g on a wind-swept flat. Seventy miles beyond it, and with but
two more such centers of civilization between, the railroad stretched
across the rolling desolation. North of him the hills lifted above the
sage, angling with the directions so that four miles along the Three
Bar road that branched off to the left would bring him to their foot
and a like distance along the main fork saw its termination at Brill's
store, situated in a dent in the base of the hills, the end of the
Coldriver Trail.

The man took one more look at the evidence left behind to prove that
the sign was no empty threat before heading the paint-horse along the
left-hand fork. The crisp cool of early spring was blown down from the
slope of the hills. Old drifts, their tops gray-streaked with dust,
lay banked in the gulches and on sheltered east slopes, but the new
grass had claimed the range to the very foot of the drifts, the green
of it intensified in patches watered by the trickle that seeped from
the downhill extremities of the snow banks. He noted that the range
cows along his route were poor and lean, their hip bones showing
lumpily through sagging skin, giving them the appearance of milkers
rather than of beef stock. The preceding summer had been hot and dry,
browning the range six weeks before its time, and the stock had gone
into the winter in poor shape. Heavy snowfalls had completed the havoc
and ten per cent. of the range stock had been winter-killed. Those
that had pulled through were slow in putting on weight and recovering
their strength.

A big red steer stood broadside to him, the Three Bar brand looming on
its side, and the man once more pulled up his horse and lost himself in
retrospection as he gazed at the brand.

"The old Three Bar, Calico," he remarked to the horse. "The old home
brand. It's been many a moon since last I laid an eye on a Three Bar
cow."

The man was gazing directly at the steer but he no longer saw it.
Instead he was picturing the old-time scenes that the sight of the
brand recalled. Step by step he visioned the long trail of the Three
Bar cows from Dodge City to the Platte, from the Platte to the rolling
sage-clad hills round old Fort Laramie and from Laramie to the present
range. Many times he had heard the tale, and though most of the scenes
had been enacted before his birth, they were impressed so firmly upon
his mind by repetition that it seemed as if he himself had been a part
of them.

Hi