I
In all that vast expanse of country west of Fort Riley clear to the
Sierras of California there are not over four hundred thousand acres
of arable land.
This extract from McClelland’s report, later appearing as preface to
some fourteen volumes of Pacific Railroad explorations, evidently acted
as a direct challenge to the pioneering spirit of a country that was
young. Following immediately upon its publication, as if in a concerted
effort of refutation, the great westward trek across a continent set
in, the determined advance of a land-hungry horde intent upon seeking
out and settling that four hundred thousand acres of arable land; and
in the brief space of thirty years there were thirty million acres
under fence while the swarming multitude of hopeful settlers continued
to surge westward across the face of the earth.
Thus do even wise men frequently fail to vision the immensity of the
future which stretches forth ahead within the puny span of their own
remaining years.
Another few decades and old Joe Hinman, himself accounted a wise
man among his fellows, sat his horse on a little rise of ground
and lamented his own lack of foresight. Donald Carver, his younger
companion, gazed off across the flat where several riders held some
two thousand head of steers. Hinman had come with the vanguard of the
invaders and had watched succeeding waves of home seekers swarm past
on all the ancient trails, the bull trains stretching almost without
a break from the Missouri to the Colorado hills, when Cheyenne, Kiowa
and Comanche contested the advance at every crossing of the Republican
and the Smoky Hill, at the Great Bend of the Arkansas, and historic
Pawnee Rock; had watched the bull teams and the prairie schooner giving
way to freight cars that rattled past on steel rails which spanned a
continent. He had seen the rolling plains of Kansas, once constituting
the first reaches of the Great American Desert, lifted bodily into
statehood and wondrous fertility, so long since that younger men had
almost forgotten that their native State had ever been other than a
prosperous agricultural community. While the main tides of settlement
had swept on to the west and north, Hinman had turned aside and
traveled south on the Chisholm Trail till he reached a point where the
floods of home seekers were halted by some invisible barrier. There he
had settled and prospered, but even now, thirty years after driving his
first claim stakes through the prairie sod, that same barrier resisted
all advance. Just outside his dooryard a vast tract, sixty miles by
two hundred in extent, remained undeveloped and untouched. The land
was rich and beckoned temptingly to those who sought a scrap of ground
which might constitute a home, yet beyond Hinman’s holdings the virgin
sod extended to the far horizon with never a ribbon of smoke by day
or a twinkling window by night to indicate the friendly presence of
a settler’s cabin,--the Cherokee Strip, upon which the white man was
forbidden to settle by the terms of an ancient treaty. This great tract
had been set aside to serve as insulation between warring whites and
reds, its status still the same even though the necessity for such
insulation had been long since removed,--an empire lying dormant and
awaiting only the magic word which should strike off the shackles and
permit its broad miles to blossom into productiveness.
“There she lays, son,” Hinman said, waving an arm in a comprehensive
sweep toward the unowned lands. “Some day right soon they’ll open
her. Every land-hungry party in four States has his eye on the last
frontier and whenever she’s throwed open to settlement you’ll see one
hair-raising mad stampede. So if you’re going off somewheres, like I
heard it rumored, why I’d cancel the arrangements and sit tight.”
The younger man nodded without comment.
“Fortune always beckons from some place a long ways remote,” Hinman
rambled on. “When likely she’s roosting right at home, if only we’d
have a look. Now I quit Ohio as a youngster because there wasn’t any
land left open but hardwood swamp lands, which could be had for about a
dollar an acre, but I couldn’t see its value at a dollar a mile. To-day
that Ohio swamp land is selling round two hundred an acre while what
ground I’ve got under crop out here would average right at thirty and
raw grassland not over three or four.”
“But owning the most part of two countries,” Carver commented, “you can
maybe worry along.”
“Likely,” Hinman confessed. “But that’s not the point. I could have
stayed right at home with those swamp lands and without ever exerting
myself, except maybe to keep entertained with a brace of coon hounds,
I could have growed into more wealth by considerable than what I’ve
accumulated out here by steady work. That’s the real point; so it
appears that my leaving there was sheer lack of foresight. So it’s
likely that your best chance to get ahead and lay up an honest dollar
is by staying right here instead of stampeding off somewheres. That’s
the real reason I sent for you.”
“Since I’ve never even considered leaving, and you well aware of it,”
said Carver, grinning, “then the real reason you sent for me was to
engage me to perform something you didn’t want to do yourself--which in
turn is related to the possibility of my accumulating an honest dollar.
