a straight red brand and the Three Bar will be rated at thirty dollars a head, come as they run on the range, instead of round ten or twelve as they'd figure us now. We'll have good hay land that will be worth more by itself than the whole brand is to-day. ”

“ The elder Harris must have nursed a lifelong enmity against her father, who had believed him the most devoted friend on earth.
She had often heard the tale of how her parent had, in all friendliness, followed old Bill Harris step by step from Dodge City to the Platte, to old Fort Laramie and finally to the present Three Bar range. Perhaps the one so followed had felt that Cal Warren was but the hated symbol of the whole clan of squatters who had driven him from place to place and eventually forced him to relinquish his hope of seeing the Three Bar brand on a hundred thousand cows ”

“ Her eyes never once left Harris as he came down the street. When almost abreast of the stage Slade stepped from a doorway twenty feet in before him and stopped in his tracks. Harris turned on one heel and stood with his left side quartering toward Slade,—the old pose she remembered so well. There was a tense quiet the length of the street.
"Those you hire do poor work from behind," Harris said. "Maybe you sometimes take a chance yourself and work from in front." His thumb was hooked in the opening of his shirt just above the butt of his gun. ”

“ In some spots the paramount issue was over the relative grazing rights of cows and sheep, fanning a flame of hatred between those whose occupations were in any way concerned with these rival interests. In others the stockmen ignored the homestead laws which proclaimed that settlers could file their rights on land. As always before, wherever men resorted to lawlessness to protect their fancied rights, the established order of things had broken down, all laws disregarded instead of the single one originally involved. ”

“ The music ceased and the chant of the roulette croupier began, mingling with the smooth purr of the ivory ball. There came a sudden hush from the vicinity of the rear door, a hush that spread rapidly throughout the room, so swift are the perceptions of a frontier gathering.
Old Rile Foster stood just inside, his gun half-raised before him. Canfield and Lang stood together in the center of the floor, apart from the rest and with no others in line beyond them. ”

“ You want an outfit of your own—and if the Three Bar gets crowded out you'll go to the man that can give you one in its place. That will be me. Some day we'll trade."
"Some day—right soon—you'll trade your present holdings for a nice little range in hell," a voice said in Slade's ear and at the same instant two huge paws were thrust from the little window of the cook-wagon and clamped on his arms above the crook of his elbows. ”

“ Harris sat looking through the door at the valley spread out below and after a moment he answered the thrust as if he had been long prepared for it.
"Yes," he said. "And that's what all range country will come to in a few more years; farm what they can and graze what they can't—and the sooner the better for all concerned." He waved an arm down the valley. "Good alfalfa dirt going to waste down there—overrun with sage and only growing enough grass to keep ten cows to the quarter. If that was ripped up and seeded to hay it would grow enough to winter five thousand head." ”

“ The minute farming starts there'll be squatters filing on every quarter where they can get water to put it in crop. There's twenty places Slade would have to cover by filings to hold his range where the others would only have to file on one to control the amount of range they're using now."
She nodded as she caught this point.
"Folks have fallen into a set habit of mind," he explained. "You think because every squatter is burned out that every outfit but the Three Bar is against sticking a plow in the ground. ”

“ She was half asleep when a voice some distance from the teepee roused her by speaking the name of Bangs.
"I've a pretty elastic conscience myself," the voice went on. "I'm not above lifting a few calves for the brand I'm riding for or any little thing like that, but this deal sort of gorges up in me. They'll never cinch it on to any man—they never do. Old Rile is brooding over it. He'll likely run amuck. One way or another he'll try to break even for Bangs."
Billie recognized the voice as Moore's and knew that one of her men, at least, had not forgotten Bangs. ”

“ The advance was slower as they closed in on the stockade. There was a sudden commotion among the men at the buildings. They were moving swiftly under cover. Some of the attacking force had been seen. The majority of the rustlers took to the stockade. Four ran into the main cabin.
It was as if she gazed upon the activities of battling ants, the whole game spread out in the field of her glasses. There came a lull in the action and she knew that the sheriff had raised his voice to summon them to come out without their guns and go back as prisoners to stand trial for every crime under the sun. ”