.
he assured the new-comer. "A man that's not above doing a little fixing up! A cowhand is the most overworked and underpaid saphead that ever lost three nights' sleep hand running and worked seventy-two hours on end; sleep in the rain or not at all—to hold a job at forty per for six months in the year. The other six he's throwed loose like a range horse to rustle or starve. Hardest work in the world—but he don't know it, or money wouldn't hire him to lift his hand. He thinks it's play. Not one out of ten but what prides himself that he can't be browbeat into doing a tap of work. Ask him to cut a stick of firewood and he'll arch his back and laugh at you scornful like. Don't that beat hell?"
"It do," said the stranger.
"I'm the best wagon cook that ever sloshed dishwater over the tail-gate, and even better than that in a ranch-house kitchen," the loquacious one modestly assured him. "But I can't do justice to the meals when I lay out to do all the chores within four miles and run myself thin collecting scraps and squaw wood to keep the stove het up. Now since Billie has hired you, I trust you'll work up a pile of wood that will keep me going—and folks call me Waddles," he added as an afterthought.
"Very good, Mr. Waddles," the newcomer smiled. "You shall have your fuel."
The big man grinned.
"That title is derived from my shape and gait," he informed. "My regular name is Smith—if you're set on tacking a Mister on behind it."
The girl waved the talkative cook aside and turned to the new hand.
"You'll take it then."
He nodded.
"Could you spare me about ten minutes some time to-day?" he asked.
"Yes," she said. "I'll send for you when I have time."
The man headed back for his horses and unlashed the buckskin's top-pack, dropping it to the ground, then led the two of them back toward the corral, stripped the saddle from the pinto, the side panniers and packsaddle from the buckskin and turned them into the corral. He rambled among the outbuildings on a tour of inspection and the girl saw him stand long in one spot before the solid log cabin, now used as a storeroom for odds and ends, that had been the first one erected on the Three Bar and had sheltered the Harrises before her father took over their brand.
II
The Three Bar girl sat looking from the window of her own room, the living room of the ranch house, one end of which was curtained off to serve as sleeping quarters. The rattle of pots and pans came from the big room in the rear which was used by Waddles as a kitchen and dining hall for the hands. The new man was still prowling about the place, inspecting every detail, and she wondered if he could tell her anything which would prove of benefit in her fight to stop the shrinkage of the Three Bar herds and help her to face the drastic changes that were reshaping the policies of the range country.
The Three Bar home range was one of many similar isolated spots where the inhabitants held out for a continuance of the old order of things. All through the West, from the Mexican border to the Canadian line, a score of bitter feuds were in progress, the principles involved differing widely according to conditions and locality. There were existing laws—and certain clans that denied the justice of each one, holding out against its enforcement and making laws of their own. In some spots the paramount issue was over the relative grazing rights of cows and sheep, fanning a flame of hatred between those whose occupations were in any way concerned with these rival interests. In others the stockmen ignored the homestead laws which proclaimed that settlers could file their rights on land. As always before, wherever men resorted to lawlessness to protect their fancied rights, the established order of things had broken down, all laws disregarded instead of the single one originally involved.
In many communities these clashes between rival interests had furnished opportunity for rustlers to build up in power and practically take the range. Each clan was outside the law in some one particular and so could not have recourse to it against those who violated it in some other respect; could not appear against neighbors in one matter lest their friends do likewise against themselves in another.
This attitude had enabled the wild bunch to saddle themselves on certain communities and ply their trade without restraint. Rustling had come to be a recognized occupation to be reckoned with; the identity of the thieves was often known, and they visited from ranch to ranch, whose owners possibly were honest themselves but had friends among the outlaws for whom the latch-string was always out. The rustlers' toll was in the nature of a tribute levied against every brand and the various outfits expected certain losses from this source. It was good business to recoup these losses at another's expense and thus neighbor preyed on neighbor. Big outfits fought to crush others who would start up in a small way, and between periods of defending their own interests against the rustlers they hired them to harry their smaller competitors from the range; clover for outlaws where all factions, by mutual assent, played their own hands without recourse to the law. It was a case of dog eat dog and the slogan ran: "Catch your calves in a basket or some other thief will put his iron on them first."
It was to this pass that the Three Bar home range had come in the last five years. As Billie Warren watched the new hand moving slowly toward the bunk house she pondered over what manner of man this could be who had played a single-handed game in the hills for almost a year. Was he leagued with the wild bunch, with the law, or was he merely an eccentric who might have some special knowledge that would help her save the Three Bar from extinction?
The stranger picked up his bed roll and disappeared through the bunk-house door as she watched him.
The lean man who had first greeted him jerked a thumb toward an unoccupied bunk.
"Pay roll?" he inquired; then, as the new man nodded, "I'm most generally referred to as Lanky," he offered tentatively. "Evans is the rest of it."
The stranger hesitated appreciably; then:
"Harris will do all right for me—Cal for every day," he returned and introductions had been effected. It was up to each man to use his own individual method of making his name known to the newcomer as occasion arose.
There had been much speculation about the brand worn by the two horses. The hands were a drifting lot, gathered from almost as many points as there were men present, but none of them knew the brand.
A dark, thin-faced man with a slender black mustache was the first to voice a query, not from the fact that his curiosity was large—it was perhaps less than that of any other man in the room—but for the reason that he chose to satisfy it at once. Morrow's personality was cold and bleak, inviting no close friendships or intimacies; uncommunicative to a degree that had impressed itself on his companions of the last few days and they looked up, mildly surprised at his abrupt interrogation.
"Box L," he commented. "Where does that brand run?"
"Southwest Kansas and Oklahoma," the stranger answered.
"Squatter country," Morrow said. "Every third section under fence."
Harris sat looking through the door at the valley spread out below and after a moment he answered the thrust as if he had been long prepared for it.
"Yes," he said. "And that's what all range country will come to in a few more years; farm what they can and graze what they can't—and the sooner the better for all concerned." He waved an arm down the valley. "Good alfalfa dirt going to waste down there—overrun with sage and only growing enough grass to keep ten cows to the quarter. If that was ripped up and seeded to hay it would grow enough to winter five thousand head."
This remark led to the old debate that was never-ending in the cow country, breaking out afresh in every bunk house and exhaustively rediscussed. There were men there who had viewed both ends of the game—had seen the foremost outfits in other parts tearing up the sage and putting in hay for winter feed and had seen that this way was good.
Evans