We’ve rambled all the way from timbered swamp land on down to the
surrounding short grass. What sort of country lays beyond? My curiosity
is fairly foaming over.”
Hinman regarded him quizzically and Carver bore the scrunity
undisturbed. The older man knew that Carver was dependable; that once
committed he would follow any mission to its termination and defend the
financial interests of his employer with every resource at his command.
It was only in his own affairs that he evidenced supreme carelessness.
Older men forgave his irresponsibility in that quarter and accorded him
a certain measure of respect for the reason that even in the midst of
some bit of recklessness he retained an underlying sense of balance
and proportion. And he had worked intermittently for old Joe Hinman for
the past twelve years.
“It’s not that I don’t want to do it myself,” Hinman denied, reverting
to Carver’s mild accusation. “It’s only that it wouldn’t look right
on the surface. Now whatever property is down in the Strip is legally
non-existent, you might say, and consequently untaxable,” thereby
disproving his oft-lamented lack of foresight. “And it’s drawing right
close to the first of March.”
“So you want me to move a thousand head of steers across the line and
hold ’em till after you’ve been assessed.” Carver hazarded.
“Two thousand, son,” Hinman corrected. “Two thousand head. You couldn’t
hold ’em in the quarantine belt for long without getting jumped, but
you know the boss of every outfit off to the south and you could maybe
trade deals with one of them. You’ll know how. It’ll save me taxes on
two thousand head and give me a few weeks’ free grass. That much for me
and a thousand nice dollars for you if you put it across.”
“An hour after dark I’ll be shoving those cows across the line,” Carver
promised. “Meantime you might advance a hundred. Unfortunately I’m
just out of funds.”
“Unfortunately,” said Hinman, “you’re just always out.” He counted off
the money. “You’ve worked for me on and off ever since you was big
enough to claw your way up onto a horse and on some occasions you’ve
exercised such fair average judgment in looking after my affairs that
I’ve wondered why on all occasions you was such a poor hand to look
after your own.”
“I’ve been so taken up with your business that I’ve sort of let my own
interests drift along,” Carver explained.
* * * * *
“You’re right handy at doing things for me,” Hinman resumed. “But
when it comes to doing anything for yourself you’re somewhat the most
tinkering, trifling specimen I’ve come acrost. You really ought to
settle on some one job and stick at it.”
“That’s my one favorite motto,” Carver confessed. “Stick to your
bush--and be exhibited among the vegetables.”
He turned his eye upon a tumbleweed that raced madly past before
the wind. The dried skeleton was of the general size and shape of a
pumpkin. Two more of these discontented wraiths of the prairies hurtled
past.
“Now there goes a vegetable with ambitions,” said Carver. “Every winter
the tumbleweed tribe stages a protest against being mere plants rooted
forever to one spot.” He chanted a few of the numberless verses of a
prairie song:
“Our size and shape is similar,”
Said the tumbleweed to the pumpkin.
“I’ll run you a race from here to there
And all the way back again.
“I’m a wild free blade of the open,
The spirit of all unrest.
I may end up in some worse place
But I’m going to make the test.”
“And I’m the soul of solid content,”
Said the pumpkin to the weed.
“Rather than take any chance at all
I’ll stay here and go to seed.”
But I’d rather be a traveling weed
Than a stationary squash.
“I know,” Hinman said. “You’re a pure-bred tumbleweed and no mistake.
But most folks follow one business, and let the rest alone.”
“And it’s my observation that most folks are dissatisfied with what
they’re working at but keep on doing it the rest of their natural lives
just to try and vindicate their judgment,” Carver said. “Now if I
don’t settle on one pursuit there’ll never be any reason for me to be
discontented with my choice.”
The old man considered this bit of philosophy.
“If you ever decide to risk a mistake I’ll maybe help you out to a mild
extent,” he said, “provided you come through with this present little
errand I’m sending you on.”
Carver thanked him, pocketed the bills which constituted the advance
upon his venture, and headed his horse off to the east. As he rode he
reviewed all possible motives underlying Hinman’s proposal. Tax-dodging
on a smaller scale was no unusual thing along the line, but he was
morally certain that this motive, though the purported object of the
trip, was entirely secondary in Hinman’s considerations.
“The taxes won’t amount to half the expenses of the trip,” Carver
reflected. “Now just what is he aiming at?”
