The Settling of the Sage

by Hal G. Evarts

"I'm as good a shot as there is in the hills," she said. "And it was my ranch they burned."

The sheriff shoved back his hat and pushed his fingers through his mop of gray hair.

"Fact," he confessed. "Every word. But there's swarms of men in this country—and such a damn scattering few of girls that we just can't take the risk. That's how it is. If you don't promise to stay out of it we'll have to detail a couple of the boys to ride guard on you till it's over with."

She knew that the other men would back Harris and Alden in their verdict. She nodded and watched them turn back toward the horses. She wanted to lead her men down in a wild charge on the stockade, shooting into it as she rode, avenging the sack of the Three Bar in a smashing fight.

But there was nothing spectacular in the attack of Harris and the sheriff. They went about it as if hunting vermin, cautiously and systematically, taking every possible advantage of the enemy with the least possible risk to their men.

An hour after the two men had left her she saw a figure off to the right. She trained the glasses on it and saw that it was Alden moving toward the buildings. She swept the glasses round the edge of the circular basin. From all sides, from the mouth of every coulee that opened into it, dark specks were converging upon the stockade. Some of them stood erect, others crouched, while a few sprawled flat and crawled for short distances before rising and moving on.

From her point of vantage it seemed that those round the buildings must see them as clearly as she did herself; but she knew they were keeping well out of sight, taking advantage of every concealing wave of ground and all inequalities of surface. The advance was slower as they closed in on the stockade. There was a sudden commotion among the men at the buildings. They were moving swiftly under cover. Some of the attacking force had been seen. The majority of the rustlers took to the stockade. Four ran into the main cabin.

It was as if she gazed upon the activities of battling ants, the whole game spread out in the field of her glasses. There came a lull in the action and she knew that the sheriff had raised his voice to summon them to come out without their guns and go back as prisoners to stand trial for every crime under the sun.

Not a shot had been fired. One after another she picked up the men with her glasses. Occasionally one moved, hitching himself forward to some point which afforded a better view. One or two knelt in the bottom of shallow draws, peering from behind some sheltering bush. Inside the stockade she could see Lang's men kneeling or flattened on the ground as they gazed through cracks in the walls.

She made out Harris, crouching in a draw. A thin haze of smoke spurted from his position. Three similar puffs showed along the face of the stockade. Then the sounds of the shots drifted to her,—faint, snappy reports. Harris had dropped flat and shifted his position the instant he fired. A dozen shots answered the smoke-puffs along the stockade.