It is said that there comes a day in the life of every handler of bad
horses when he will mount one and ride him out, master him and
dismount,--and forever after decline to ride another. Riley Foster was
evidence of this. For three years Rile and Bangs had been inseparable,
riding together on every job, and the shaggy youth topped off the
animals in Foster's string before the older man would mount them. As
Bangs went about his work his faded blue eyes were ever turned toward
the Three Bar boss who stood in the door of the blacksmith shop.
The girl was vaguely troubled as she noted this. Bangs and Foster had
returned for their second season at the Three Bar. All through the
previous summer the boy had evidenced his silent adoration, his eyes
following her every move.
The scene round Billie was one of strenuous activity, every effort bent
toward whipping the remuda into shape for the calf round-up in the
least possible space of time.
Every rider must have nine horses in his string. His five circle
horses needed but little training, the only necessary qualifications
being endurance and a sufficient amount of breaking to make it possible
to saddle them; the two night mounts must be partially broken to work
the herd, then switched to night guarding and thereafter used
exclusively for that. But the two cow horses required long and skilful
training. Every man gave one of his circle string the preliminary
training of the cow horse each season, the work resumed by the man to
whose string the horse was allotted the following year; thus new ones
were coming on to replace the older horses as fast as they were
condemned.
Four pairs of men worked within a hundred yards of the girl, taking
equal turns at riding and wrangling. The one who wrangled put his rope
on a horse and led him out, snubbed him to the saddle horn and
frequently eared him as well, while the one who was to ride him out
cinched on his saddle and mounted.
Green horses were led out, one after another, to be saddled for the
first time, and those previously broken required a few work-outs to
knock the wire edge off their unwillingness to carry a rider after a
winter of freedom on the range.
Three men were shoeing horses tied to snubbing posts at ten-yard
intervals before the shop. One animal that had fought viciously
against this treatment had been thrown and stretched, his four feet
roped to convenient posts, and while he struggled and heaved on the
ground Rile Foster calmly fitted and nailed the shoes on him. Cal
Harris finished shoeing the colt he was working.
"That's the last touch," he said. "My string is all set to go."
"You have five colts gentled for your circle bunch," she said. "But
you didn't pick a single cow horse. The boys have sorted out the best
ones and the few that are left won't answer for a man that insists on a
gentled string."
"Creamer and Calico will do for me," he said. "I broke them myself and
maybe I can worry along."
"Did you break them like that?" she asked. Bangs was topping a horse
that strenuously refused to be conquered and as they looked on the
animal threw himself.
"Like that? Well, no--not precisely," Harris said. "They're not
breaking horses. They're proving that they're bronc-peelers that can
ride 'em before they're broke. A horse started out that way will be a
bronc till the day he dies. The first thing he knows some straddler
swarms him and hangs the spurs in him. He bogs his head and starts out
to slip his pack--and from right then on he thinks the first thing to
do whenever a man steps up on him is to try his best to shake him off."
Three men were lashing their bed rolls and war bags on three pack
horses and when this task was completed they rode down the lane, each
one leading his pack animal. Harris knew this as evidence that they
would start after the calves on the following day. The custom was to
exchange representatives to ride with each wagon within a reasonable
distance, the reps to look after the interest of the brand for which
they rode.
"How many reps do you trade?" he asked.
"Three," she said. "Halfmoon D, V L and with Slade."
The Halfmoon D lay some fifteen miles eastward along the foot of the
hills; the V L the same distance to the west, but cached away in a
pocket that led well back into the base of the range, a comparatively
small outfit owned by the Brandons, father and four sons, who made
every effort to keep the bulk of their cows ranging in their own home
basin and exchanged reps only with the Three Bar.
Slade's home place lay forty miles south and a little west and his cows
grazed for over a hundred miles, requiring three wagons to cover his
range.
During the afternoon the three reps came in to replace the men who had
left. The surplus horses had been cut out and thrown back on the
range, only those required for the remuda remaining in the pasture lot.
The chuck wagon was wheeled before the cookhouse door and packed for an
early start. Before the first streaks of dawn the men had saddled and
breakfasted. It was turning gray in the east when four horses,
necessitating the attentions of four men, were hooked to the wagon. A
man hung on the bit of each wheel horse while another grasped the bits
of the lead team as Waddles made one last hasty trip inside.
"This will be a rocky ride for a mile or two," he prophesied, as he
mounted the seat and braced himself. "These willow-tails haven't had
on a strap of harness for many a month. All set. Turn loose!"
The men stepped back and the four horses hit the collars raggedly. One
wheel horse reared and jumped forward. The off leader dropped his head
and pitched, shaking himself as if struggling to unseat a rider, then
the four settled into a jerky run and the heavy wagon clattered and
lurched down the lane.
"Fine way to break work stock," Harris remarked to Evans. "That layout
would bring maybe a dollar a head."
The men swung to their saddles and followed the wagon at a shuffling
trot. From where she rode between Evans and Harris, the girl turned in
her saddle and watched two men throw open the gates of the big corral
where the remuda was held. The wrangler, whose duty it was to tend the
horse herd by day, and the nighthawk who would guard it at night sat on
their horses at the far end of the corral and urged the herd out as the
gates swung back. The remuda streamed down the valley, the two first
riders swinging wide to either flank while the nighthawk and wrangler
brought up the rear.
