The Settling of the Sage | Page 8

big man on the back.
"I'd work for half pay where you get grub like this," he said. "That's
what I'd call a real feed."
Waddles beamed and followed him to the door.
"It's a fact that I can set out the best bait you ever throwed a lip over,"
he confessed. "You're a man of excellent tastes and it's a real pleasure
to have you about."
Billie Warren opened the door and motioned to Harris. He went into
the big front room that answered for both living room and sleeping
quarters. A fire burned in the rough stone fireplace; tanned pelts, Indian
curios and Navajo rugs covered the walls; more rugs and pelts lay on
the floor. Indian blankets partitioned off one end for her sleeping room.
"You had something to tell me," she observed, after he had remained
silent for the space of a minute, sitting in the chair she had indicated
and gazing into the fire.

"And I'll have to start it a little different from the way I first counted
on," he said. "Have any of the boys mentioned my name to you?"
She shook her head and waited for him to go on.
"You won't care much to hear it," he announced. "I'd thought some of
spending two years here under some other name--but perhaps it's better
to come out in the open--don't you think?"
The girl had straightened in her chair and was leaning toward him, her
face white and her gray eyes boring straight into the man's. She knew
now who he was,--the man she had more reason to despise than all
others on earth combined. Of the Harris family she knew nothing at all
except that her father's lifelong regret had been the fact that the
partnership between himself and his oldest friend, William Harris, had
never been brought to pass. And this regret had, in the end, led him to
try and cement that arrangement in the second generation. Five years
before his trail had crossed that of the elder Harris for the first time
since he had taken over the Three Bar brand; and when his will had
been read she had known that on the occasion of that visit his old friend
had played upon this sentiment to trick him into making it. On all sides
of her she had evidence that men were wolves who preyed upon the
interests of others, and there was not a doubt that the father of the man
before her had preyed upon her interests through the sentiment of her
parent; no other possible theory could account for the strange disposal
of his property, the will dated and signed at the exact time of his visit to
the Harrises.
The tenseness of her pose was replaced by lethargic indifference and
she relaxed into her chair.
"I've known all the time you would come," she said.
"It's too bad, Billie," he said. "It's tough having me wished on to you
this way."
"Don't play that game with me!" she flared. "Of course you've
disproved every drop of human decency in advance."

"It sure looms up like that on the surface," he admitted ruefully. "But I
didn't have a hand in cinching you this way."
"You could have proved that by staying away. I wrote you a year ago
that I'd donate you a half-interest in the Three Bar at the expiration of
the time if you'd only keep off the place. But at the last moment you
couldn't resist having it all. Ten more days and you'd have been too
late."
The man nodded slowly.
"Too late," he agreed and sat looking into the fire.
She had been almost a son to her father, had ridden the range with him,
managed the Three Bar during his sickness; and such was her loyalty to
his memory that not a trace of her bitterness had been directed toward
her parent. He had loved the Three Bar and had always believed that
old Bill Harris, its founder, had loved it too. His will had stipulated that
half of his property should go to the younger Harris under the condition
that the man should make his home on the Three Bar for two out of the
first three years after her father's decease. The whole of it was to go to
him in case she failed to make her own home at the Three Bar during
her co-heir's stay, or in the event of her marriage to another before the
expiration of three years.
"Of course I'm tied here for two years," she said. "Or left penniless. If
you can make it unpleasant enough to drive me away--which won't be
difficult--you win."
"I wouldn't count too strong on that," he counseled mildly.
"Then why did you come?" she insisted. "Half