He had reached no satisfactory solution when, an hour later, the squat
buildings of Caldwell loomed before him. He dismissed the problem
temporarily. As he rode down the wide main thoroughfare it seemed
that the hand of time had been turned back two decades to the days of
Abilene, Hayes and Dodge, when each of those spots in turn had come
into its brief day of glory as the railroad’s end and the enviable
reputation of being the toughest camp on earth. In their day all
those towns had eclipsed the wildest heights of wickedness attained
by mushroom mining camps of lurid fame, then had passed on into the
quiet routine of permanent respectability as the trading centers of
prosperous agricultural communities. But little Caldwell stood unique,
as if she were a throwback to an earlier day, nestling in the edge
of a state where prohibition and anti-gambling regulations had long
prevailed, yet her saloons stood invitingly open by day and night and
the clatter of chips and the smooth purr of the ivory ball were never
silent in the halls of chance; for just beyond lay No Man’s Land,
the stamping ground of all those restless spirits who chafed against
restrictive laws that were not of their own making, and wide-open
Caldwell reaped the harvest of their free-flung dollars.
Groups of tall-hatted, chap-clad men hailed Carver from the sidewalk
as he rode down the wide main street. Scores of saddled horses drowsed
at the hitch rails and ranchers’ families rattled past in buckboards
drawn by half-wild ponies. The street was thronged with blanketed
Indians, for the Government beef issue was parcelled out semi-monthly
on the little hill south of Caldwell and every two weeks the whole
Cherokee nation made the pilgrimage to receive the largess of the
Great White Father. As if to complete the illusion that he had been
transported back to the days of Dodge and Abilene, Carver could make
out the low-hanging pall of dust which marked the slow progress of a
trail herd moving up from the south along the old Chisholm Trail, a
thoroughfare now paralleled by the railroad that pierced the Cherokee
Strip, but which was still available to those who would save freight
charges and elected instead to follow the old-time method of pastoral
transportation in marketing their droves.
Carver left his horse in a lean-to shed in rear of a two-room frame
house in the outskirts of town. The plot of ground on which it stood,
consisting of three corner lots, had come into his possession the
preceding winter through the medium of a poker hand. Instead of
disposing of the tract for ten dollars--the amount of chips which he
had risked against it--it had pleased him to retain it and construct
thereon the little board house, performing the work himself during
leisure hours.
He headed for the swinging doors of the Silver Dollar, hopeful of
finding congenial companionship even though this was the wrong time
of day for any considerable activity within doors. A group of men sat
along the rear wall and conversed in listless tones. Here were those
upon whom fortune had failed to smile the preceding night, waiting for
some kindred spirit who, more favored than themselves, might express a
willingness to relieve their temporary distress.
“It’s high noon and I’ll wager not a man present has even had his
breakfast,” Carver greeted. “But the rescue squad is here to provide
nourishment for the losers.”
He tendered a crisp bill to Alf Wellman.
“Fill the boys with food,” he invited. “And in the meantime, while
they’re deciding what to order--” and he motioned toward the polished
bar.
Wellman jerked a casual thumb in the direction of the three men in the
group who were unknown to Carver.
“These are the Lassiter boys,” he announced by way of introduction.
“Not bad after you get to knowing ’em.”
The three Lassiters were an oddly assorted crew; Milt, the eldest, a
gaunt, dark man who spoke but seldom; Noll, a sandy, self-assertive and
unprepossessing individual; while Bart, by several years their junior,
was a big blond youngster whose genial grin cemented Carver’s instant
friendship.
Noll Lassiter hitched from his chair, his eyes resting on the bank
note in Wellman’s hand, and as he attained his feet a slight lurch
testified to the fact that even if he had not found food during the
morning hours he had at least found drink. Being thus fortified his
desire for food was now uppermost.
“Let’s eat,” he said.
“Restrain yourself,” the younger brother admonished. “The gentleman’s
giving a party. Besides it’s downright harmful to eat breakfast on an
empty stomach--and mine is absolutely vacant.”
“Worst thing you could do,” Wellman seconded. “It will show up on a man
if he keeps at it.”
“I expect there have been folks tried it and went right on living till
they got kicked by a horse or died some other sort of a natural death,”
said Carver. “But what’s the use of taking chances?”
Noll restrained his urge for food while the host paid for two rounds,
then reverted to his original contention.
“And now,” said he, “let’s eat.”
“Not until I’ve purchased a return round for our old friend Carver,”
Bart dissented.
“How’re you going to manage it without a dime in your pockets?” Noll
demanded.
“You ought to be familiar with the state of my pockets,” the blond
youth returned, “having conducted a thorough search of them and
purloined therefrom my last ten spot before I was awake. Why didn’t you
reserve two bits for breakfast before you tossed it off on the wheel if
you’re so damn near starved?”