The four that pulled the wagon had settled to a steady gait and when
some three miles below the Three Bar Waddles wheeled to the right and
angled up the bench that flanked the bottoms, the wagon tilting
perilously in the ascent, then struck out westward across a rolling
country that showed not even a wagon track. The big cook unerringly
picked the route of least resistance to the point from which the first
circle would be launched, striking every wash and coulee at a place
where a crossing was possible.
Shortly before noon the wagon was halted in a broad bottom threaded by
a tiny spring-fed stream. The teams were unhitched; mounts were
unsaddled and thrown into the horse herd, which was then headed into
the mouth of a branching draw and allowed to graze. Waddles dumped off
the bed rolls that were piled from the broad lowered tail-gate to the
wagon top and each man sorted out his own and spread it upon some spot
which struck him as a likely bed ground.
One man carried water from the stream. Two others snaked in wood for
the chuck-wagon fire. Still another drove long stakes in the shape of
a hollow square, stretching a single rope from one to the next and
fashioning a frail rope corral.
Harris and Evans took three poles that were slung under the wagon,
looped the top-rope of a little teepee round the small ends of them and
erected the three, tripod fashion, after having first pegged down the
teepee sides. Harris brought the girl's bed roll and war bag from the
wagon and placed them inside.
"There's your house," he said. "All ready to move in."
The men repaired to the creek bank and splashed faces and hands. The
big voice of the cook bellowed angrily from the wagon.
"Downstream! Downstream!" he boomed. "Get below that water hole!"
Two men who had elected to perform their ablutions above the point from
which the culinary water supply was drawn moved hastily downstream.
It was not long before Waddles was dispensing nourishment from the
lowered tail-gate, ladling food and hot coffee into the plates and cups
which the men held out to him. They drew away and sat cross-legged on
the ground. The meal was almost finished when six horsemen rode down
the valley and pulled up before the wagon.
"What's the chance for scraps?" the leader asked.
"Step down," Waddles invited. "And throw a feed in you. She's still
a-steaming."
Four of the men differed in no material way from the Three Bar men in
appearance. The fifth was a ruffian with little forehead, a face of
gorilla cast, stamped with brute ferocity and small intelligence. The
last of the six was a striking figure, a big man with pure white hair
and brows, his pale eyes peering from a red face.
"The roasted albino is Harper, our leading bad man in these parts,"
Evans remarked to Harris. "And the human ape is Lang; Fisher, Coleman,
Barton and Canfield are the rest. Nice layout of murderers and such."
Harper's men ate unconcernedly, conscious that they were marked as men
who had violated every law on the calendar, but knowing also that no
man would take exceptions to their presence on that general ground
alone, and as they had neared the wagon each man had scanned the faces
of the round-up crew to make certain that there were none among them
who might bear some more specific and personal dislike.
The Three Bar men chatted and fraternized with them as they would have
done with the riders of any legitimate outfit. Harper praised the food
that Waddles tendered them.
Billie Warren forced a smile as she nodded to them, then moved off and
sat upon a rock some fifty yards from the wagon, despising the six men
who ate her fare and inwardly raging at the conditions which forced her
to extend the hospitality of the Three Bar to men of their breed
whenever they chanced by.
Harris strolled over and sat down facing her, sifting tobacco into a
brown paper and deftly rolling his smoke.
"Has it been on your mind--what I was telling you a few nights back,
about how much I was loving you?" he asked.
"You had your chance to prove it by going away," she said, "and
refused; so why bring it up again? The next two years will be hard
enough without my having to listen to that."
"Our families must have been real set on throwing us together," he
observed. "I was cut off without a dime myself--unless I spent two
full years on the Three Bar."
She was angry with herself for believing him sincere, for being
convinced that he too, as he had several times intimated, was tied in
much the same fashion as herself. The explanation came to her in an
illuminating flash. The elder Harris must have nursed a lifelong
enmity against her father, who had believed him the most devoted friend
on earth.
She had often heard the tale of how her parent had, in all
friendliness, followed old Bill Harris step by step from Dodge City to
the Platte, to old Fort Laramie and finally to the present Three Bar
range. Perhaps the one so followed had felt that Cal Warren was but
the hated symbol of the whole clan of squatters who had driven him from
place to place and eventually forced him to relinquish his hope of
seeing the Three Bar brand on a hundred thousand cows; that his
friendliness had been simulated, his vindictiveness nursed and finally
consummated by leaving his affairs in such fashion that his son must
carry on the work his trickery had begun.
The voice of Waddles reached them. He was announcing a half-day of
rest, according to her orders.
"It's kill-time for the rest of the day," he stated. "Make the most of
it."
For three weeks past, excepting for the trip to Brill's, the men had
toiled incessantly, breakfasting before sunup and seeking their bunks
long after dark. Some immediately turned to their bed rolls to make up
lost sleep. Others repaired to the stream to wash out extra articles
of soiled clothing before taking their rest.
Harris resumed where he had broken off some five minutes before.
