He caught two of the saddled horses that had carried the men from Brill's and crossed over to where she sat.
"Let's ride down to the field," he said. "And see what's got to be done. I expect a week's work will repair that part of it all right."
She gazed at him in amazement. He spoke of repairing the damage while the Three Bar burned before his eyes. But she rose and mounted the horse. He shortened her stirrup straps and they rode off down what had once been the lane, the fence flattened by the rushing horde of cattle that had swept through.
The homestead cabins smoked but still stood intact.
"Look!" he urged cheerfully. "Those logs were too green to burn. We won't even have to rebuild. They'll look a little charred round the edges maybe, but otherwise as good as new."
Behind her sounded a gurgling roar as the roof of the main house fell but Harris did not even look back.
"We can restring that fence in a right short while," he asserted. "We've lost one crop of oat-hay—which we didn't much need, anyhow. That young alfalfa is too deep rooted to be much hurt. Next spring it'll come out thick, a heavy stand of hay; and we'll cut a thousand tons."
They rode across fields trampled flat by thousands of churning hoofs and reached the spot where the head gate had been, a yawning hole at which the water sucked and tore. A section of the bank caved and was washed away. And through it all he planned the work of reconstruction and the transformation which would be effected inside a year,—while behind them the home ranch was ablaze.
"We're not bad hurt," he said. "They can't hurt our land. I'd rather have this flat right now—the way it stands—than three thousand head of cows on the range and no land at all. We can rebuild the place this winter while work is slack. Build better than before. Those buildings were pretty old, at best. There'll be enough hungry cowhands riding grub-line at the Three Bar to rebuild it in two months. Every man that feeds on us this winter will have to work."
His enthusiasm failed to touch her. For her the Three Bar was wrecked, the old home gone, and her gaze kept straying back to the eddying black smoke-cloud at the foot of the hills.