The Settling of the Sage

by Hal G. Evarts

"Anyway, he had a chance to see who got him," Lanky philosophized. "He was likely ordered to turn round—given a fighting chance maybe."

The girl could find no sorrow in her heart over the passing of Barton but there was an uneasy feeling deep within her,—a vague suspicion that she should be able to pronounce the killer's name. This elusive thought was crowded from her mind when the ranger rode up to the Three Bar accompanied by Slade, each man leading a pack horse.

"Slade's going to look over a little territory up on the Forest," Wilton explained. "So we can get it all done on one trip."

There was no way to avoid this unexpected addition to their party. Harris and the ranger packed the three bed rolls and Billie's teepee along with the necessary equipment and in half an hour the little cavalcade filed up a gulch back of the Three Bar, the ranger in the lead with his pack horse. The other pack animals followed and the three other men and the girl brought up the rear in single file. By noon they made the first rims and followed over into a rolling country, heavily timbered in the main. In the early evening they rode out on to a low divide and Blind Valley showed below them, a broad expanse of open grassland. A little stream threaded the bottoms and its winding course was marked by thickets of birch. In places it disappeared under the leafy tunnels of aspen groves, their pale silvery trunks and leaves contrasting with the heavy blue-green of an occasional water-spruce. In a narrowing of the valley it was choked from wall to wall by a cottonwood jungle, opening out once more into wide meadows immediately below the neck. Long open parks extended their tongues well back up the timbered sidehills.

"Feed!" Harris said. "Feed. Worlds of it."

They angled down the slope and struck the rank grass of the bottoms,—mountain hay in which the horses stood knee-deep. They made camp at the mouth of a branching canyon, just within the timber. The ranger threw the horses up this side gulch while Harris felled a dead pine and kindled a fire. When the ranger returned he picketed one horse in the heavy grass while Slade pitched Billie's teepee under a spruce. The meal was finished, dishes washed and the five sat round a fire.

Harris sensed Deane's attitude toward it all for he knew something of the other man's way of life. Those with whom Deane was thrown most in contact were careful of appearances. It was unheard-of in his code that a girl should jaunt for days accompanied by four men. Here appearances seemed entirely disregarded and no one gave the matter a thought.

The moon swung over the ridges and shed its radiance over Blind Valley. Deane motioned to Billie and the girl rose and followed him to the edge of the timber where they sat on a blow-down.

"Billie, let me take you away from all this," he urged. "All this hard riding and rough man's work. Let me give you the things that will shut out all the hardships. What's the use of going on like this?"

The girl was conscious of a vague sense of disappointment. Deane was an active figure in the business life of his own community and she had felt some pride in the fact that when he should come to the Three Bar he would find that she too was doing real work in the world. She reflected that his attitude was that of so many other men, his idea of love synonymous with shelter for the object of it, and his main plea was that of providing her with shelter against all the rough corners of life. Shelter! And what she wanted was to be part of things—to have a hand in running her own affairs. It came to her that of all men perhaps Slade understood her the best.