The Settling of the Sage

by Hal G. Evarts

"I've finished," he said. "You'd better eat yours before it gets cold," and the closing of the door announced that he had gone without waiting for an answer. She heard again the sound of saw and axe as he worked up the dry logs into stove lengths. At least he was making good his word to the cook. The sounds ceased when the sun was an hour high and when she looked out to determine the reason she saw him working with four colts in one of the smaller corrals.

He had fashioned a hackamore for each and they stood tied to the corral bars. He left them there and repaired to the big gates of the main corral. The two swinging halves sagged until their ends dragged on the ground when opened or closed, necessitating the expenditure of considerable energy in performing either operation. She watched him tear down the old support wires and replace them with new ones, stretching a double strand from the top of the tall pivot posts to the free ends of the gates. Placing a short stick between the two strands of heavy wire he twisted until the shortening process had cleared the gate ends and they swung suspended, moving so freely that a rider could lean from his saddle and throw them open with ease.

This completed to his satisfaction he fashioned heavy slabs of wood to serve as extra brake-blocks for the chuck wagon. Between the performance of each two self-appointed duties he spent some little time with the colts, handling them and teaching them not to fear his approach, cinching his saddle on first one and then the next, talking to them and handling their heads.

For three days there was little communication between the two. It was evident that he had no intention of forcing his society upon her, and her failure to prepare his meals failed to elicit a single sign to show that he had expected otherwise; the contrary was true, in fact, for he invariably prepared enough for two. It was clear that he exercised the same patience toward her that he showed in handling the green four-year-olds; and she was inclined to be a little scornful of his method of gentle-breaking them. She felt her own ability to handle any horse on the range although old Cal Warren had gentled every animal she had wanted for her own and flatly refused to let her mount any others. Waddles was as insistent upon this point as her parent had been, but never had she known a cowhand who took time and pains to gentle his own string.

In the afternoon of the third day she saw him swing to the back of a big bay, easing into the saddle without a jar, and the colt ambled round the corral, rolling his eyes back toward the thing clamped upon him but making no effort to pitch. He dismounted and stripped off the saddle, cinched it on a second horse and let him stand, leading a third out to a snubbing post near the door of the blacksmith shop where he proceeded to put on his first set of shoes.

The girl went out and sat on the sill of the shop door and watched him. The colt pulled back in an effort to release the forefoot that the man held clamped between his leather-clad knees, then changed his tactics and sagged his weight against Harris.

"You Babe!" the man ordered. "Don't you go leaning on me." He pared down the hoof and fitted the shoe but before nailing it on he released the colt's foot and addressed the girl. "If I'd fight him now while he's spooky and half-scared it would spoil him maybe," he explained.

"I gentle-break mine, too," she said, and the man overlooked the inflection which, as plainly as words, was intended to convey the impression that his ways were effeminate. "If every man used up his time gentling his string he'd never have a day off to work at anything else."

"Why, it don't use up much time," he objected. "They halfway break themselves, standing round with a saddle on and having a man handle them a little between spells of regular work—like cutting firewood and such. And it's a saving of time in the end. There's three hundred odd days every year when a man consumes considerable time fighting every horse he steps up on—if they're broke that way to start."

"So your only reason for not riding them out is to save time," she said.