The Settling of the Sage

by Hal G. Evarts

Christmas had found the range covered with a fresh tracking snow which precluded possibility of a raid and all hands had been summoned to the home ranch for a two-day rest. Harris knew that cowhands, no matter how loyal to the brand that pays them, are a restless lot and must have their periodical fling to break the monotony of lonely days; so he had provided food and drink in abundance. The frolic was over and the hands back on the range. Harris sat with Billie before her fire.

"They'll be satisfied for another two months," he said. "Then we'll have to call them in for another spree."

This evening conference before the fire had come to be a nightly occurrence. Together they went over the details of the work accomplished during the day and mapped out those for the next. From outside came the crunch of hoofs and the screech of logs on the frozen trail as the last mule team came down with its load.

Most of the logs had been skidded down and the men now worked in pairs, erecting the cabins on each filing. The cedar posts had been hauled and strung out along the prospective fence lines. The wagons, under heavy guard, had made two trips to the railroad to freight in more implements and supplies. Thousands of pounds of seed oats and alfalfa seed were stored at the Three Bar along with sixty hundred of cement.

"Another two months and the cabins will be roofed and finished," Harris said. "Then we'll be through till the frost is out of the ground. We'll start building fence as soon as you can sink a post hole; and we'll have time to break out another two hundred acres of ground before time to seed it down."

The girl nodded without comment, content to leave him to his thoughts, her mind pleasantly occupied with her own. For long her evenings had been lonely but now she had come to look forward to the conferences before the blazing logs. She had made no attempt to analyze the reasons for the new contentment which had transformed her evenings, formerly periods of drab reflections, into the most pleasant portion of each day.

Harris gazed about the familiar room and wondered what the future held out to him if he should be forced to spend his evenings alone after having shared them for six months with the Three Bar girl. The weekly letters still came from Deane. The girl valued Harris as a friend and partner without apparent trace of more intimate regard. He wondered which would prevail, the ties which bound her to the life she had always known or the lure of the new life which beckoned.

Suddenly, without having sought it, the explanation of her recent contentment bubbled to the surface of the girl's consciousness, and she turned and gazed at Harris. Night after night she had sat here with old Cal Warren and discussed the details of their work and after his passing her evenings had been hours of restlessness. Now Harris, the partner, had crept into the father's place,—had in a measure filled the void.

Harris rose and flicked the ash from his cigarette, suppressing the desire to take her in his arms, for he knew that time had not yet come. As he opened the door to leave an eddy of steam curled in at the opening as the warm air of the room battled on the threshold with the thirty-below temperature of the outside world. She heard the hissing crunch of his boots on the frozen crust—and reached for Deane's Christmas letter to reread it for perhaps the fifth time.

During the night a chinook poured its warm breath over the hills and morning found the snow crumpling before it. 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.