"And I'd have tossed it off, as I told you once, if the Three Bar girl
had turned out to be any except you. You've had a tough problem to
work out, girl," he said. "I sold out my little Box L outfit for more
than it was worth--and figured to stop the leak at the Three Bar and
put the old brand on its feet."
His calm assurance on this point exasperated the girl.
"How?" she demanded. "What can you do?" She pointed toward the six
men near the wagon. "During the time you spent prowling the hills did
you ever come across those men?"
"Not to pal round with them," he confessed. "But I did cut their trail
now and then."
"Then don't you know what every other man in this country knows--that
those six and a lot more of their breed are responsible for every loss
within a hundred miles? They can operate against a brand one week and
stop at the home ranch and get fed the next. That's where the Three
Bar loss comes in. And I have to feed them when they come along."
"Some day we'll feed them and hang them right after the meal," he said.
"They're not the outfit that's going to be hardest to handle when the
time arrives."
"What do you mean?" she asked. "No one has ever been able to handle
them up to date."
"Did it ever strike you as queer that Slade could come into this
country twelve years back, with nothing but a long rope and a running
iron, and be owning thirty thousand head to-day?"
"He has the knack to protect his own and increase," she said. "They're
afraid of Slade."
Harris absently traced the Three Bar in the dust with a stick, then
fashioned the V L and the Halfmoon D, the three brands that ranged
along the foot of the hills. With a few deft strokes he transformed
the Three Bar into the Three Cross T, reworked the V L into a Diamond
Box and the Halfmoon D into Circle P, each one of the worked-overs
representing one of the dozen or so brands registered by Slade. He
blotted out his handiwork with the flat of his hand.
"Don't you suppose that the owner of every one of those brands knows
that?" she scoffed. "A clumsy rebrand would loom up for a mile.
Slade's no fool."
"Not in a thousand years," Harris agreed. "I was just commenting on
how peculiar it was that the three brands he runs farthest north should
be so easy worked over into any one of the three that his range
overlaps up this way. And I happen to know his farthest south brands
would work out the same way with the outfits at the other end of his
range. But he earmarks all of his brands the same--with jinglebobs;
and jinglebobs most generally drop off and leave nothing but a good big
piece absent out of the ear."
"So you think a man as big as Slade is stupid enough to try his hand at
brand-blotting on all sides at once?" she asked.
"No; nor even once on one side," he returned. "Not him. The one fact
that the similarity of brands would make it easy to fall into the habit
is enough to keep every outfit watching him. He couldn't start--and
knows it."
"Then what does it all amount to?" she asked.
"While folks watch him on that score he could work in a dozen ways that
don't concern those brands at all," he said.
The girl shook her head impatiently and looked across at the six men
who ate her fare.
"Look at them," she flared. "Eating my food; and in a few nights
they'll be hazing a bunch of Three Bar steers toward the Idaho line.
Why doesn't some man that is a man kill that albino fiend and all his
whelps and rid the country of his breed? Even Slade lets them put up
at his place."
"If they're pestering you I'll order them off," he said.
"And what effect would that have?" she inquired scornfully.
"The effect of causing them to climb their horses and amble off down
the country," he returned. He sprawled on the grass, his head propped
on one hand as he regarded them.
"Then probably you'd better order them off," she suggested. "You have
my permission. Now's your chance to make good the lordly brag of
helping the Three Bar out of the hole." She instantly regretted having
said it. A dozen times of late she had wondered if she were turning
bitter and waspish, if she would ever again be the even-tempered Billie
Warren with a good word and a smile for every one.
Harris was, as always, apparently undisturbed by her words. Far down
the bottoms she could see a point of light which she knew for a white
sign that read: "Squatter, don't let sundown find you here." The man
before her had defied these sinister warnings scattered about the range
and publicly announced that he would put in hay on his filing, knowing
that he was a marked man from the hour he turned the first furrow.
Whatever his shortcomings, lack of courage was not one of them.
"I take that back," she said, referring to her words of a few moments
before. Harris straightened to a sitting position in his surprise at
this impulsive retraction, and as he smiled across at her she divined
that this man, seemingly so impervious to her sarcasm, could be easily
moved by a single kind word.
"Thanks, Billie," he said. "That was real white of you."
He rose and sauntered toward the wagon and Billie Warren felt a sudden
clutch of fear as he halted before Harper and she realized that he had
taken her words literally and intended ordering them off.
"I've been made temporary foreman of the Three Bar--just so the boss
could try me out on that job for an hour or two," he remarked
conversationally. "So I'm putting in a new rule that goes into effect
right off. When you boys ride away, in a few minutes from now, you can
tell folks that the grub line is closed as far as the Three Bar is
concerned."
Lang took a half-step toward him, his face reflecting his gathering
rage as his slow brain comprehended the fact that this speech was but
another way of announcing that he and his men would find no welcome at
the Three Bar from that moment on. Harper caught his arm and jerked
him back. The albino was an old hand and could rightly read the signs.
"The gentleman was remarking to me," he said to Lang; "not you." He
turned to Harris, noting as he did so that every Three Bar man,
excepting those asleep, had suddenly evidenced keen interest in what
was transpiring there; several carelessly shifted their positions.
"There's no law to make you feed any man," he said to Harris. "From
now on we'll pay our way--as far as the Three Bar is concerned."
