"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 they'll find a place either here or somewhere else a little further on." He slipped an arm about her shoulders. "It's been right lonesome planning without a little partner to talk it all over with at night," he said. "Have you come back for keeps to help me make the Three Bar the best outfit in three States? I can't hold down that job alone." She nodded and leaned against him. "That's what they wanted--old Bill and Cal," she said. "But it's nice that we want it too. I've come for keeps; and the road to the outside is closed." They stood and watched the sun pitch over the far edge of the world; and down in the valley below them the hopeful squatters were looking for a place to camp.