He remained with Carver while the others followed Wellman through the
swinging side door that led into the adjoining restaurant.
“And now, since Pete here,” said Bart, indicating the barkeeper,
“steadfastly refuses to open a charge account, I’ll have to do some
financing. Lend me a couple of quarts of your very worst,” he wheedled.
“Not charge, you understand, but just lend ’em to me for a period of
three minutes. Something round a dollar a quart.”
The bartender selected a brace of black bottles and shoved them across
to Lassiter who moved with them to a rear door that opened on an
alley. Several blanketed figures prowled this rear thoroughfare and
the copper-hued wards of the Government converged upon the man in
the doorway. He exchanged the two quarts for two five-dollar bills,
thereby becoming eligible for a protracted stay within the walls of the
penitentiary.
“Now we can start even,” he announced, paying Pete for the initial
stock and retaining the surplus. “Quick turns and small profits is my
rule of life.”
“One day you’ll acquire a new rule--long years and no profits,”
predicted the white-aproned philosopher behind the bar. “Unless you
learn to transact that sort of business by the dark of the moon.”
“Necessity,” Lassiter advanced in extenuation of his lack of caution.
“Suppose you set us out a sample of something a few shades more
palatable than what we just peddled to the old chief.”
The two pooled their resources and pursued their casual carefree way,
all sense of responsibility discarded for the moment, as one might
shed an uncomfortable garment with the idea of donning it again at
some future time. The youthful Lassiter, who deplored all things
serious while at play, found in Carver a delightful companion who
seemed sufficiently light-minded and irresponsible to satisfy the most
exacting. The wheel in the Silver Dollar, the faro bank in the Senate
and the crap layout in the Gilded Eagle, each contributed modestly to
their swelling bank roll in response to a few casual bets. As they
left this last-named resort Bart halted suddenly. Carver glanced up
to determine the cause of this abrupt halt. Freel, a deputy United
States marshal, had just passed, and Carver, recalling the incident
of the two black bottles, concluded that Lassiter had decided against
meeting the Federal officer at just that moment lest the news of
the transaction had reached him. Freel walked with a girl, his hand
clasping her arm familiarly as he piloted her through the crowd. Bart
frowned after the couple.
“I wouldn’t let the valiant marshal fret you,” Carver counselled. “I
don’t know much about him except that he strikes a flat note in me,
but I suspect he’s a pussy-footer and real harmless. I’ve heard things
about Freel.”
“That’s what I know,” said Lassiter. “So’ve I; and it’s the things I’ve
heard which keeps him on my mind. One day I’ll have to slip my twine
on him and canter off across a few thousand acres of country with him
dangling along behind.”
“Tell me when,” said Carver. “I’ll dab my noose on his off leg and
bounce my horse off the opposite direction like we was contending for
the biggest piece of a turkey’s wishbone. If half I hear is true he’s
got it coming and folks will hail us as public benefactors.”
Twice within the next hour Carver noticed Noll Lassiter conversing
with Freel. It was evident, that, whatever Bart’s grievance against
the marshal, the feeling was not shared by the elder brother. The
mid-afternoon crowd had gathered in the Silver Dollar by the time
Carver returned to the starting place. Men banked deep round the
roulette layout as it was whispered about that Carver and Bart Lassiter
were winning heavily from the bank. The professional chant of lookout
and croupier rose above the hum of conversation as the ivory ball
purred smoothly round the wheel of chance. Noll Lassiter shouldered his
way through the crowd and stationed himself between the two favorites
of fortune.
“Luck’s with us,” he genially proclaimed thereby identifying himself
with the winnings. “We’ll break this wheel between the three of us.
She’s running our way strong.”
Carver suddenly realized that the pair had become a trio as Noll
supplied himself with chips from the accumulation before the other two.
When these had joined their fellows in the check rack he appropriated
a fresh supply. Carver was conscious of a growing dislike for this
uninvited partner. He tapped Noll’s hand with a forefinger as the man
reached for a third stack of chips.
“Try keeping it in your pocket,” he mildly advised. “It’s as active
after chips as a sand rat after a beetle; and it makes me restless.”
“Half of these chips belong to Bart,” Noll insisted. But this sudden
assumption of the close-knit bond of brotherhood failed to rouse any
corresponding enthusiasm in the younger Lassiter.
“You’re blasting our luck,” he asserted. “Not to say annoying us. Take
yourself off somewheres.”
