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.