His tones were casual; only his pale eyes, fastened unblinkingly on
Harris's face, betrayed his real feeling toward the man who,
notwithstanding the roundabout nature of his announcement, had
practically ordered him to stay away from the Three Bar for all time.
"But even in the face of that," he resumed, "we'll welcome you any time
you happen to ride down our way."
Every man within earshot understood the threat that lay beneath the
casual words.
"Then I'll likely drop in some time," Harris said. "If you'll send
word where it is. And I'll bring fifty men along."
The albino motioned his men toward their horses and they mounted and
rode off down the bottoms. Harris walked back and resumed his seat
near the girl, who sat looking at him as if she could not believe what
she had just witnessed.
"You see it was just as easy as I'd counted on," he said. "It'll be a
considerable saving on food."
"But how did you know?" she asked. "Why is Harper afraid of you?"
"He's not," Harris said. "Not for a single second. But he's an old
hand and has left a few places on the jump before he came out here."
"And he thinks you know it!" she guessed.
"He don't care what I know; it's what he knows himself--that the wild
bunch is always roosting on the powder can even when it appears like
they're sitting pretty--that counts with him. You thought I was taking
a fool chance of out-gaming him. In reality I was taking almost an
unfair advantage of him, providing he had the brains he must possess to
have lived to his age."
She could find no ready-made answer to this surprising statement. He
sprawled comfortably on the grass, turning over in his mind the
conditions that were but a repetition of the history of so many
frontiers; first the earliest settlers resenting the intrusion of the
later ones and resorting to lawless means of protecting their priority;
then the strengthening of the outlaw element, half the countryside in
league with the wild bunch, the two opposing factions secretly hiring
the predatory class to prey upon rival interests; then, inevitably, the
clean split, usually occasioned by the outlaws having increased in
power until they felt competent to defy both sides, to play both ends
against the middle, to commit atrocities that opened the eyes of those
who, believing they had subsidized the lawless, suddenly woke to the
fact that they had subsidized themselves; then the outlaws, in their
turn, discovering that every man's hand was against them; the ruthless
establishing of a definite line between those inside and those outside
the law, replacing the vague middle ground of semi-lawlessness. Always
their friends fell away from them, those secretly leagued with them
fearing to be seen in their company, and those not too definitely known
to belong to their ranks invariably quitting them cold, often joining
forces against them and developing into more or less substantial
citizens, according to the standards of their day.
"Don't you know that the albino will kill you for that?" the girl asked
at length.
"Not unless he can stage it as a personal quarrel," he said. "He'll
never follow it up as coming out of what happened to-day by taking it
out on me as temporary foreman of the Three Bar--for ordering him off."
"Why?" she puzzled. "What possible difference would that make to a man
like him?"
"Just this," he said: "There's a good majority of folks that don't
relish seeing Harper's bunch ride up--that feed them through policy.
But whenever you make it plain to a man that he's compelled to do a
thing whether he likes it or not it's ten to one he'll balk out of
sheer human pride. If Harper kills the Three Bar foreman on the
grounds that he refused to feed all his men--why then, right off, every
other foreman and owner within a hundred miles starts to resenting the
possibility that maybe the albino feels the same way toward him.
Harper knows that."
"But if your theory had been wrong?" she persisted. "What then?"
"Then," he said, "then there'd have been hell and repeat. I wasn't
just acting as me, a personal affair, but, as I took pains to remark
aloud, as the foreman of the Three Bar. Every Three Bar man would have
gone into action the second Harper made a move at me. You know
that--and Harper knew it."
She realized the soundness of this statement. The one unalterable code
of the country, a code that had been fostered till it eclipsed all
others, decreed that a man should be loyal to the brand for which he
rode. The whole fabric of the cow business was based on that one point.
"And a wrangle of that magnitude was something he couldn't risk,"
Harris said. "It would stir folks up, and any time they're stirred a
mite too far Harper has come to the end of his rope. Any other brand
could have done the same--only folks fall into a set habit of mind and
figure they must do what others do just because it's custom."
"But now they'll work their deviltry all the stronger against the Three
Bar," she predicted. "They could wreck us if they tried. You couldn't
get a conviction in five years. Not a man would testify against one of
Harper's outfit."
"Then we'll put on a fighting crew and hold them off," he said. "But
that's not the layout that will be hardest to handle in the long run.
Slade is the one real hard nut for the Three Bar to crack. He can work
it a dozen different ways and you couldn't prove one of them on him to
save your soul. He's one smooth hombre--Slade."
Harris rose and headed for his bed roll and the girl sought the shelter
of her teepee for a rest. All was quiet near the wagon till Waddles
boomed the summons to feed. After the meal a youth named Moore mounted
a saddled horse that was picketed nearby and rode up a branching gulch,
returning with a dry cedar log which he snaked to the wagon at the end
of his rope. After a few hours' rest and the prospects of a full
night's sleep ahead the hands snatched an hour for play.
