"I see you've settled down to a steady job, Cal, instead of browsing round the hills alone. I run across Horne at Brill's and he was telling me about some one gunning for you from the brush. Morrow, he says. Do you want me to pick Morrow up?" "It would only waste your time," Harris said. "We couldn't prove it on him--the way things are." "Fact," Alden agreed. "But I could hold him till after you're back at the ranch. Some day folks may wake up and need a sheriff. It's hard to say." The men had finished working the herd and were crowding around the wagon for their meal. "You go ahead and eat, Billie," Alden said. "Cal and I'll feed a little later on. I've got a fuss to pick with Cal." Billie left them together and the sheriff squatted on his heels. "What's this rumor about your farming the Three Bar?" he asked. "Horne said all the hands were guessing, but I haven't heard anything about it outside." "And I don't want it leaking out before we start," Harris said. "But we're going to break out the flat. I had the plans all laid and sent word off. Things are moving toward the start right now." "It'll stir things up," Alden predicted. With one forefinger he traced a design in the dust, then blotted it out. "I'll play in with you the best I can." "We've got to make a clean split," Harris said. "Get the wild ones definitely set apart. Then they can be handled." When he spoke again it was apparently as if to himself. "Al Moody sprung it in the Gallatin country a few years back," he said reflectively. "And old Con Ristine worked it on the Nations Cow-trail twenty years ago. It always brings the split." "That kind of thing is dead against the law," the sheriff said. "But it works right well--that backfire stuff. And it's never been proved on either Al Moody or old Con Ristine, so I hear." "But of course I wouldn't have a hand in anything like that," Harris stated. "No. Neither would I," said the sheriff. "Nothing like that." Alden was regarding old Rile Foster who had drawn apart from the rest and was eating his meal in solitude. The old man had taken a boot heel from his pocket and was studying it as if fascinated by the somber reflections it roused in him. Alden shook his head as he rose and moved toward the wagon. "Horne was telling me about Bangs too," he said. "Pretty tough for Rile. They was as close as father and son, those two." Harris and the sheriff joined the rest at the wagon and held out plates and cups to Waddles. The girl was oddly excited, anxious for the start, now that the decision had been made. "How long will it take to get things moving after we get back?" she asked. "Not more than a week at the outside," Harris said. "Probably less." "You don't mean that," she stated. "I want to know the truth."