The Settling of the Sage

by Hal G. Evarts

VI

Billie Warren rode with Harris on the last lap of the circle. There were but two men remaining with them.

"Moore!" Harris called, and the man turned his horse down the head of a draw that would lead him out into the bottoms a trifle less than a mile above the wagon. Harris heard a shrill whistle behind him and turned sidewise in the saddle to look back, saw that Moore had regained the ridge and was signaling. They turned and rode back to him.

"There's another," Moore said, pointing down the gulch. "It's getting to be a habit."

A dead cow lay on a little flat a hundred yards below. For three consecutive days some rider had found a fresh-killed Three Bar cow. Every animal had been shot.

"I'll look this one over myself," Harris decided. "There's only two more gulches to work. Each one of you boys take one."

The girl followed him as he turned down the first steep pitch. They pulled up their horses and sat looking at the cow. A trickle of blood oozed out of a hole between her eyes. Harris rode in a circle round the spot.

"He downed her from some point above," he said. "Not a sign anywhere close at hand." He surveyed the ridges that flanked either side of the draw and the little saddle-like depression at the head of it from which they had just descended. From beyond this gap came the shrill nicker of a horse, the sound chopped short as if a man had clamped his hand on the animal's nostrils to silence it. Harris turned swiftly to the girl.

"It's a plant," he said. "Ride—hard!"

He suited his action to the words and jumped his horse off down the bottoms. 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. The gulch made a reverse bend and as they swept around it Harris swung sidewise in the saddle and looked back. They were entirely sheltered from any point on the divide six hundred yards behind them. He pulled his horse to a swinging trot and they rode down the sloping meadow that led straight to the main valley.

"It was certainly stupid of me not to know right off that it was a decoy," he said. "A man just out to act spiteful would have piled up a dozen cows at one stand and left. He's downed one every day—in plain sight of the divide we'd follow on the circle, knowing that I'd soon ride down to look one over myself. All he had to do was to cache himself on the far side, watch for me to ride down, wait until the rest had gone on and climb to the divide and pot me. And it would have been so dead easy to turn the tables and bushwhack him," he added regretfully. "If only I'd have used my head in time."

A sick chill swept the girl as she thought of an enemy with the patience to kill a cow every day, use it for a decoy and wait for a chance at his human prey.

The cows that grazed on the meadow raced off ahead of them. A bunch of wild range horses swept up the broken slopes and wheeled to watch them pass.

"We didn't get started any too soon," Harris said. "His horse wasn't more than a hundred feet beyond the notch when he blew off and warned us—not time for me to get cached and drop him as he topped the ridge."

The girl's eyes suddenly riveted on a small round hole in the cantle of his saddle where the ball had entered. On the inside and far to the left extremity of the cantle a ragged gash showed where if had passed out. The shot had been fired as he wheeled round the sharp bend, quartering away from the man above, but even then the ball had not missed his left hip to exceed an inch.

She started her horse so suddenly that before he realized her purpose she was well in the lead and going at a dead run toward the mouth of the gulch where it opened out into the main bottoms two hundred yards beyond.

From the opposite slope riders were hazing cows out of their respective draws; some had reached the wagon; others were coming down from above. The running horse caught every man's eye as the girl careened out into the center of the valley, rose in her stirrups and waved an arm in a circle above her head. In five seconds riders were whirling in behind her from all directions as she headed for the wagon.

She waved those already on the spot toward the rope corral.

"Change horses!" she called, and as each man rode in he caught up a fresh horse.

"Scatter out; some of you below where we came down, some above," she said. "Five hundred to the man that brings Morrow in."

"It's no use, Billie," Harris counseled mildly. "He's plum out of the country by now. It'll be dark in three hours—and it's right choppy country over there."

Waddles interposed and seconded her move.

"Let 'em rip," he said. "There's just a chance."

Bangs was the first to change mounts. The boy's physical qualifications were as sound as his mental ability was limited and it was his pride to have a string of mounts that included the worst horses in the lot. He rode from the corral on Blue, holding the big roan steady, and headed up the ridge a mile below where Harris and the girl had come down. Rile Foster chose the next; five riders were but a few jumps behind. Harris did not change horses but searched hastily in his war bag and slipped the strap of a binocular case across his shoulders and rode off with the girl as she finished cinching her saddle on a fresh horse.