They sat cross-legged round the fire kindled from the cedar and raised
their voices in song. Waddles drew forth a guitar and picked a few
chords. Bentley, the man who repped for Slade, carried the air and the
rest joined in. The voices were untrained but from long experience in
rendering every song each man carried his part without a discordant
note. Evans sang a perfect bass. Bangs a clear tenor; Moore faked a
baritone that satisfied all hands and Waddles wagged his head in unison
with the picking of his guitar and hummed, occasionally accenting the
air with a musical, drumlike boom. They rambled through all the old
familiar songs of the range. The Texan herded his little dogie from
the Staked Plains to Abilene; the herd was soothed on the old bed
ground--bed down my dogie, bed down--and the poor cowboy was many times
buried far out on the lone prair-ee.
Bangs had stationed himself so that he could see the girl and
throughout the evening his surprised eyes never once strayed from
Billie Warren's face.
She leaned back against the wagon wheel, enjoying it all, but her
complacence was jarred as she half-turned and noted Morrow's face,
drawn and bleak, unsoftened by the music. Again the feeling of dislike
for him rose within her; but he was an efficient hand and she had
nothing definite against him. At the end of an hour Waddles rose and
returned his instrument to the wagon. The group broke up and every man
turned in.
Billie Warren lay in her teepee, her mind busily going over the events
of the day. The night sounds of the range drifted to her. A bull-bat
rasped a note or two from above. A picketed horse stamped restlessly
just outside and a range cow bawled from an adjacent slope. The
night-hawk had relieved the wrangler and she could half-hear, half-feel
the low jar of many hoofs as he grazed the remuda slowly up the valley,
singing to while away the time.
She reflected that Cal Harris was at least possessed of self-confidence
and that procrastination was certainly not to be numbered among his
failings. It came to her that his interests, for the present, were
identical with her own. As half-owner in the Three Bar it would be as
much to his advantage as to her own to build it up. Waddles's warped
legs prevented his acting as foreman on the job and it might be that
the other man would find some way to prevent the leak that was sapping
the life from the Three Bar. His half-ownership entitled him to the
place. Billie Warren loved her brand and her personal distrust of
Harris was submerged in the hope that his sharing the full
responsibility with herself might be a step toward putting it back on
the old-time plane of prosperity.
The jar of hoofs had ceased and she knew that the remuda had bedded
down; and having at last reached a decision she fell asleep with the
crooning voice of the nighthawk drifting to her ears.
V
It seemed but a few fleeting moments before Waddles's voice roused her.
"Roll out!" he bawled. "Feet in the trough!"
There was instant activity, the jingle of belts and spurs and in five
minutes every man was fully clothed and splashing at the creek. It was
showing rose and gray in the east when the meal was finished and the
cook's voice was once more raised.
"All set! Ru-un-n 'em in!" he called, and there came the rumble of
hoofs as the nighthawk acted on this order and headed the remuda toward
the wagon. Two men mounted the horses that had been picketed close at
hand throughout the night and stationed themselves on either side of
the open end of the rope corral to guide the horse herd into it.
The horses could not be seen until almost upon them, looming suddenly
out of the dim gray of early morning and surging into the corral. The
nighthawk and the two men already mounted rode around it, driving back
any horse that showed a disposition to leave the corral by a downward
slash of a doubled rope across his face and ears. The men went in and
scattered through the milling herd, each one watching his chance to put
his noose on a circle horse of his own string.
When most of the men were mounted Billie urged Papoose over near
Harris's horse.
"Do you know how to throw a circle?" she asked.
"After a fashion," he said. "I've bossed one or two in the past."
"Then we'd better be off," she suggested. "Since you're the Three Bar
foreman it's for you to say when."
"I only preempted that job for ten minutes or so," he explained with
evident embarrassment. "You surely didn't think I was trying to boost
myself into the foreman's job for keeps?"
"No," she said. "But you're half-owner--and you can handle men. I'm
giving you free rein to show what you can do."
Harris straightened in his saddle and motioned to the men.
"Let's go!" he ordered, and headed his horse for the left-hand flank of
the valley. They ascended the first slopes, picked a long ridge and
followed it to the crest of the low divide between that valley and the
next.
Harris increased the pace and they swept up-country along the divide at
a steady lope. When traveling or making a long day's ride on a single
horse the cowhand saves his mount and travels always at a trail-trot,
but with work to be done, three circles to be thrown in a day and with
a string of fresh horses for every hand, the paramount issue of the
circle is the saving of time rather than the saving of mounts. As they
reached the head of the first draw that led back down into the valley
Harris waved an arm.
"Carp," he called, and a middle-aged man named Carpenter, abbreviated
to Carp, wheeled his horse from the group and headed down the draw.
A half-mile farther on they reached the head of another gulch.
"Hanson!" the new foreman called, and the man who repped for the
Halfmoon D dropped out. One man was detailed to work each draw and
when some five miles up the divide there were but half the crew left.
Harris dropped down a long ridge and crossed the bottoms. Far down the
valley the wagon showed through the thin, clear air. The foreman led
the way to the opposite divide and doubled back, sending a man down
every gulch.
The girl rode with him. Down in the bottoms they could see the riders
detailed on the opposite side hazing the cows out of their respective
draws and heading them toward the wagon. The first few men left their
cows in the flat and veered past them to station themselves near the
wagon and block the valley, sitting their horses at hundred-yard
intervals across it.
