The Settling of the Sage

by Hal G. Evarts

She waved those already on the spot toward the rope corral.

"Change horses!" she called, and as each man rode in he caught up a fresh horse.

"Scatter out; some of you below where we came down, some above," she said. "Five hundred to the man that brings Morrow in."

"It's no use, Billie," Harris counseled mildly. "He's plum out of the country by now. It'll be dark in three hours—and it's right choppy country over there."

Waddles interposed and seconded her move.

"Let 'em rip," he said. "There's just a chance."

Bangs was the first to change mounts. The boy's physical qualifications were as sound as his mental ability was limited and it was his pride to have a string of mounts that included the worst horses in the lot. He rode from the corral on Blue, holding the big roan steady, and headed up the ridge a mile below where Harris and the girl had come down. Rile Foster chose the next; five riders were but a few jumps behind. Harris did not change horses but searched hastily in his war bag and slipped the strap of a binocular case across his shoulders and rode off with the girl as she finished cinching her saddle on a fresh horse.

In less than five minutes from the time she had reached the wagon the last Three Bar man had mounted and gone. Harris rode with her up a long ridge that led up to the divide; they followed another into the next bottoms and ascended the second divide. This was sharp and rocky, its crest a maze of ragged pinnacles. He chose the highest of these and dismounted to sweep the range with his glasses. The low country beyond them was broken and choppy, a succession of tiny box canyons and rough coulees. Off to the right he made out Rile Foster working through the tangle. Somewhere beyond him Bangs would be doing the same. Riders came into view off to the left, crossing some ridge, only to disappear once more. The high point afforded a view of every ridge for miles. After perhaps half an hour Harris caught five horsemen in the field of his glasses. They were riding in a knot.

"They've picked up his trail," he said. "But he'll have too long a lead. He'll be fanning right along and they'll have to work out a track. In less than two hours it will be dark—and by morning he'll be forty miles from here and up on a fresh horse."

He rested his elbows on the ground to steady the glasses as he trained them off in the direction the five men had gone. Twice he saw them cross over ridges. Then a tiny, swift-moving speck came into his field of view, traveling up the slope of a distant divide. The ant-like rider dipped over the crest of it and was gone.