The Settling of the Sage

by Hal G. Evarts

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 embarrassment. "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.

"Let's go!" he ordered, and headed his horse for the left-hand flank of the valley. They ascended the first slopes, picked a long ridge and followed it to the crest of the low divide between that valley and the next.

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.

"Carp," he called, and a middle-aged man named Carpenter, abbreviated to Carp, wheeled his horse from the group and headed down the draw.

A half-mile farther on they reached the head of another gulch.

"Hanson!" the new foreman called, and the man who repped for the Halfmoon D dropped out. One man was detailed to work each draw and when some five miles up the divide there were but half the crew left. Harris dropped down a long ridge and crossed the bottoms. Far down the valley the wagon showed through the thin, clear air. The foreman led the way to the opposite divide and doubled back, sending a man down every gulch.

The girl rode with him. Down in the bottoms they could see the riders detailed on the opposite side hazing the cows out of their respective draws and heading them toward the wagon. The first few men left their cows in the flat and veered past them to station themselves near the wagon and block the valley, sitting their horses at hundred-yard intervals across it.

Harris and the girl worked the last draw themselves and when they drove their cows out of the mouth of it they found a herd already milled, two hundred yards above the wagon. Harris left her and circled the bunch, estimating it.

A few belated riders were bringing their quotas to swell the herds. Frequently a bunch of cows made a break to leave and many were allowed to make good their escape to the safety of the broken slopes. But these were only marked stuff previously branded and any attempt including a cow with an unbranded calf was instantly blocked. Each rider noted the brands of any cows which he let escape and more particularly still he scanned them with an eye for the presence of a "slick," an animal missed in previous round-ups and wearing no brand. Slick cows were fair prey for any man who first put his rope on them and he was entitled to run his own brand on a slick or to mark it with the brand for which he rode and draw down a certain scale of premiums at the end of the round-up season.

Harris changed mounts, throwing his saddle on the paint-horse. When the last rider appeared with his bunch and threw it into the herd Harris signaled all hands to change mounts. Half the men repaired to the rope corral and caught up cow horses while the balance of the crew held the herd, each one relieving some other as soon as he had saddled a fresh horse.

When the hands commenced working the herd the Three Bar girl watched the trained cow horses with an interest that was always fresh, for from long experience they thoroughly understood every move of the game.

A sagebrush fire was burning fifty yards above the wagon and each man rode past it, leaned from his saddle and dropped his running iron in the flame.

The men worked round the edge of the bunch and slipped a noose on every calf that was thrown to the edge of the constantly shifting mass. Morrow roped the first calf and dragged it to the fire. A cow darted away with her calf and Bangs's horse whirled to head her back. As Bangs shook out his rope the horse changed tactics and abandoned the course that would have carried him past to turn them, following in close behind them instead. After two preliminary swings Bangs made his throw and missed. The horse did not miss a step but kept on close behind the calf while his rider coiled the rope. The second throw fell fair and the horse set his feet and braced himself as the calf hit the end of the rope.

As much as she loved the round-up, many times as she had seen it, Billie Warren had never become calloused to the brutalities perpetrated on the calves. She withdrew and sat in the shade of the wagon. She was downwind and the dust raised by the trampling hoofs floated down to her, mingled with the odor of steaming cows, the acrid smoke of the sage fire and the taint of scorched hair and flesh.

Some of the men handled their hot irons with makeshift tongs of split sage, which were soon burnt through and replaced. Others used slender, long-handled pliers for the work.

The horses held the calves helpless, moving just enough to keep the ropes taut. Evans loosed a fresh-branded calf and rode over to the wagon for a drink. Several cows raced wildly round at a distance from the fire.

"One of those old sisters will go on the prod and make a break for some one right soon," he predicted to the girl.

A calf bawled in pain and a cow, maddened by the appeal of her offspring, charged the group around the fire. The horses that stood there, holding calves, pricked their ears and watched her rush alertly but before it was necessary for any one of them to dodge, Slade's rep slipped his rope on her, jumped his horse off at an angle and brought her down.