In less than five minutes from the time she had reached the wagon the last Three Bar man had mounted and gone. Harris rode with her up a long ridge that led up to the divide; they followed another into the next bottoms and ascended the second divide. This was sharp and rocky, its crest a maze of ragged pinnacles. He chose the highest of these and dismounted to sweep the range with his glasses. The low country beyond them was broken and choppy, a succession of tiny box canyons and rough coulees. Off to the right he made out Rile Foster working through the tangle. Somewhere beyond him Bangs would be doing the same. Riders came into view off to the left, crossing some ridge, only to disappear once more. The high point afforded a view of every ridge for miles. After perhaps half an hour Harris caught five horsemen in the field of his glasses. They were riding in a knot.

"They've picked up his trail," he said. "But he'll have too long a lead. He'll be fanning right along and they'll have to work out a track. In less than two hours it will be dark—and by morning he'll be forty miles from here and up on a fresh horse."

He rested his elbows on the ground to steady the glasses as he trained them off in the direction the five men had gone. Twice he saw them cross over ridges. Then a tiny, swift-moving speck came into his field of view, traveling up the slope of a distant divide. The ant-like rider dipped over the crest of it and was gone.

"He's more than five miles in the lead of them," he said. "Across rough country too. There was just a chance that he would work back through these breaks below us instead of making a ride for it, and we could have spotted him from up here. We might as well be going."

They mounted and headed to the right along the divide.

"If Rile is in sight we can wait for him," he said. "And see if he's picked up any tracks."

A half-mile along the ridge they saw Foster off through the breaks and he was working back their way.

"Thanks, Billie," Harris said. "For losing a circle trying to run him down."

"I'd have done as much for any Three Bar man," she returned.

"Of course," he said. "I'd have expected that. But all the same I'd hardly looked to see you show much concern over what happened to me."

"I don't want to see even you shot in the back," she said. "Is that answer enough?"

"It shows that I'm progressing," he smiled. "Maybe my good qualities will grow on you until you get to thinking right well of me."

They waited till Foster joined them on the ridge.

"Bangs crossed over a mile below," Rile said. "We might pick him up."

"Any sign?" Harris asked as they moved down the divide.

"A bunch of shod horses went down through there a few days back," Rile said. "Three or four men likely, with a few pack horses along. There was a fresh track, made this morning, going up-country alone. He likely stayed at their camp all night, wherever it is. I worked across, thinking he might go back to it; but there was no down trail. He's pulled out."

"I saw him," Harris said. "He's gone."

They stopped in the saddle of the ridge where a fresh track showed the spot Bangs had crossed.

The girl was looking at Harris and saw a sudden pallor travel up under his tan and as she turned to see what had occasioned it he crowded his horse against her own.

"Don't look!" he ordered, and forced her horse over the far side of the ridge. "You'd better ride on back to the wagon," he urged. "There's been some sort of doings over across. Rile and I will ride down and look into it." Without a word she turned her horse toward the wagon.

"It's God's mercy she didn't see," Harris said, as the two crossed back over the ridge. "Isn't that a hell of a way for a man to die?"

But the girl had seen. Her one brief look had revealed a horse coming round a bend in a little box canyon below. A shapeless thing dragged from one stirrup and at every third or fourth jump the big blue horse side-slashed the limp bundle with his heels.

As the two men reached the bottoms the frenzied horse had stopped and was fighting to free himself of the thing that followed him. He moved away from it in a circle but it was always with him. He squealed and kicked it, then dashed off in a fresh panic, side-swiping his pursuer.

Harris's rope tightened on his neck and threw him. As he rolled over Foster's noose snared both hind feet and he was held stretched and helpless between two trained cow horses while the men disengaged the bundle that had once been Bangs. One boot heel was missing and his foot was jammed through the stirrup, evidence that the horse had pitched with him and the loosened heel had come off, allowing his foot to slip through as he was thrown.

Harris pointed to a burnt red streak across the right side of Bangs's neck. He unbuttoned his shirt and revealed a similar streak under his left armpit.

Old Rile cursed horribly and his face seemed to have aged ten years.

"They learned that from the albino," he said. "It's an old trick that always works. They dropped a rope on him and jerked him, pried off his heel, shoved his boot through and laid the quirt on his horse. Blue did the rest."

