The Settling of the Sage

by Hal G. Evarts

He turned his back on Slade and went out.

"And you," she said to Slade, "you'd best be going too. We've been too good neighbors to quarrel—unless you come over again with the same idea you did to-day."

At sunset the girl called to Harris and he repaired to the house and found her putting a hot meal for two on the end of the long pine table, the first time she had deigned to eat with him since that first meal.

"There's no use of our going on like this," she said. "We've two years of it to face; so it's best to get on some kind of a neutral footing."

For her own peace of mind she had tried to smother her dislike of him and he was very careful to avoid any topic that would rekindle it. They washed the dishes together, and from that hour their relations, to all outward appearance, were friendly or at least devoid of open hostility. They no longer ate separately; she did not avoid him during the day, and the second evening she prepared two places at her own table in the big living room before the fireplace.

"It's so empty out there," she explained.

"With only the two of us at a table built for twenty."

He lingered for an hour's chat before her fire and each evening thereafter was the same. But he knew that she was merely struggling to make the best of a matter that was distasteful, that her opinion of him was unaltered. Her bitterness could not be entirely concealed, and she frequently touched on some fresh point that added to her distrust of his present motives and confirmed her belief in his double-dealing in the past. There were so many of these points; his refusal to accept her offer to give him his half-interest if he would stay off the place; his weak insinuations that there was some reason why he must spend two years on the Three Bar; his prowling the country for a year spying on the methods she followed in running the outfit, half of which would soon be his; his buying the school section and filing on a quarter of land, the location blocking the lower end of the Three Bar valley. Whenever she mentioned one of these he refused to take issue with her. And one night she touched on still another point.

"What was the reason for your first idea—of coming here under another name?" she demanded.

"I thought maybe others knew I'd been left a part interest," he said, "and it might be embarrassing. The way it is, with only the two of us knowing the inside, I can stay on as a regular hand until the time is up."