The Settling of the Sage

by Hal G. Evarts

IX

There was a new contentment in the eyes of the Three Bar girl as she sat her horse beside Carlos Deane and looked off down the bottoms. A haze of smoke drifted above the little valley of the Crazy Loop. Three mule outfits were steadily ripping up the sage flats. Men lifted the uprooted brush on forks and piled it for the burning. The two rode down to the fields with the pungent sage smoke drifting in their faces. Harris joined them, a smudge of fire-black across his forehead, and swept his arm across the stretch of plowed ground.

"Can you picture that covered with a stand of alfalfa hay?" he asked.

The girl nodded.

"Yes—and cut and cured and in the stack yards," she said. "And a straight red run of Three Bar cows wintering under fence."

Harris wondered if her new contentment came wholly from the progress the Three Bar was making or was derived partly from the presence of Carlos Deane. Each man had recognized the other as a contender for the love of the Three Bar girl and during the two days of Deane's stay each one had been covertly sizing and estimating the caliber of the other man.

"The opposite faction hasn't succeeded in wrecking the Three Bar up to date," Deane said. "It's probable they see you're too strong for them."

"It's hard to wreck plowed ground," Harris pointed out. "And that's all they have to work on right now; not a fence to tear up, a stack to fire or any growing crops to trample down. All they can do right now is to wait. It must be wearing. But sooner or later they'll show their teeth."

For a month prior to Deane's arrival Harris had been occupied from dawn till dark with the details of the new work. The wagons had made a week's trip to the railroad to freight in more implements and supplies. A hundred acres of plowed ground lay mellowing under the sun. Five miles back up the slope of the hills two men worked in a valley of lodgepole pine, felling, trimming and peeling sets of matched logs for the cabins that must be erected on each filing. The cowhands were out working the range in pairs, branding late-dropped calves and moving drifted stock back to the home range. Forty white-face bulls had been trail-herded from the railroad and thrown out along the foot of the hills to replace the other bulls that had been rounded up and brought in. These old stags now grazed in the big pasture lot until such time as the beef herd should be gathered and shipped. In a few more days the boys would come in from the range and gather at the home ranch, preparatory to going out once more on the beef round-up.

"I'm about to take a vacation," Harris said. "The ranger is coming over to mark out some more trees for us and to run the U. S. brand on the logs we've already cut. I'm going back up in the hills with him to sort out a valley or two for summer range."