Harris and the girl worked the last draw themselves and when they drove
their cows out of the mouth of it they found a herd already milled, two
hundred yards above the wagon. Harris left her and circled the bunch,
estimating it.
A few belated riders were bringing their quotas to swell the herds.
Frequently a bunch of cows made a break to leave and many were allowed
to make good their escape to the safety of the broken slopes. But
these were only marked stuff previously branded and any attempt
including a cow with an unbranded calf was instantly blocked. Each
rider noted the brands of any cows which he let escape and more
particularly still he scanned them with an eye for the presence of a
"slick," an animal missed in previous round-ups and wearing no brand.
Slick cows were fair prey for any man who first put his rope on them
and he was entitled to run his own brand on a slick or to mark it with
the brand for which he rode and draw down a certain scale of premiums
at the end of the round-up season.
Harris changed mounts, throwing his saddle on the paint-horse. When
the last rider appeared with his bunch and threw it into the herd
Harris signaled all hands to change mounts. Half the men repaired to
the rope corral and caught up cow horses while the balance of the crew
held the herd, each one relieving some other as soon as he had saddled
a fresh horse.
When the hands commenced working the herd the Three Bar girl watched
the trained cow horses with an interest that was always fresh, for from
long experience they thoroughly understood every move of the game.
A sagebrush fire was burning fifty yards above the wagon and each man
rode past it, leaned from his saddle and dropped his running iron in
the flame.
The men worked round the edge of the bunch and slipped a noose on every
calf that was thrown to the edge of the constantly shifting mass.
Morrow roped the first calf and dragged it to the fire. A cow darted
away with her calf and Bangs's horse whirled to head her back. As
Bangs shook out his rope the horse changed tactics and abandoned the
course that would have carried him past to turn them, following in
close behind them instead. After two preliminary swings Bangs made his
throw and missed. The horse did not miss a step but kept on close
behind the calf while his rider coiled the rope. The second throw fell
fair and the horse set his feet and braced himself as the calf hit the
end of the rope.
As much as she loved the round-up, many times as she had seen it,
Billie Warren had never become calloused to the brutalities perpetrated
on the calves. She withdrew and sat in the shade of the wagon. She
was downwind and the dust raised by the trampling hoofs floated down to
her, mingled with the odor of steaming cows, the acrid smoke of the
sage fire and the taint of scorched hair and flesh.
Some of the men handled their hot irons with makeshift tongs of split
sage, which were soon burnt through and replaced. Others used slender,
long-handled pliers for the work.
The horses held the calves helpless, moving just enough to keep the
ropes taut. Evans loosed a fresh-branded calf and rode over to the
wagon for a drink. Several cows raced wildly round at a distance from
the fire.
"One of those old sisters will go on the prod and make a break for some
one right soon," he predicted to the girl.
A calf bawled in pain and a cow, maddened by the appeal of her
offspring, charged the group around the fire. The horses that stood
there, holding calves, pricked their ears and watched her rush alertly
but before it was necessary for any one of them to dodge, Slade's rep
slipped his rope on her, jumped his horse off at an angle and brought
her down.
Evans pointed to where Harris, seated on the big pinto, was working
slowly through the center of the herd.
"He's gone in after another slick," Evans said. "Watch the paint-horse
work."
Calico was moving after the animal Harris wanted, working easily and
without a single sharp rush that would cause undue disturbance among
the cows.
"A good cow horse is like a hound," Lanky observed. "Let him spot the
critter you're wanting and nothing can shake him off."
Calico followed a serpentine course through the mass, crowded a
three-year-old to the edge and cut him out. The animal attempted to
dodge back among his fellows but the paint-horse turned as on a pivot
and blocked him, then started him off in a straightaway run.
"There's a real rope-horse," Lanky said. "I've been noticing him work.
Look!"
Calico had braced himself as the slick was roped, shoving his hind feet
out ahead, squatting on his haunches and raising his forefeet almost
clear of the ground.
"Cal broke him without shoes in front," Evans explained. "His feet got
tender after he'd jerked a steer or two and he learned to sock his hind
feet ahead and take the jar on them. He'll last two years longer that
way. A horse that takes all the weight on his front feet in jerking
heavy stuff soon gets stove up in the shoulders and has to be
condemned. This Cal Harris has one whole bagful of knowing tricks."
He rode back to the work after this endorsement of her choice of a
foreman.
Through all the turmoil the nighthawk slept peacefully in the shade of
a sage-clump. Waddles dozed in the wagon but suddenly came to life
with a start and signaled to the wrangler who, in his turn, waved an
arm to the man nearest him. The four wagon horses were roped and
harnessed while Waddles loaded the bed rolls on the tailgate and lashed
them fast. The rope corral was dismantled and loaded. The chuck wagon
veered past the herd and lumbered up the valley and the wrangler and
one other followed with the horse herd.
In a short space of time the herd had been worked, the last calf
branded, and Harris led the men up the bottoms. As they rode each one
reported the brands of all stock which he had let break away from his
bunch before reaching the herd. Each rep entered the number and kind
of his own brand so reported to the former tally taken of the herd.