Both men knew well how it had happened. Bangs had run across the camp of some of the wild bunch, men he had known for long, and the slow-thinking youth had suspected no more danger from riding on up to them at this time than at any other. He had told them of the shot fired at Harris and they had known that some other Three Bar man would find the trail leading from the direction of their camp. And Bangs would mention having found them there, linking them with the bushwhacker.

When Bangs had left a pair of them had ridden a distance with him and accomplished their aim.

"It's coming dark," Harris said. "And by morning they'll be thirty miles away. That sort of a killing was never fastened on to any man yet."

The old man raised a doubled fist and his face was lined with sorrow.

"Bangs was almost a son to me," he said. "I taught him to ride—and we've rode together on every job since then. You hear me! Some one is going to die for this!"

It was an hour after sundown when they reached the wagon with all that was earthly of Bangs lashed across the blue horse and it was midnight before the five men who had followed the trail returned with the word that they had been unable to even sight the man they tracked.

During the next week the girl inwardly accused the men of heartlessness. They jested as carelessly as if nothing unusual had occurred and she heard no mention of Bangs. It seemed that it took but a day for them to forget a former comrade who had come to an untimely end. Rile Foster had disappeared but on the fifth day he turned up at the Three Bar wagon and resumed his work without the least explanation of his absence.

The old man was gloomy and silent, his face set in sorrowful lines as he went about his work, and it was evident that he was continually brooding over the fate of the youth he had loved. It seemed to the girl that the men were even more cheerful and thoughtless than usual, that they concerned their minds with every conceivable topic except that which was uppermost in her own. The death of Bangs had affected them not at all.

She could not shake off the remembrance of the boy's adoring gaze as his eyes had followed every move she made and in some vague way she felt that she was responsible for the accident. She often rode near Rile Foster, knowing what was in his mind. He spoke but little and, in common with the rest, he never once mentioned Bangs.

At the end of a week Slade rode up to the wagon as the men were working the cows gathered in the second circle of the day. He jerked his head to draw her aside out of range of Waddles's ears.

"How's the Three Bar showing up this spring?" he asked abruptly.

"Better than ever," she retorted and he caught a note of defiance in her voice.

"You're lying, Billie," he asserted calmly. "The Three Bar will show another shrinkage this year."

"How do you know?" she flashed; and the distrust of him that Harris had roused in her, lately submerged beneath the troubling thoughts of Bangs, was suddenly quickened and thrown uppermost in her mind. In gauging him from this new angle she sensed a ruthlessness in him that was not confined solely to business efficiency; he would crush her interests without a qualm if it would gain his end.

"I know," he asserted. "It's my business to know everything that goes on anywhere near my range. There's not another outfit within a hundred miles that's on the increase. They're just hanging on, some of them making a little, some of them not. You say you want to run the Three Bar brand yourself. There's not a man in this country that would touch a Three Bar cow if you was hooked up with me."

"And then the Three Bar would be only one out of a dozen or more Slade brands," she said. She pointed to the men that worked with the milling cows in the flat. "That's what I want," she said. "To run an outfit of my own—not one of yours."

For no reason at all she was suddenly convinced of the truth of Harris's suspicions concerning Slade. She noted that his eyes traveled from one man to the next till he had scrutinized every one that worked the herd.

"Are you looking for Morrow?" she demanded, and instantly regretted her remark. Slade's face did not change by so much as the bat of an eye and he failed to reply for a space—too long a space, she reflected—then turned to her.

"Morrow—who's he?" he asked. "And why should I look for him?"

"He rode for you last year," she said.

"Oh! That fellow. I recall him now. Bleak-looking citizen," he said. "And what about him?"

"You tell me," she countered.

"That new foreman of yours—the fellow that was scouting round alone for a few months—has been talking with his mouth," Slade said. "If he keeps that up I'll have to ask him to speak right out what's on his mind."

"He'll tell you," she prophesied. "What then?"

"Then I'll kill him," the man stated.

The girl motioned to Lanky Evans and he rode across to them.

"Lanky, I want you to remember this," she said. "Slade has just promised to kill Harris. And if he does I'll spend every dollar I own seeing that he's hung for it," she turned to Slade. "You might repeat what you just told me," she suggested.

Slade looked at her steadily.

"You misunderstood me," he stated. "I don't recall any remark to that effect or even to mentioning the name of Harris. Who is he, anyhow?"

Evans slouched easily in the saddle and twisted a smoke.

