The Settling of the Sage

A rider approaching the Three Bar range finds warning signs aimed at settlers and the remains of a burned wagon. Beyond the road lie sage plains, distant water supplies and cattle weakened by a hard winter. Hal G. Evarts places his Western novel in a country where the arrival of farmers challenges the cattlemen's claim to open grazing land. The opening traces this dispute through Cal Warren and Bill Harris, old friends whose different ideas about land and livestock repeatedly delay a business partnership.

At the Three Bar, protecting the ranch requires careful judgment as well as nerve. In a tense conversation with Harper, the foreman Harris weighs the danger of a raid against the power of public opinion. Ranch work, shifting loyalties and arguments over settlement give the story its practical stakes. Readers interested in frontier fiction will find a struggle over how the land should be used, carried through blunt dialogue and close observation of range life.