"At least, there's some of them back," he said. "Likely all."
"Lang is busy gloating over the fact that the Three Bar is sacked," Alden said. "Figuring that the whole country will be afraid of him now and that his friends will stand by—without a thought that his neck will maybe get stretched a foot long before night."
Harris turned up a side pocket and the men waited while he and the sheriff climbed a ridge on foot to investigate. Harris motioned to the girl.
"Come along up where you can see," he said and she followed them up the ridge. Two hundred yards from the horses they came out on a crest which afforded a view of the basin that sheltered Lang's stockade.
From behind a sage-clump Harris trained his glasses on the group a mile out across the shallow basin. Smoke rose from the chimney of the main building. Two men stood before a teepee near the stockade. There were two other tents inside the structure, with a number of men moving about them. Three sat on the ground with their backs against the log walls of the main house. Thirty or more horses fed in a pasture lot and a little band of eight or ten stood huddled together inside the stockade at the far end from the tents.
He handed his glasses to the girl.
"We'll be starting," he said. "By the time we get fixed the rest will be closing in. You stay here and watch the whole thing."
"I'm going along," she said.
The sheriff demurred.
"It will be dirty business down there—once we start," he said. "Business for men; and you're a better man than most of us, girl; but you surely didn't reckon that Cal and me would let you go careening down in gunshot of that hornet's nest."