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At the end of a week Slade rode up to the wagon as the men were working the cows gathered in the second circle of the day. He jerked his head to draw her aside out of range of Waddles's ears. "How's the Three Bar showing up this spring?" he asked abruptly. "Better than ever," she retorted and he caught a note of defiance in her voice. "You're lying, Billie," he asserted calmly.
The only sounds which shattered the quiet were the muffled thuds of Waddles's hand-axe as the cook worked on a single idea and endeavored to gouge a loophole through the cracks of the twelve-inch logs. Harris transferred his attention to the long line of log buildings a hundred yards to the east. The row afforded perfect cover for any who chose that route of approach.
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."
When within a hundred yards of the cabin a horse, tied to a hitch post in front, neighed shrilly and Harris laid a restraining hand on Waddles's arm. They knelt in the brush as the door opened and a man stood silhouetted against the light. After a space of two minutes Carp's voice reached them. "Not a sound anywheres," he said. "Likely some horses drifting past."
"I'll have to face a number of things that are equally unpleasant in the next two years so I might as well start now. He must have praised the food in order to win you to his side in two minutes flat." Waddles's face expressed pained reproach. "Now there it is again!" he said. "You know I'm only on one side yours.
The jar of hoofs had ceased and she knew that the remuda had bedded down; and having at last reached a decision she fell asleep with the crooning voice of the nighthawk drifting to her ears. It seemed but a few fleeting moments before Waddles's voice roused her. "Roll out!" he bawled. "Feet in the trough!"
The sound of Waddles's hand-axe ceased and an instant later the roar of the shotgun sounded twice from within the house, followed by the cook's lament. "Missed!" the big voice wailed. "Two minutes more and I'd have made a real hole." The muffled crash of a rifle rolled steadily from the house as Waddles fired at the chinking in an effort to reach the two men outside.
"What's a-fretting you?" "Do you know who he is?" she asked. Waddles wagged a negative head. "He's Calvin Harris," she stated. Instead of the blank dismay which she had expected to see depicted on Waddles's face at this announcement, it seemed to her that the big man was pleased. "The hell!" he said. "'Scuse me, Billie. So this here is Cal! Well, well now what do you think of that?"
Waddles's warped legs prevented his acting as foreman on the job and it might be that the other man would find some way to prevent the leak that was sapping the life from the Three Bar. His half-ownership entitled him to the place.
The force of the blow threw Harris off his balance and as he tripped and reeled to his knees Slade's boot heel scored a glancing blow on his skull and floored him. He regained his feet, gripping a fragment of the chair Morrow had smashed over Waddles's head, and struck at a dim form which loomed against the vague light of the window.
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