Evans pointed to where Harris, seated on the big pinto, was working slowly through the center of the herd.

"He's gone in after another slick," Evans said. "Watch the paint-horse work."

Calico was moving after the animal Harris wanted, working easily and without a single sharp rush that would cause undue disturbance among the cows.

"A good cow horse is like a hound," Lanky observed. "Let him spot the critter you're wanting and nothing can shake him off."

Calico followed a serpentine course through the mass, crowded a three-year-old to the edge and cut him out. The animal attempted to dodge back among his fellows but the paint-horse turned as on a pivot and blocked him, then started him off in a straightaway run.

"There's a real rope-horse," Lanky said. "I've been noticing him work. Look!"

Calico had braced himself as the slick was roped, shoving his hind feet out ahead, squatting on his haunches and raising his forefeet almost clear of the ground.

"Cal broke him without shoes in front," Evans explained. "His feet got tender after he'd jerked a steer or two and he learned to sock his hind feet ahead and take the jar on them. He'll last two years longer that way. A horse that takes all the weight on his front feet in jerking heavy stuff soon gets stove up in the shoulders and has to be condemned. This Cal Harris has one whole bagful of knowing tricks."

He rode back to the work after this endorsement of her choice of a foreman.

Through all the turmoil the nighthawk slept peacefully in the shade of a sage-clump. Waddles dozed in the wagon but suddenly came to life with a start and signaled to the wrangler who, in his turn, waved an arm to the man nearest him. The four wagon horses were roped and harnessed while Waddles loaded the bed rolls on the tailgate and lashed them fast. The rope corral was dismantled and loaded. The chuck wagon veered past the herd and lumbered up the valley and the wrangler and one other followed with the horse herd.

In a short space of time the herd had been worked, the last calf branded, and Harris led the men up the bottoms. As they rode each one reported the brands of all stock which he had let break away from his bunch before reaching the herd. Each rep entered the number and kind of his own brand so reported to the former tally taken of the herd.

Five miles up the valley, at the spot where Harris had crossed it a few hours before, they found the wagon waiting at the new stand, the corral refashioned and the remuda inside it. It was but ten o'clock but the first circle had commenced at four. The noon meal on the round-up was served whenever the first circle was completed. The men fell ravenously on the hot meal, changed to fresh circle horses and started again.

It was falling dusk when the herd gathered in the third circle had been worked and the last calf branded for the day. The men had unsaddled and spread their bed rolls before Waddles had announced the meal. The nighthawk came riding up on the horse he had picketed prior to going to sleep before sunup at the first stand. His bed roll was lashed on a half-wild range horse he had roped and it sagged to one side, having no pack saddle to keep it from slipping, and he spoke in no gentle terms of an outfit that would pull out without troubling to throw his pack saddle from the wagon or taking pains to picket an extra horse. His fretfulness passed, however, as he smelled the hot coffee and he repaired to the wagon, his ill humor dissipated.

There was no music that night, every man retiring to his bed roll the instant he finished his meal.

At the end of the first week out from the ranch Harris pulled up his horse beside the girl's and showed her his tally book.

"We've run Slade's mark on more calves than we have our own," he said. "That's one way he works."

"But that's not his fault and it doesn't mean anything," she said. "His cows are sure to drift. This first strip we've worked is the southernmost edge of our range and his north wagon works the strip right south of us. We're sure to find a number of his cows. As we double back on our next lap we'll not find the same proportion."

"Not quite—but plenty," he predicted. "We've marked more calves for Slade in one week than all his three wagon crews will mark for the Three Bar in a year. The first three weeks of each season your men do a little more work for Slade than they do for you. It's a safe bet that the Halfmoon D does the same, and so on through every brand that joins his range. That puts him way off ahead."

"But that is pure accident," she said.

