"If Harris only wanted to wipe out those on the list he wouldn't go to all this fuss," Brill explained. "He'd just put on an extra bunch of hands and raid the Breaks himself. Swear he caught them running off a bunch of Three Bar cows. Simpler and considerable less expense." "Then what's the object of this bounty?" Carson insisted. "That's aimed at the doubtful folks," Brill stated. "Folks that was on the fence--like you. This death list makes them spooky and they turn into good little citizens in one round of the clock. It leaves the worst ones outside without a friend. Every one lined up solid behind the law. Public sentiment will start running strong against those outside. Then it'll be easy for the sheriff and a bunch of deputies--like you--to clean the country up from end to end, with the whole community backing your play." Carson considered this for some time. "Well, I can furnish the deputies," he said at last. "Boys that are strong for law and order from first to last." "I've got about all I need," the sheriff said. "A dozen or so. Mostly old friends of yours. I've picked 'em up on and off in the last two weeks. They're strong for upholding the last letter of the law--just like you said." "A dozen?" Carson asked. "How'll you raise the money to pay that many at once?" "I'm sort of expecting maybe the Three Bar will make up the deficit," Alden said. "It's cheaper than paying rewards. That's another reason I don't think Cal had a hand in this blacklist report." The storekeeper grinned. "Surely not. Surely not. I'd never suspect him of that," he said. "But all the same it's working just as well as if he really had." XIII The first warm days of spring had drawn the frost from the ground. Billie rode beside Harris down the lane to the lower field. A tiny cabin stood completed on every filing. Two men were digging post holes across the valley below the edge of the last fall's plowing and the mule teams were steadily breaking out another strip. "Almost a year," she said, referring to the commencement of the new work. "Just a year to-day," Harris corrected, and he was thinking of the day he had first met the Three Bar girl. "This is our anniversary, sort of." She nodded as she caught his meaning. "The anniversary of our partnership," she said. "You're good on dates. We've pulled together pretty well, considering our start." "It was a rocky trail for the first few days," he confessed. "But all the time I was hoping it would get smoothed out." "You told me there were millions of miles of sage just outside," she recollected. "And millions of cows--and girls." "Later I told you something else," he said. "And I've been meaning it ever since. The road to the outside is closed. If I was to start now I'd lose the way."