Noll, however, declined to heed this bit of counsel. Bart and Carver
pushed their chips across the board and cashed in.
“Cheerful companion, Noll is, when he’s packing a skinful,” Bart
commented as the doors of the Silver Dollar closed behind them. “And
he’s equally genial when he’s sober.”
“Offhand I’d pass unfavorable judgment on your relative,” Carver
confessed. “I don’t see much family resemblance. How come you’re
brothers?”
“Half-brothers,” Bart amended. “We had the same father. I came along
a dozen years late. Spoiled younger son, you know. Leastways I was
always spoiled in spots where Noll had been working on me. When I
turned sixteen I set out to spoil Noll. Since his convalescence he’s
had a notion I might declare another open season on the dove of peace
so we get along nowadays in regular family style. Say; now since we’re
rolling in wealth you wouldn’t mind if I held out twenty in case
fortune failed us? It’s not quite the thing to do but----”
“Bury it,” Carver agreed, waving his hesitancy aside. “Tuck it away
somewhere.” He knew his man and was certain that the twenty was
destined to fill some urgent necessity. “We’ll never even miss a little
piece like that.”
Lassiter led the way to a rooming house above a store and turned into
a dimly lighted room on one side of the narrow hall. Articles of man’s
attire lay scattered about the place.
“The three of us headquarter here when we’re in town,” Bart explained.
“I’ll plant these two tens in a dresser drawer.”
He opened the drawer in question and Carver, standing just to his
right, found himself gazing down upon a scrap of black cloth from which
two eyeholes stared blankly back at him. Lassiter placed the two gold
pieces beneath the old newspaper with which the drawer was carpeted,
closing it without comment, and they returned to the street and sought
the wheel in the Gilded Eagle. For a time fortune smiled on them. Then
a reverse tide set in. At the end of an hour each one shoved a stiff
bet upon the board. There was the usual brief hush as the ball neared
the end of its spin.
“The even losses to the odd and the red defeats the black,” the
croupier chanted. “The middle column pays the gambler and the others
pay the house. Place your bets for another turn.” He twisted the wheel
and snapped the ivory marble in the reverse direction. “The little
ivory ball--she spins! the flitting pill of fortune. Off again on the
giddy whirl.”
He glanced expectantly at the two chief players but they had explored
their pockets and failed to invoice sufficient resources with which to
purchase a white chip between the two of them.
“Odd how rapid a man can shed it if he sets out to exert himself,”
Carver commented.
Lassiter grinned and turned suddenly toward the door. It occurred to
Carver that the youth was starting forth to retrieve that twenty-dollar
reserve which was cached in the dresser drawer.
“Don’t you,” he admonished; but Lassiter had passed out the door.
Carver made a move to follow but met Carl Mattison, town marshal,
coming in.
“You recollect that extra saddle,” Carver greeted without parley. “The
one you was admiring, with all those silver trappings. If you still
admire it fifty dollars’ worth----”
“Sold,” said the marshal and counted out the money. “Send it round to
my room above the Boston Store.”
“I would,” said Carver, “only my delivery boy, the shiftless little
wart, is out somewhere spinning his top. Here’s the key to my shack.
You saunter past and collect it.”
Carver headed for Lassiter’s room. The door stood ajar and as he
entered he observed a stooping figure whose hand was busily exploring
the drawer of the dresser.
“We won’t need that twenty,” Carver said. “Let her ride where she is.”
The figure straightened and whirled to face him in the dim light. It
was Noll Lassiter, not Bart.
“Where’s Bart?” Carver asked.
“Haven’t seen him,” Noll returned.
“Then where’s Bart’s twenty dollars?” Carver inquired. “I mistrust that
you’ve got it--and I want it. S’pose you hand it over.”
“Make it out of here!” Noll ordered. “This is my room and I don’t want
you in it.”
“Someway you haven’t inspired me with any ardent fancy,” Carver stated.
“Right at present the feeling is mild, but it will grow acute if you
keep exploring in that drawer for Bart’s last twenty.”
Lassiter made a swift move behind him but his arms fell back at his
sides as Carver’s gun was jammed suddenly against his floating ribs.
“Tut, tut,” Carver admonished. “You’re way too awkward for that sort of
thing. Sometime you’ll do that and some excitable soul will shoot you
three or four times while you’re starting your wind-up.”
He removed Noll’s weapon and tossed both it and his own upon the bed.
“Now we can converse at our ease until Bart comes,” he said.
