shop stood on the site
of the old. And in the midst of all the improvements the old cabin
first erected on the Three Bar stood protected by a picket fence on
which a few vines were already beginning to climb.

"It didn't take long to throw them up, with all hands working, along in
the winter when there wasn't much else to do," he said.

After the men had quit work to greet the returning Three Bar boss she
went over every detail of the new house. The big living room and
fireplace were modeled closely along the lines of her old quarters;
heads and furs were on the walls, pelts and Indian rugs on the floors.
Running water had been piped down from a sidehill spring. The new
house was modernized. Then Harris saddled Calico and Papoose and they
rode down to the fields.

As they turned into the lane they heard the twang of Waddles's guitar
from the cook shack, the booming voice raised in song in mid-afternoon,
a thing heretofore unheard of in the annals of Three Bar life.

"There'll be one real feast to-night," Harris prophesied. "Waddles
will spread himself."

They rode past the meadow, covered with a knee-deep stand of alfalfa
hay.

"It was only tramped down," he said. "She came up in fine shape this
spring. We'll put up a thousand tons of hay."

He held straight on past the meadow, turned off below the lower fence
and angled southwest across the range. The calves and yearlings along
their route gave proof that the grading-up of the Three Bar herds was
already having its effect. Ninety per cent. were straight red stock
with only a few throwbacks to off-color strains. The two spoke but
little and near sunset they rode out and dismounted on the ridge from
which, almost a year before, they had viewed the first move of
organized law in the Coldriver strip.

A white-topped wagon came toward them up the valley along the same
route followed by the file of dusty riders on that other day. A woman
held the reins over the team and a curly-haired youngster jostled about
on the seat by her side. A man wrangled a nondescript drove of horses
and cows in the rear.

"That's the way we both came into this country first, you and I,"
Harris said. "Just like that little shaver on the seat."

"Will they find a place to settle?" she asked, with a sudden hope that
the newcomers would find a suitable site for a home.

"Maybe not close around here," he said. "Most of the good sites you
can get water on are picked up. But