XIII
The first warm days of spring had drawn the frost from the ground. Billie rode beside Harris down the lane to the lower field. A tiny cabin stood completed on every filing. Two men were digging post holes across the valley below the edge of the last fall's plowing and the mule teams were steadily breaking out another strip.
"Almost a year," she said, referring to the commencement of the new work.
"Just a year to-day," Harris corrected, and he was thinking of the day he had first met the Three Bar girl. "This is our anniversary, sort of."
She nodded as she caught his meaning.
"The anniversary of our partnership," she said. "You're good on dates. We've pulled together pretty well, considering our start."
"It was a rocky trail for the first few days," he confessed. "But all the time I was hoping it would get smoothed out."
"You told me there were millions of miles of sage just outside," she recollected. "And millions of cows—and girls."
"Later I told you something else," he said. "And I've been meaning it ever since. The road to the outside is closed. If I was to start now I'd lose the way."
She pointed down the valley as a drove of horses moved toward them under the guidance of a dozen men. The hands would start breaking out the remuda the following day. The spring work was on.