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his cows north and west across the Kansas line into the edge of the great unknown that was styled Nebraska and Northwest District. At first his range was limitless, but in a few short years he could stand on the roof of his sod hut and see the white points of light which were squatters' wagons dotting the range to the far horizon in any direction he chose to look. The first of these to invade his range had been Cal Warren, moving on before the swarm of settlers flocking into the locality of his first choice in such alarming numbers that he feared an unhealthy congestion of humanity in the near future. The debate of farming versus cows was resumed between the two, but each held doggedly to his own particular views and the longed-for partnership was again postponed.
Harris moved once more—and then again—and it was something over two decades after his departure from Dodge with the Three Bar cows that he made one final shift, faring on in search of that land where nesters were unknown. He made a dry march that cost him a fourth of his cows, skirted the Colorado Desert and made his stand under the first rim of the hills. Those others who came to share this range were men whose views were identical with his own, whose watchword was: "Our cows shall run free on a thousand hills." They sought for a spot where the range was untouched by the plow and the water holes unfenced. They had moved, then moved again, driven on before the invasion of the settlers. These men banded together and swore that here conditions should be reversed, that it was the squatter who should move, and on this principle they grimly rested.
Cal Warren had been the vanguard of each new rush of settlers that had pushed Bill Harris on to another range, and the cowman had come to see the hand of fate in this persistence. The nesters streamed westward on all the trails, filing their rights on the fertile valleys and pushing those who would be cattle barons undisputed back into the more arid regions. When the Warren family found him out again and halted their white-topped wagon before his door, Bill Harris gave it up.
"I've come up to see about getting that partnership fixed up, Bill," Warren greeted. "You know—the one we talked over in Dodge a while ago, about our going in together when either of us changed his mind. Well, I've changed mine. I've come to see that running cows is a good game, Bill, so let's fix it up. I've changed my mind."
"That was twenty years ago, Cal," Harris said. "But it still holds good—only I've changed my mind too. You was dead right from the first. Squatters will come to roost on every foot of ground and there'll come a day when I'll have to turn squatter myself—so I might as well start now. The way to get used to crowds, Cal, is to go where the crowds are at. I'm headed back for Kansas and you better come along. We'll get that partnership fixed up."
A single child had come to bless each union in the parents' late middle age. The Harris heir, a boy of eight, had been named Calvin in honor of his father's friend. Cal Warren had as nearly returned the compliment as circumstances would permit, and his three-year-old daughter bore the name of Williamette Ann for both father and mother of the boy who was his namesake, and Warren styled her Billie for short.
Each man was as stubbornly set in his new views as he had been in the old. The Harrises came into possession of the Warrens' prairie schooner and drove off to the east. The Warrens took over the Three Bar brand and the little Williamette Ann slept in the tiny bunk built for the son of the Harris household.
For a space of minutes these old pictures occupied the mind of the man on the pinto horse. The led buckskin moved fretfully and tugged on the lead rope, rousing the man from his abstraction. Distant strings of prairie schooners and ox-bows faded from his mind's eye and he way once more conscious of the red steer with the Three Bar brand that had stirred up the train of reflections. He turned for another glimpse of the distant sign as he headed the paint-horse along the road.
"All that was quite a spell back, Calico," he said. "Old Bill Harris planted the first one of those signs, and it served a good purpose then. It's a sign that stands for lack of progress to-day. Times change, and it's been eighteen years or so since old Bill Harris left."
The road traversed the bench, angled down a side hill to a valley somewhat more than a mile across. Calico pricked his ears sharply toward the Three Bar buildings that stood at the upper end of it.
Curious eyes peered from the bunk house as he neared it, for the paint-horse and the buckskin were not without fame even if the man himself were a stranger to them all. For the better part of a year the two high-colored horses had been seen on the range—south to the railroad, west to the Idaho line. The man had kept to himself and when seen by approaching riders he had always been angling on a course that would miss their own. Those who had, out of curiosity, deliberately ridden out to intercept him reported that he seemed a decent sort of citizen, willing to converse on any known topics except those which concerned himself.
He dropped from the saddle before the bunk house and as he stood in the door he noted half a dozen men lounging on the bunks. This indolence apprised him of the fact that they were extra men signed on for the summer season and that their pay had not yet started, for the cowhand, when on the pay roll, works sixteen hours daily and when he rests or frolics it is, except in rare instances, on his own time and at his own expense.
A tall, lean individual, who sat cross-legged on a bunk, engaged in mending a spur strap, was the first to answer his inquiry for the foreman.
"Billie Warren is the big he-coon of the Three Bar," he informed. "You'll likely find the boss at the blacksmith shop." The lanky one grinned as the stranger turned back through the litter of log outbuildings, guided by the hissing squeak of bellows and the clang of a sledge on hot iron. Several men pressed close to the windows in anticipation of viewing the newcomer's surprise at greeting the Three Bar boss. But the man did not seem surprised when a young girl emerged from the open door of the shop as he neared it.
She was clad in a gray flannel skirt and black Angora chaps. The heavy brown hair was concealed beneath the broad hat that was pulled low over her eyes after the fashion of those who live much in the open. The man removed his hat and stood before her.
"Miss Warren?" he inquired. The girl nodded and waited for him to state his purpose.
"What are the chances of my riding for the Three Bar?" he asked.
"We're full-handed," said the girl. "I'm sorry."
"You'll be breaking out the remuda right soon now," he suggested. "I'm real handy round a breaking corral."
"They're all handy at that," she said. Then she noted the two horses before the bunk house and frowned. Her eyes searched the stranger's face and found no fault with it; she liked his level gaze. But she wondered what manner of man this was who had so aimlessly wandered alone for a year and avoided all other men.
"Since you've finally decided to work, how does it happen that you choose the Three Bar?" she asked, then flushed under his eyes as she remembered that so many men had wished to ride for her brand more than for another, their reasons in each case the same.
"Because the Three Bar needs a man that has prowled this country and gathered a few points about what's going on," he returned.
"And that information is for sale to any brand that hires you!" said the girl. "Is that what you mean?"
"If it was, there would be nothing wrong with a man's schooling himself to know all points of his job before he asked for it," he said. "But it happens that wasn't exactly my reason."
A shade of weariness passed over her face. During the two years that her father had been confined to the house after being caved in by a horse and in the one year that had elapsed since his death the six thousand cows that had worn the Three Bar brand on the range had decreased by almost half under her management.
"I'll put you on," she said. "But you'll probably be insulted at what I have to offer. The men start out after the horses to-morrow. I want a man to stay here and do tinkering jobs round the place till they get back."
"That'll suit me as well as any," he accepted promptly. "I'm a great little hand at tinkering round."
The clang of the sledge had ceased and a huge, fat man loomed in the door of the shop and mopped his dripping face with a bandanna.
"I'm