"It's pure design," he stated. "His boys are busy shoving his cows from the middle all ways so that when fall comes he has a good inside block that's only been lightly fed over. They fall back on that for winter feed. Last winter, when cows were dying like rats, his men were out drifting Slade's stuff back toward his middle range."

"That's true enough," she admitted. "But——"

"But you thought he was doing it as a favor to you—getting his surplus off your territory so your own cows would have a better chance. That's the same kind of talk he floated all round the line; playing the benevolent neighbor when in reality the old pirate had deliberately planned, year after year, to overcrowd your range and feed you out."

"But his men would know," she objected.

"Not many of them would grasp the whole scheme of it," he said. "You hadn't thought of it yourself. He'd detail a pair of boys to shove a few hundred head way off to the south. A few days later another couple would be throwing a bunch off northeast. See? And what if a few of them did surmise? They're riding for his brand."

The girl nodded. That unalterable code again,—the religion of being loyal to one's brand. Not one of Slade's men would balk at doing it knowingly; each would do anything to advance his interests as long as he drew his pay from Slade.

"I doubt if there's a dozen men within two hundred miles that haven't lifted a few calves now and then for the brand they were riding for. That's the way it goes. A rule that was fine to start—loyalty to the hand that paid you; then carried too far until it's degenerated into a tool that's often abused," he said.

As they talked Harris detailed men for each draw but when they reached the point where they were due to drop down and cross the valley he pulled up his horse.

"You take the rest of the circle, Carp," he instructed Carpenter. "I'm going to ride off up the ridge a piece." The girl regarded him curiously. No less than three times in the last week he had stopped midway of the circle and asked her to complete it. Now he had turned it over to Carp and he signaled her to remain with him.

"Where are we going?" she asked as she watched the men ride down toward the bottoms. "And why?"

"Back the way we came," he said. "And maybe I can show you why."

He headed back the divide they had just followed until he came to the saddle at the head of a draw that led down to the valley. 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. Even at that distance she recognized this last man as Lanky Evans. Harris resumed his way down the divide and she knew that he had discovered some irregularity for which he had been seeking.

"Who was the man that overlooked those cows?" she asked. "Who worked that draw?"

"Morrow," he said. "His eyesight is getting bad. That's the second time this week—and the last. I've detailed Lanky to work the gulch next to him every circle so that he could drop over the ridge and see what was going on. That's why he's always late coming in—not because he's lazy but because he's been working almost a double shift."

"Then Morrow is an inside man for Harper," she said. "Drawing Three Bar pay and working against us too."

"Yes," he said. "Only he's an inside man for Slade."

"But how could his leaving those calves behind benefit Slade?" she demanded.

"How could it benefit Harper?" he countered. "Can you tell me that?"

She could not and motioned for him to go on.

"None of Harper's men has a brand of his own," he said. "They're living on the move. They can't wait for calves to grow up. The way they work is to run a bunch of beef steers across into Idaho. They'll pick up another bunch there and shove them across the Utah line and repeat by moving a drove of some Utah brand up in here. Only beef steers—quick turning stuff. You know about the reputation of the O V and the Lazy H Four."

She knew all too well. There was a half-feud, a smoldering distrust displayed between cowmen on each side of the three State lines, a triangle of ill feeling. It was current rumor that the O V and the Lazy H Four, ranging far southwest of the Three Bar, would traffic in any steers that came from across either the Utah or Idaho line. In the corner of those States were similar outfits that were receiving stations for rustled stock from the opposite sides. But they were good neighbors and kept hands off so far as brands on their home range were concerned. It was part of the game, and as long as their own interests were not disturbed the adjacent outfits were blind. The triangular feud had been fostered to a point where the thieves were immune. Even if a direct complaint should be brought against them they had but to ride across into another State and a sheriff following them would be helpless, the inhabitants resenting this intrusion into their affairs by an officer from another State, truly having no right there, and refusing to aid him even if they did not actually oppose his passage.

"But how would it benefit Slade?" she repeated.

