VIII
Three heavy wagons, each drawn by four big mules, traveled north along the Coldriver stage trail. Every wagon was loaded to the brim of the triple box. Two men were mounted on each wagon seat, the man beside the driver balancing a rifle across his knees. The butt of another protruded from a saddle scabbard that was lashed to each wagon within easy reach of the man who handled the reins.
"Nice place to camp, Tiny," said the guard on the lead wagon. He pointed off across a flat beside the road toward a sign that loomed in the center. The black-browed giant designated as Tiny swung the mules off the road and headed for the sign. The three wagons were drawn up some fifteen yards apart in the shape of a triangle, the mules unhitched and given a feed of grain from nose-bags, tied to the wagons and supplied with baled hay. Tiny walked over and viewed the sign.
"Squatter don't let sunset find you here," he read.
"It's about that time now," he observed, squinting over his shoulder. "It'd be a mistake to leave evidence like that around." He tore down the sign and worked it into firewood with an axe. "Now they can't do nothing to us for drifting in here by error," he remarked to his companions. "It wouldn't be fair."
While four of them slept the other two remained awake, rousing a second pair after a three-hour period. In the morning the three wagons lumbered on. Near sunset they passed another sign where the Three Bar road branched off to the left. Tiny pulled up the mules.
"Uproot that little beauty, Russet," he advised. "We're getting close to home."
The carrot-haired guard descended and threw his weight against the sign, working it from side to side until the posts were loosened in the ground, pried it up and loaded it on the wagon.
"Quick work, Russ," the big man complimented. "For a little sawed-off runt, you're real spry and active." He clucked to the mules and they settled steadily into the collars and moved on to the Three Bar. As they rolled up the lane the freighters could see the chuck wagon drawn up before the house, the remuda milling round the big pasture lot and a number of men moving among the buildings. The calf round-up was over.
The Three Bar men viewed the freighters curiously as they swung the mule teams in front of the blacksmith shop, noted the rifle in the hands of each guard and the second one in easy reach of each driver. They knew what this portended.
The freighters had stripped off the wagon-sheet lashed across the top of each load and the Three Bar men moved casually toward the wagons, curious to view the contents.
"You boys get to knowing each other," Harris said. "These mule-skinners will be hanging out at the Three Bar from now on."
The short man, known as Russet, removed his hat and scratched his head reflectively as he studied the first move in unloading his wagon. Moore promptly uncovered his own head and revealed his brilliant red shock of hair, his freckled face breaking into a genial grin.
"Hello, you red-hot little devil," he greeted. "I'm glad some one has turned up with redder hair than mine. Brother—shake!"
Russ looked him over carefully.
"Don't you claim no relationship with me, you sorrel hyena," he said. "I won't stand it for a holy second. Get a move on and help me snatch off this load."
All down the line the Three Bar men were getting acquainted with the freighters, introductions effected in much the same manner as that between Russet and Moore. A thousand pounds of oats were tossed from the top of the first wagon and when the concealing sacks were cleared away there were three heavy plows showing underneath, the spaces between them filled with shining coils of fence wire. The second load consisted of a dismantled drill, a crate of long-handled shovels, and more barbed wire; the third held a rake and a mowing machine, more wire, kegs of fence staples and a dozen forks.
"The Three Bar will be the middle point of a cyclone," Moore prophesied as he viewed the implements. "Just as soon as this leaks out."
"We fetched our cyclone openers with us," Russ assured him. "Let her buck."
From the cook-shack door the girl viewed these preparations, then turned her eyes to the flat and visioned it with a carpet of rippling hay.
There was a clatter of hoofs and a rattling of gravel as five horsemen put their sure-footed mounts down the steep slope two hundred yards back of the house and followed along the fence of the corral. The five Brandons had cut across the shoulder of the mountain. The girl wondered at this visit as she heard Lafe Brandon, the father and head of the tribe, ask Harris to put them up for the night.
An hour later Harris and Lafe came to her door and she let them in.
"The Brandons are riding down to file on a quarter apiece," Harris said. "Art quit the wagon below their place as we came in and told the rest that we're going to farm the Three Bar."
"Then you're doing the same?" she asked Lafe with sudden hope that her brand would have company in the move.
Old man Brandon shook his head.
"Not right off," he said. "Until we see how you folks pan out. We can't fix to handle it the way you do. We're filing to protect ourselves before some nester outfit turns up at our front door."
The old man explained his views. There was enough flow in the stream that cut their home valley to water something over a section of land. With that filed on they would control their home range. They could grade up their cows and increase a hundred per cent. with a section under hay. He hoped the Three Bar would win, but he feared to start in the face of the wave of opposition he was sure would rise against the move.
"We're not fixed for it," he explained again.
"But the other small outfits feel the same way," Harris said. "If two of us start the rest will join in."
"Maybe so," the old man said doubtfully. "But noways likely. They're too set on the other side." The thought was deep-rooted and he could not be moved.
