id. "I'd try to get
along--and declare hands off." He rose, nodded to the two men and
returned to the stud game.

"He'll do it too," Evans predicted. "There's that much fixed
anyway--not a bad piece of work."

The two men returned to the bar and Brill moved close to Harris. For
fifteen years he had stood behind that bar and observed the men of the
whole countryside at their worst--and best; and he knew men. As well
as if he had heard the words of the three at the table he knew that
Harris and Harper had reached an agreement of some sort that was
satisfactory to both.

"Take the boys over a drink on me," Harris said, and Brill slid a
bottle and five whisky glasses on to a tray and moved over to the table.

"Here's a drink on the Three Bar boss," he announced.

Lang scowled, remembering the recent occasion when Harris had ordered
them off.

"To hell with----" he commenced, but the albino cut him short.

"Drink it," he said.

Ten minutes later the five men rose to go. Harris looked at his watch.

"I'm off," he said to Evans. "Try and get the boys home by to-morrow
morning if it's possible."

He went outside and mounted as the five rustlers swung to their saddles.

"I'm going your way as far as the forks," he said to Harper.

The Three Bar men were treated to the sight of their foreman riding
down the road beside Harper at the head of four of the worst ruffians
in the State.

And behind the bar Brill moved softly back and forth when not serving
drinks, pausing opposite first one group and then the next to dab at
the polished wood with his cloth, listening carefully to the
conversation and gauging it to determine whether the apparent sentiment
toward the squatter foreman was sincere or would prove different when
the men, flushed with undiluted rye, were unrestrained by his presence.
At one end of the bar Evans and Bentley conversed together in low tones
but whenever Brill strolled casually to their end the conference
lagged. The few sentences which reached his ears were of trivial
concern.

IX

There was a new contentment in the eyes of the Three Bar girl as she
sat her horse beside Carlos Deane and looked off down the bottoms. A
haze of smoke drifted above the little valley of the Crazy Loop. Three
mule outfits were steadily ripping up the sage flats. Men lifted the
uprooted brush on forks and piled it for the burning. The two rode
down to the fields with the pungent sage smoke drifting