Five miles up the valley, at the spot where Harris had crossed it a few
hours before, they found the wagon waiting at the new stand, the corral
refashioned and the remuda inside it. It was but ten o'clock but the
first circle had commenced at four. The noon meal on the round-up was
served whenever the first circle was completed. The men fell
ravenously on the hot meal, changed to fresh circle horses and started
again.
It was falling dusk when the herd gathered in the third circle had been
worked and the last calf branded for the day. The men had unsaddled
and spread their bed rolls before Waddles had announced the meal. The
nighthawk came riding up on the horse he had picketed prior to going to
sleep before sunup at the first stand. His bed roll was lashed on a
half-wild range horse he had roped and it sagged to one side, having no
pack saddle to keep it from slipping, and he spoke in no gentle terms
of an outfit that would pull out without troubling to throw his pack
saddle from the wagon or taking pains to picket an extra horse. His
fretfulness passed, however, as he smelled the hot coffee and he
repaired to the wagon, his ill humor dissipated.
There was no music that night, every man retiring to his bed roll the
instant he finished his meal.
At the end of the first week out from the ranch Harris pulled up his
horse beside the girl's and showed her his tally book.
"We've run Slade's mark on more calves than we have our own," he said.
"That's one way he works."
"But that's not his fault and it doesn't mean anything," she said.
"His cows are sure to drift. This first strip we've worked is the
southernmost edge of our range and his north wagon works the strip
right south of us. We're sure to find a number of his cows. As we
double back on our next lap we'll not find the same proportion."
"Not quite--but plenty," he predicted. "We've marked more calves for
Slade in one week than all his three wagon crews will mark for the
Three Bar in a year. The first three weeks of each season your men do
a little more work for Slade than they do for you. It's a safe bet
that the Halfmoon D does the same, and so on through every brand that
joins his range. That puts him way off ahead."
"But that is pure accident," she said.
"It's pure design," he stated. "His boys are busy shoving his cows
from the middle all ways so that when fall comes he has a good inside
block that's only been lightly fed over. They fall back on that for
winter feed. Last winter, when cows were dying like rats, his men were
out drifting Slade's stuff back toward his middle range."
"That's true enough," she admitted. "But----"
"But you thought he was doing it as a favor to you--getting his surplus
off your territory so your own cows would have a better chance. That's
the same kind of talk he floated all round the line; playing the
benevolent neighbor when in reality the old pirate had deliberately
planned, year after year, to overcrowd your range and feed you out."
"But his men would know," she objected.
"Not many of them would grasp the whole scheme of it," he said. "You
hadn't thought of it yourself. He'd detail a pair of boys to shove a
few hundred head way off to the south. A few days later another couple
would be throwing a bunch off northeast. See? And what if a few of
them did surmise? They're riding for his brand."
The girl nodded. That unalterable code again,--the religion of being
loyal to one's brand. Not one of Slade's men would balk at doing it
knowingly; each would do anything to advance his interests as long as
he drew his pay from Slade.
"I doubt if there's a dozen men within two hundred miles that haven't
lifted a few calves now and then for the brand they were riding for.
That's the way it goes. A rule that was fine to start--loyalty to the
hand that paid you; then carried too far until it's degenerated into a
tool that's often abused," he said.
As they talked Harris detailed men for each draw but when they reached
the point where they were due to drop down and cross the valley he
pulled up his horse.
"You take the rest of the circle, Carp," he instructed Carpenter. "I'm
going to ride off up the ridge a piece." The girl regarded him
curiously. No less than three times in the last week he had stopped
midway of the circle and asked her to complete it. Now he had turned
it over to Carp and he signaled her to remain with him.
"Where are we going?" she asked as she watched the men ride down toward
the bottoms. "And why?"
"Back the way we came," he said. "And maybe I can show you why."
He headed back the divide they had just followed until he came to the
saddle at the head of a draw that led down to the valley. Far below
them they could see a rider hazing a bunch of cows out into the
bottoms. High on the right-hand slope of the gulch lay a notch, a
little blind basin watered by the seepage from a sidehill spring, and
there on the green bed of it a dozen cows with their calves grazed
undisturbed. For perhaps five minutes Harris lolled sidewise in the
saddle and watched them. Then a rider appeared on the ridge that
divided that draw from the next, dropped in below the cows and headed
them back over the ridge into the draw from which he had appeared.
Even at that distance she recognized this last man as Lanky Evans.
Harris resumed his way down the divide and she knew that he had
discovered some irregularity for which he had been seeking.
"Who was the man that overlooked those cows?" she asked. "Who worked
that draw?"
"Morrow," he said. "His eyesight is getting bad. That's the second
time this week--and the last. I've detailed Lanky to work the gulch
next to him every circle so that he could drop over the ridge and see
what was going on. That's why he's always late coming in--not because
he's lazy but because he's been working almost a double shift."
"Then Morrow is an inside man for Harper," she said. "Drawing Three
Bar pay and working against us too."
"Yes," he said. "Only he's an inside man for Slade."
"But how could his leaving those calves behind benefit Slade?" she
demanded.
"How could it benefit Harper?" he countered. "Can you tell me that?"
She could not and motioned for him to go on.