"Now let's get this straight what I'm to remember," he said. "Mr. Slade was saying that he planned to down Cal Harris the first time he caught him out alone. I heard him remark to that effect." He turned and grinned cheerfully at Slade. "That's his very words—and I'd swear to it as long as my breath held out. I'll sort of repeat it over to myself so that I can give it to the judge word for word when the time comes."

Slade favored him with a long stare which Lanky bore with unconcern, smiling back at him pleasantly.

"I've got my little piece memorized," Evans said; "and in parting let me remark that Cal Harris will prove a new sort of a victim for you to work on. If you tie into him he'll tear down your meat-house." He turned his horse and rode back to the herd.

"I'll play your own game," the girl told Slade. "If anything happens to another man who is riding for me and I have any reason to even suspect you were at the bottom of it I'll swear that I saw you do the thing yourself. The Three Bar is the only outfit with a clean enough record to drag anything up for an airing before the courts without taking a chance. This rule of every man for himself won't hold good with me."

She moved toward the wagon and Slade kept pace with her, leading his horse. There was no sign of life around the wagon and the jerky movement of a hat, barely visible through the tips of the sage, indicated that Waddles was washing out some clothing at the creek bank fifty yards away.

Slade leaned against the hind wheel on the far side from the herd and looked down at her.

"You're a real woman, Billie," he said. "You better throw in with a real man—me—and we'll own this country. I'll run the Three Bar on ten thousand head whenever you say the word."

"I'd rather see it on half as many through my own efforts," she said. "And some day I will."

"Some day you'll see it my way," he prophesied. "I know you better than any other man. 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. Slade was a powerful man but he was an infant in the grip of the two great hands that raised him clear of the ground and shook him before he was slammed down on his face ten feet away by a straight-arm thrust. His deadly temper flared and the swift move for his gun was simultaneous with the twist which brought him to his feet, but his hand fell away from the butt of it as he looked into the twin muzzles of a sawed-off shotgun which menaced him from the window.

It occurred to him that the nighthawk must have been restless and had elected to wash at the creek bank instead of indulging in sleep, thus accounting for the bobbing hat he had seen, for assuredly it did not belong to the cook, as he had surmised. The face behind the gun was the face of Waddles.

"I'm about to touch off a pound of shot if you go acting up," Waddles said. "Any more talk like you was just handing out and you'll get smeared here and there."

"Are you running the Three Bar?" Slade asked.

"Only at times, when the notion strikes me," Waddles said. "And this is one. Whenever you've got any specific business to transact with us why come right along over and transact it—and then move on out."

Billie Warren laughed suddenly, a gurgle of sheer amusement at the sight of the most dreaded man within a hundred miles standing there under the muzzle of a shotgun, receiving instructions from the mouth of the Three Bar cook. For Slade was helpless and knew it. Even if he took a chance with Waddles and won out he would be in worse shape than before, for if he turned a finger against her old watchdog and friend he would gain only her deadly enmity.

"Waddles, you win," Slade said. "I'll be going before you change your mind."

As the man walked toward his horse which had sidled a few steps away the big cook gazed after him and fingered the riot gun regretfully.

The wagon did not move on when the men had finished working the herd as the rest of the day had been set aside for kill-time. An hour after Slade's departure the hands were rolling in for a sleep. The girl saw Rile Foster draw apart from the rest and sit with his back against a rock. He was regarding some small object held in his hand. As he turned it around she recognized it as a boot heel and the reason for Rile's absence was clear to her. He had back-tracked the blue horse to the scene of the mishap.

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. It was the first time an intimation that the affair was other than an accident had reached her ears.

In the evening, after resting, the men once more gathered round a fire for an hour's play. They had evidently blotted out the memory of a friend who had raised his voice with theirs on the last such event, for they sang mostly the rollicking airs with even more than the usual amount of chaff between songs. But there was one old favorite that they did not sing. At last Waddles swung into the tune of it and as they buried the poor cowboy far out on the lone prair-ee she noted the difference at once, and more clearly than ever before she divined the reason why cowhands were apparently so devoid of sentiment, refusing to be serious on any topic, passing off those things nearest to their hearts with a callous jest. It was only that there were so many rough spots in the hard life they led that they avoided dwelling too seriously on matters that could not be rectified lest they become gloomy and morose. There were warm hearts under the indifferent exteriors. For now the voices were soft and hushed and she knew that every man was thinking of the lonely mound of rocks that marked the last resting place of Bangs.