"Why, suppose that Morrow overlooked a nice bunch of Three Bar calves all along this first strip next to Slade's range," Harris said. "Then some Slade rider happens to drop along after our wagon has moved on and he hazes them off south. Later another picks them up and shoves them along another half-day's drive—way beyond where our boys ever work, even beyond the strip covered by Slade's north wagon, the only one that carries a Three Bar rep; what then?"

"The calves would still be with mothers wearing the Three Bar mark," she said. "After they leave the cows they're slicks, fair game for the first man that puts his rope on them—and Slade wouldn't risk running one of his own brands on them before they left the cows."

"Not one of his own, no," Harris said; "only one that's going to be his later on. Did it ever strike you as queer that Slade, whose way is to crush every new outfit, should suffer a soft-hearted streak every year or so and befriend some party that had elected to start up for himself right in the middle of Slade's range? And later buy him out? That's the way he came into nearly every brand he runs."

"He's impulsive in his friendships," she defended. "He has always been like that."

"And his impulses embrace some right queer folks," Harris remarked. "Several of those dinky little owners have moved out right sudden with a dozen riders from some other outfit fanning along close behind; McArthur didn't even get moved, for the Brandons went on the war trail before he had time to start. But it transpired that he was all set to go because Slade showed bill of sale for Mac's holdings, dated only the day before. That's how he came to own every one of those brands that match up so close with those of every outfit that overlaps his range."

"But if he actually dealt with so many as you believe, some one of them would be sure to have trouble later on and tell of it," she argued.

"And it would be the word of a self-confessed thief against that of the biggest owner within two hundred miles, and Slade would laugh at him—or kill him, according to whatever mood he happened to be in."

They had turned their horses down a long ridge that led to the wagon in the bottoms.

"I'll mention to the boys that Morrow sold out the interests of the Three Bar while he was drawing down your pay. They'll pass sentence on him right sudden. Four hours from now they'll have dry-gulched him so far from nowhere that even the coyotes can't find him."

"Not that," she said. "Turn him over to the sheriff. You caught him in the act."

"In the act of missing a few cows on his detail. The sheriff would hold him almost an hour before he let him go."

"Then give him his check and send him off the Three Bar range," she said.

Harris waited till the herd had been worked and the men had gathered round the wagon. Then he handed Morrow a check.

"Here's your time," he said. "You can be leaving almost any time now."

Every man knew that Morrow had been caught at some piece of work contrary to the interests of the Three Bar. The discharged hand gave a short ugly laugh.

"As soon as you pussyfooted into the foreman's job I knew it was only a question of time," he said.

"Exactly," Harris returned. "Pack your stuff."

"A foreman has a scattering of a dozen or so men to back him up," Morrow observed with a shrug of one shoulder toward the rest of the men.

Harris turned to the girl.

"I resign for about sixty seconds," he said and swung back toward Morrow; and again all hands noted his queer quartering stand. "I'm not foreman right at this minute," he said. "So if you had anything in particular to address to me in a personal vein you can start now. Otherwise you'd better be packing your stuff."

Morrow turned his back and headed for the rope corral. When he had saddled one horse and packed his effects on another he turned to Evans.

"You helped frame this on me," he said. "I thought I saw you messing over into my detail a few days back."

"Right on the first ballot," Lanky assented. "I'm only riding for one brand at a time."

"One day right soon I'll run across you again," Morrow prophesied.

"Then I'll take to riding with my head over my shoulder—surveying my back-track," Lanky promised. "Because we'll most likely meet from behind."

For the first time Morrow's bleak face changed expression, the lines deepening from the strain of holding himself steady in the face of the contemptuous insults with which Lanky casually replied to his threats.

He started to snarl an answer, his usual self-repression deserting him, but Harris waved an impatient hand.

"Drag it!" he snapped. "Get moving. If I had my own way we'd lead your horse out from under you—and we will if I ever hear of your turning up on the Three Bar range again."