"Well, I'm going now," she said. "I don't need to be urged."
Three of the homesteaders had been detailed to stay at the ranch. They were putting up a temporary fence across the lower end to hold range stock back from the trampled crops until a permanent one could be built and linked up with the side fences which still stood intact. She showed no interest in this. The sight below turned her weak and sick. She wanted but to get away from it all.
Harris pointed as they rode down the slope. The little cabin that old Bill Harris had first erected on the Three Bar, and which had later sheltered the Warrens when they came into possession of the brand, stood solid and unharmed among the blackened ruins which hemmed it in on all sides.
"Look, girl!" he exclaimed triumphantly.
"Look at that little house. The Three Bar was started with that! We have as much as our folks started with—and more. They even had to build that. We'll start where our folks did and grow."
XVI
Harris sat on a baggage truck and regarded the heap of luggage somberly. Way off in the distance a dark blot of smoke marked the location of the onrushing train which would take the Three Bar girl away.
"Some day you'll be wanting to come back, old partner," he predicted hopefully.
Billie shook her head. There is a certain relief which floods the heart when the worst has passed. Looking forward and anticipating the possible ruin of the Three Bar, she had thought such a contingency would end her interest in life and she had resolutely refused to look beyond it into the future. Now that it was wrecked in reality she found that she looked forward with a faint interest to what the future held in store for her,—that it was the past in which her interest was dead.