The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Settling of the Sage, by Hal G. Evarts

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Title: The Settling of the Sage

Author: Hal G. Evarts

Release Date: July 18, 2006 [EBook #18856]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SETTLING OF THE SAGE ***

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
nestlin