But Lassiter, angered beyond precaution, jumped for him the instant he
relinquished the weapons, and being heavier than Carver he sought to
bear him down by sheer weight. Carver rocked his head with two solid
smashes but Noll sought only to come to grips where he could exert his
strength, clutching at his opponent instead of returning his blows.
They fought in cramped quarters and Carver could not step to either
side lest he should give Lassiter access to the two guns reposing on
the bed. The huge paws clamped on his shoulders and Lassiter crushed
him back against the dresser. Carver elevated one knee between them,
planted his boot against the other’s paunch and propelled him violently
doorward. With a single step he retrieved his gun with intent to
discourage Lassiter’s return, but he had no need of it. The big man’s
head collided forcibly with the door jamb and he sprawled in a limp
heap just outside in the narrow corridor.
Bart Lassiter, just mounting the stairway, witnessed this strange exit
of his relative. He peered inside and discovered Carver, so he entered
and seated himself on the edge of the bed, twisting a cigarette while
he sought to reconcile the evidence before his eyes with the mental
picture of the empty room as he had left it not five minutes past.
“Incidentally, there seems to be a corpse on the threshold,” he
presently observed. “What did it die of?”
“General malignancy that set in right after birth and just now came to
a head,” Carver diagnosed. “He was prospecting for your cache when I
arrived.”
“He’d already located it,” Bart stated. “It was gone when I came up.
Likely he came back to hunt for more as I went down, and your trails
converged, sort of. Wellman said you’d just turned up the stairs, so I
came on back.”
He crossed over to inspect the sprawled figure in the hallway.
“I’d say he was totally defunct,” he reported; but as if to refute this
assertion Noll stirred an arm and grunted. “Unfortunately resuscitation
is already setting in,” Bart revised his statement. “Let’s be off
before he opens one eye and tries to borrow ten.”
An hour later the proceeds derived from the sale of the saddle had
faded in the face of the bank’s per cent and their finances were
totally exhausted except for a few small coins in Carver’s pocket.
Lassiter leaned rather heavily against the bar in the Silver Dollar and
straightened himself with an effort.
“It’s time for me to dangle,” he announced. “Hate to break up the party
and all that sort of thing, but I’m overdue right now. Meet you here in
an hour.”
He proceeded toward the door which opened into the adjoining restaurant
but Carver overhauled him while he was yet some ten feet from his goal.
“Now don’t you go trickling out on me,” he reproved. “I’ll be gone in
an hour--riding off for three weeks. Stay with me till then and we’ll
both move out together.”
Lassiter turned uncertainly and Carver, looking past him, discovered
that the swinging door into the restaurant stood half-open. The young
girl framed in the doorway was gazing straight into his eyes. Oddly
enough his first thought took the form of an intense desire to expend
large sums of money in buying things for her, this impulse coupled
with a swift regret that such amounts as he wished to squander were
not for the moment available. The eyes that looked back into his were
gray eyes, bordering on blue; and he gathered that they regarded him
with a mixture of doubt and pity. He straightened resentfully, never
having been doubted and refusing to be pitied, flooded with a sense
of having been detected in some bit of wickedness. For the first time
in his life his own eyes dropped before the direct gaze of another’s
yet in his whole past career there was not one deed for which he felt
any particular regret or shame. He lifted his eyes again with a hint
of defiance, but found himself staring at the blank swinging door; in
that split-second of averted glance the vision had disappeared, leaving
him with a vague impression of its unreality,--and with a pronounced
disinclination for continuing the party. Lassiter had not seen, and
Carver dispelled the blond youth’s hesitation.
“Maybe we’d better call it a day,” he said. “See you when I get back
from the Strip.”
Carver was conscious of a distaste for his surroundings, once the door
had closed behind his companion. These carousals in town always palled
on him in the end, giving way to the urge to straddle a horse and be
off through the clean outdoors while the wind fanned the fumes from
his head, but heretofore this state of mind had come about through
gradual transition instead of descending upon him in a single second as
had been the case to-day.
He gravitated to the roulette wheel through force of habit and risked
his handful of small coins, playing absently and placing his bets
without care or consideration. Now just why, he wondered, had he been
struck with a wild wish to buy things for a girl he had never glimpsed
before in his life. He was not conscious that she had been shabbily
clothed, for to save his immortal soul he could not have testified to
the color, texture or state of preservation of one single item of her
attire, but someway he felt that she was needing things and he wanted
to see that these things were provided. He cashed in his few remaining
chips and the banker handed him a single silver dollar in return.