"We'll let it out it's only for protection that we all are filing," he said. "And that we don't aim to prove up. The outfits that don't file now will lose out. This will always be open range, more than ninety per cent. of it, and those who file on their water will control the grass. As soon as the squatters see one outfit starting, they'll take out papers on every piece of dirt they can get water to. They'll have six months to move on, then a six months' stay. They'll hang round waiting for things to open up so they can rush in here. The brand owners who haven't hedged theirselves beforehand will run down to file and find that nesters have had papers on all the good pieces right in their dooryard for months. They'll have only the plots left that their home ranch sets on, and likely no water even for that."
The Brandons stayed for the night and rode off at daylight the next morning, while the Three Bar men prepared for a trip to Brill's. As the rest were saddling for the start Harris saw old Rile Foster seated by himself, gazing off across the hills.
"Better come and ride over with us, Rile," he urged. "Bangs would want you to try and forget."
The old man shook his head.
"I'm drifting to-day," he said. "I'll likely be back before long. I back-tracked Blue to their camp and trailed them twenty miles to where they joined another bunch. It was some of Harper's devils—I don't know which four. One way or another, whether I get the right four or not, I'm going to play even for Bangs."
When the rest of the men rode off the old man was still leaning against the shop.
There were less than a dozen others in Brill's store when the Three Bar men crowded through the door. Five men sat at one of the tables in the big room and indulged in a casual game of stud. Harper and Lang were among them. Two of them Harris knew as men named Hopkins and Wade. The fifth was unknown to him.
The albino's eyes met Harris's steadily as he entered at the head of the Three Bar men. Those among the hands who had formerly fraternized as freely with Harper's men as with those who rode for legitimate outfits now held way from them since their foreman had ordered Harper from the Three Bar wagon. They merely nodded as they filed past to the bar.
"Who is the man dealing now?" Harris inquired of Moore.
The freckled youth turned to the card players.
"Magill," he said. "Same breed as the rest."
The news that the Three Bar had turned into a squatter outfit had been widely noised abroad. Carpenter had stopped at Brill's late the night before and announced the fact. Others had seemed already aware of it.
From behind the bar Brill covertly studied the man who was responsible for this change. Four men from the Halfmoon D stood grouped at one end of the room. They split up and mingled among the others. Brill moved up and down behind the bar, polishing it with a towel. One after another he drew each of the men from the Halfmoon D into conversation with the Three Bar foreman to determine whether or not they resented his move. There was no evidence of it in their speech. They had all been present when Harris rode the blue horse and had heard his subsequent remark to Morrow. There was but one reference to the state of affairs at the Three Bar.
"Now you've gone and raised hell," one boy from the Halfmoon D remarked to Harris. "You'll have folks out looking for your scalp." He lowered his voice and Brill moved nearer to wipe away an imaginary spot on the bar. "It's Slade you'll have to buck," the boy warned. "There's likely to be some excitement over in your neighborhood. I'd like right well to ride for the Three Bar next year. Hold a job for me in the spring."
The men from the two outfits mingled as unrestrainedly as before and at last Harris smiled across at Brill.
"Well, have you sized it all up?" he asked.
The storekeeper looked up quickly, knowing that Harris had read his purpose in drawing him into conversation with the four men. He polished the bar thoughtfully, then nodded.
"A man in my business has to keep posted—both ways," he said. "I just wanted to make sure. Five years ago every man would have quit the Three Bar like a snake—feeling was that strong. But the boys drift from place to place and they've seen both ends of it. They don't give a damn one way or the other now. Why should they? They've got nothing at stake. Five years ago you couldn't have hired a man to ride for you. Now they'll be pouring in asking for jobs—just because they figure there'll be some excitement on tap."
The men from the Halfmoon D were due back and inside of an hour they rode off, leaving only Harris's men and the five card-players in the place. Harris walked over to the table and the Three Bar men shifted positions, slouching sidewise at the bar or leaning with their backs to it, alertly watching this unexpected move as the foreman spoke to the albino.
"Let's you and I draw off and have a little talk," he said. "If you can spare the time."
Harper looked up at him in silence. He carefully tilted up the corner of his hole-card and peeked at it, then turned his other cards face down on the table.
"Pass," he said, and rose to face Harris. "Lead the way."
Harris moved over to another table and the two men sat down, facing each other across it. He motioned to Evans and Lanky joined them. Harris plunged abruptly into what he had to say.
"First off, Harper, I want you to get it straight that I'm not fool enough to threaten you—for I know you're not any more afraid of me than I am of you. This is just a little explaining, a business talk, so we'll both know where we stand. It's up to you whether we let each other alone or fight."
"Good start," the albino commented. "Go right on."
"All right—it's like this," Harris resumed. "I'm going to have my hands full without you hiring out to pester us. I'm not out to reform the country. They set the fashion of dog eat dog and every man for himself; so the Three Bar is all that interests me. You keep out of my affairs and I'll let you go your own gait. If you mix in I'll have your men hunted down like rats."
Harper glanced toward the group at the bar.
"You were prudent enough to pick a time when you're three to one to tell me about that," he said. "If I'd kill you in your chair I might have some trouble getting out the door."
"Of course I'd take every chance to play safe," Harris admitted. "But that is beside the point. I'd have told you the same thing if the odds had been reversed."
