The Settling of the Sage

The Settling of the Sage, by Hal
G. Evarts

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Title: The Settling of the Sage
Author: Hal G. Evarts
Release Date: July 18, 2006 [EBook #18856]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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SETTLING OF THE SAGE ***

Produced by Al Haines

[Frontispiece: His knees sagged under him as a forty-five slug struck
him an inch above the buckle of his belt.]

THE SETTLING OF THE SAGE
BY HAL G. EVARTS

AUTHOR OF
"The Cross Pull," "The Yellow Horde," etc.

A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers -------- New York
Published by arrangement with Little, Brown and Company
Printed in U. S. A.

Copyright, 1922,
BY HAL G. EVARTS.
All rights reserved

Published January, 1922
Reprinted February, 1922
Reprinted March, 1922

The Settling of the Sage
I

A rider jogged northward along the road on a big pinto horse, a led
buckskin, packed, trailing a half-length behind. The horseman traveled
with the regulation outfit of the roaming range dweller--saddle, bed roll
and canvas war bag containing personal treasures and extra articles of
attire--but this was supplemented by two panniers of food and cooking
equipment and a one-man teepee that was lashed on top in lieu of
canvas pack cover. A ranch road branched off to the left and the man
pulled up his horse to view a sign that stood at the forks.
"Squatter, don't let the sun go down on you," he read. "That's the third
one of those reminders, Calico," he told the horse. "The wording a little
different but the sentiment all the same."
Fifty yards off the trail the charred and blackened fragments of a wagon
showed in sharp contrast to the bleached white bones of two horses.
"They downed his team and torched his worldly goods," the rider said.
"All his hopes gone up in smoke."
He turned in his saddle and looked off across the unending expanse of
sage. Coldriver--probably so named from the fact that the three wells in
the town constituted the only source of water within an hour's ride--lay
thirty miles to the south, a cluster of some forty buildings nestling on a
wind-swept flat. Seventy miles beyond it, and with but two more such
centers of civilization between, the railroad stretched across the rolling
desolation. North of him the hills lifted above the sage, angling with the
directions so that four miles along the Three Bar road that branched off
to the left would bring him to their foot and a like distance along the
main fork saw its termination at Brill's store, situated in a dent in the
base of the hills, the end of the Coldriver Trail.
The man took one more look at the evidence left behind to prove that
the sign was no empty threat before heading the paint-horse along the
left-hand fork. The crisp cool of early spring was blown down from the
slope of the hills. Old drifts, their tops gray-streaked with dust, lay
banked in the gulches and on sheltered east slopes, but the new grass
had claimed the range to the very foot of the drifts, the green of it
intensified in patches watered by the trickle that seeped from the

downhill extremities of the snow banks. He noted that the range cows
along his route were poor and lean, their hip bones showing lumpily
through sagging skin, giving them the appearance of milkers rather
than of beef stock. The preceding summer had been hot and dry,
browning the range six weeks before its time, and the stock had gone
into the winter in poor shape. Heavy snowfalls had completed the
havoc and ten per cent. of the range stock had been winter-killed.
Those that had pulled through were slow in putting on weight and
recovering their strength.
A big red steer stood broadside to him, the Three Bar brand looming on
its side, and the man once more pulled up his horse and lost himself in
retrospection as he gazed at the brand.
"The old Three Bar, Calico," he remarked to the horse. "The old home
brand. It's been many a moon since last I laid an eye on a Three Bar
cow."
The man was gazing directly at the steer but he no longer saw it.
Instead he was picturing the old-time scenes that the sight of the brand
recalled. Step by step he visioned the long trail of the Three Bar