The Settling of the SageEvarts, Hal G. (Hal George)
General
The Settling of the Sage
Evarts, Hal G. (Hal George)
Western stories
Harris moved once more--and then again--and it was something over two
decades after his departure from Dodge with the Three Bar cows that he
made one final shift, faring on in search of that land where nesters
were unknown. He made a dry march that cost him a fourth of his cows,
skirted the Colorado Desert and made his stand under the first rim of
the hills. Those others who came to share this range were men whose
views were identical with his own, whose watchword was: "Our cows shall
run free on a thousand hills." They sought for a spot where the range
was untouched by the plow and the water holes unfenced. They had
moved, then moved again, driven on before the invasion of the settlers.
These men banded together and swore that here conditions should be
reversed, that it was the squatter who should move, and on this
principle they grimly rested.
Cal Warren had been the vanguard of each new rush of settlers that had
pushed Bill Harris on to another range, and the cowman had come to see
the hand of fate in this persistence. The nesters streamed westward on
all the trails, filing their rights on the fertile valleys and pushing
those who would be cattle barons undisputed back into the more arid
regions. When the Warren family found him out again and halted their
white-topped wagon before his door, Bill Harris gave it up.
"I've come up to see about getting that partnership fixed up, Bill,"
Warren greeted. "You know--the one we talked over in Dodge a while
ago, about our going in together when either of us changed his mind.
Well, I've changed mine. I've come to see that running cows is a good
game, Bill, so let's fix it up. I've changed my mind."
"That was twenty years ago, Cal," Harris said. "But it still holds
good--only I've changed my mind too. You was dead right from the
first. Squatters will come to roost on every foot of ground and
there'll come a day when I'll have to turn squatter myself--so I might
as well start now. The way to get used to crowds, Cal, is to go where
the crowds are at. I'm headed back for Kansas and you better come
along. We'll get that partnership fixed up."
A single child had come to bless each union in the parents' late middle
age. The Harris heir, a boy of eight, had been named Calvin in honor
of his father's friend. Cal Warren had as nearly returned the
compliment as circumstances would permit, and his three-year-old
daughter bore the name of Williamette Ann for both father and mother of
the boy who was his namesake, and Warren styled her Billie for short.
Each man was as stubbornly set in his new views as he had been in the
old. The Harrises came into possession of the Warrens' prairie
schooner and drove off to the east. The Warrens took over the Three
Bar brand and the little Williamette Ann slept in the tiny bunk built
for the son of the Harris household.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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