"Would you?" the albino pondered. "I wonder."
"You know I would," Harris stated. "You've got brains, or you'd have been dead for twenty years. If I thought you were a haphazard homicide I wouldn't be sitting here. But you wouldn't kill a man without looking a few weeks ahead and making sure it was safe."
"Go ahead—Let's hear the rest of it," Harper urged. "You've got an original line of talk."
"You're playing one game and I'm playing mine," Harris said. "You're in the saddle now—like you have been once or twice before. But you know that the sentiment of a community reverses almost overnight. You've stepped out just ahead of a clean-up a time or two in the past. You know how it goes—your friends drop off like you had the plague. Every man's out after your scalp. I've got a hard bunch of terriers over at the Three Bar and you couldn't raid us without a battle big enough to go down in history as the Three Bar war. Either way you'd lose for it would stir folks up—and when they're stirred you're through. Do you remember what Al Moody did up on the Gallatin and what old Con Ristine sprung on the Nations Trail? That will happen again right here."
The two men were leaning toward each other, elbows resting on the table. Harper relaxed and leaned back comfortably in his chair as he twisted a smoke. Evans propped his feet on the table and Harris hung one knee over the arm of his chair. The men at the bar knew that some crisis had been safely passed.
"You talk as if I was running an outfit of my own and had a bunch of riders that could swarm down on you," Harper objected. "I don't even run a brand of my own or have one man riding for me."
"The wild bunch is riding for you," Harris stated.
"Suppose that was true," Harper said. "Then what?"
"In one country after the next they've hit the toboggan whenever they got to feeling too strong. If you line up against me that time has come again. If I get potted from the brush I've hedged it so that those boys that filed over there won't be left in the lurch. There'll be a reward of a thousand dollars hung up for the scalp of each of fifteen men whose names I gathered while I was prowling round—reliable men to carry on what I've begun; and marshals thicker than flies to protect the homestead filings on the Three Bar."
"Then it might be bad policy to bushwhack you," Harper observed.
"You can go your own gait," Harris said. "As long as you lay off Three Bar cows. You invited me one time to come down to your hangout in the Breaks. I won't ever make that visit unless you call on the Three Bar first; then, just out of politeness, I'll ride over at the head of a hundred men."
"Then it don't look as if we'd get anywhere, visiting back and forth," Harper said.
"Now don't think I'm throwing a bluff or threatening; I'm just telling you. You could recite a number of things that could happen to me in return—all of 'em true. I'm just counting that you've got brains and can see it's not going to help either one of us to get lined up wrong. What do you say—shall we call it hands off between the Three Bar and you?"
The albino half-closed his eyes, the pale eyeballs glittering through the slit of his lids as he reflected on this proposition, tapping a careless finger on his knee. He glanced absent-mindedly toward the bar, his thoughts wholly occupied with the matter in hand. A pair of eyes that gazed back at him drew his own and he found himself looking at Bentley, the man who repped with the Three Bar for Slade. The albino's suspicions were as fluid and easily roused as those of a beast of prey in a dangerous neighborhood. With one of those quick shifts of which his mind was capable he concentrated every mental effort toward linking Bentley with some unpleasant episode of the past. The man had turned away and Harper could only sense a vague feeling that he was dangerous to him, without definite point upon which to base his suspicions. At the sound of Harris's voice his mind made another lightning shift back to the present.
"Well?" Harris asked.
"Why, if I had anything to do with it, like you seem to think, I'd advise against our bucking each other," Harper said. "I'd try to get along—and declare hands off." He rose, nodded to the two men and returned to the stud game.
"He'll do it too," Evans predicted. "There's that much fixed anyway—not a bad piece of work."
The two men returned to the bar and Brill moved close to Harris. For fifteen years he had stood behind that bar and observed the men of the whole countryside at their worst—and best; and he knew men. As well as if he had heard the words of the three at the table he knew that Harris and Harper had reached an agreement of some sort that was satisfactory to both.
"Take the boys over a drink on me," Harris said, and Brill slid a bottle and five whisky glasses on to a tray and moved over to the table.
"Here's a drink on the Three Bar boss," he announced.
Lang scowled, remembering the recent occasion when Harris had ordered them off.
"To hell with——" he commenced, but the albino cut him short.
"Drink it," he said.
Ten minutes later the five men rose to go. Harris looked at his watch.
"I'm off," he said to Evans. "Try and get the boys home by to-morrow morning if it's possible."
He went outside and mounted as the five rustlers swung to their saddles.
"I'm going your way as far as the forks," he said to Harper.
The Three Bar men were treated to the sight of their foreman riding down the road beside Harper at the head of four of the worst ruffians in the State.
And behind the bar Brill moved softly back and forth when not serving drinks, pausing opposite first one group and then the next to dab at the polished wood with his cloth, listening carefully to the conversation and gauging it to determine whether the apparent sentiment toward the squatter foreman was sincere or would prove different when the men, flushed with undiluted rye, were unrestrained by his presence. At one end of the bar Evans and Bentley conversed together in low tones but whenever Brill strolled casually to their end the conference lagged. The few sentences which reached his ears were of trivial concern.