"None of Harper's men has a brand of his own," he said. "They're
living on the move. They can't wait for calves to grow up. The way
they work is to run a bunch of beef steers across into Idaho. They'll
pick up another bunch there and shove them across the Utah line and
repeat by moving a drove of some Utah brand up in here. Only beef
steers--quick turning stuff. You know about the reputation of the O V
and the Lazy H Four."
She knew all too well. There was a half-feud, a smoldering distrust
displayed between cowmen on each side of the three State lines, a
triangle of ill feeling. It was current rumor that the O V and the
Lazy H Four, ranging far southwest of the Three Bar, would traffic in
any steers that came from across either the Utah or Idaho line. In the
corner of those States were similar outfits that were receiving
stations for rustled stock from the opposite sides. But they were good
neighbors and kept hands off so far as brands on their home range were
concerned. It was part of the game, and as long as their own interests
were not disturbed the adjacent outfits were blind. The triangular
feud had been fostered to a point where the thieves were immune. Even
if a direct complaint should be brought against them they had but to
ride across into another State and a sheriff following them would be
helpless, the inhabitants resenting this intrusion into their affairs
by an officer from another State, truly having no right there, and
refusing to aid him even if they did not actually oppose his passage.
"But how would it benefit Slade?" she repeated.
"Why, suppose that Morrow overlooked a nice bunch of Three Bar calves
all along this first strip next to Slade's range," Harris said. "Then
some Slade rider happens to drop along after our wagon has moved on and
he hazes them off south. Later another picks them up and shoves them
along another half-day's drive--way beyond where our boys ever work,
even beyond the strip covered by Slade's north wagon, the only one that
carries a Three Bar rep; what then?"
"The calves would still be with mothers wearing the Three Bar mark,"
she said. "After they leave the cows they're slicks, fair game for the
first man that puts his rope on them--and Slade wouldn't risk running
one of his own brands on them before they left the cows."
"Not one of his own, no," Harris said; "only one that's going to be his
later on. Did it ever strike you as queer that Slade, whose way is to
crush every new outfit, should suffer a soft-hearted streak every year
or so and befriend some party that had elected to start up for himself
right in the middle of Slade's range? And later buy him out? That's
the way he came into nearly every brand he runs."
"He's impulsive in his friendships," she defended. "He has always been
like that."
"And his impulses embrace some right queer folks," Harris remarked.
"Several of those dinky little owners have moved out right sudden with
a dozen riders from some other outfit fanning along close behind;
McArthur didn't even get moved, for the Brandons went on the war trail
before he had time to start. But it transpired that he was all set to
go because Slade showed bill of sale for Mac's holdings, dated only the
day before. That's how he came to own every one of those brands that
match up so close with those of every outfit that overlaps his range."
"But if he actually dealt with so many as you believe, some one of them
would be sure to have trouble later on and tell of it," she argued.
"And it would be the word of a self-confessed thief against that of the
biggest owner within two hundred miles, and Slade would laugh at
him--or kill him, according to whatever mood he happened to be in."
They had turned their horses down a long ridge that led to the wagon in
the bottoms.
"I'll mention to the boys that Morrow sold out the interests of the
Three Bar while he was drawing down your pay. They'll pass sentence on
him right sudden. Four hours from now they'll have dry-gulched him so
far from nowhere that even the coyotes can't find him."
"Not that," she said. "Turn him over to the sheriff. You caught him
in the act."
"In the act of missing a few cows on his detail. The sheriff would
hold him almost an hour before he let him go."
"Then give him his check and send him off the Three Bar range," she
said.
Harris waited till the herd had been worked and the men had gathered
round the wagon. Then he handed Morrow a check.
"Here's your time," he said. "You can be leaving almost any time now."
Every man knew that Morrow had been caught at some piece of work
contrary to the interests of the Three Bar. The discharged hand gave a
short ugly laugh.
"As soon as you pussyfooted into the foreman's job I knew it was only a
question of time," he said.
"Exactly," Harris returned. "Pack your stuff."
"A foreman has a scattering of a dozen or so men to back him up,"
Morrow observed with a shrug of one shoulder toward the rest of the men.
Harris turned to the girl.
"I resign for about sixty seconds," he said and swung back toward
Morrow; and again all hands noted his queer quartering stand. "I'm not
foreman right at this minute," he said. "So if you had anything in
particular to address to me in a personal vein you can start now.
Otherwise you'd better be packing your stuff."
Morrow turned his back and headed for the rope corral. When he had
saddled one horse and packed his effects on another he turned to Evans.
"You helped frame this on me," he said. "I thought I saw you messing
over into my detail a few days back."
"Right on the first ballot," Lanky assented. "I'm only riding for one
brand at a time."
"One day right soon I'll run across you again," Morrow prophesied.
"Then I'll take to riding with my head over my shoulder--surveying my
back-track," Lanky promised. "Because we'll most likely meet from
behind."
For the first time Morrow's bleak face changed expression, the lines
deepening from the strain of holding himself steady in the face of the
contemptuous insults with which Lanky casually replied to his threats.
He started to snarl an answer, his usual self-repression deserting him,
but Harris waved an impatient hand.
"Drag it!" he snapped. "Get moving. If I had my own way we'd lead
your horse out from under you--and we will if I ever hear of your
turning up on the Three Bar range again."