XI

The atmosphere of Oval Springs reeked of new lumber and fresh paint. A

dozen business buildings were being hastily constructed and new houses

were started daily in the residence district of the town.

Carver strolled down the main street. Shafts of light, emanating from

store fronts, splashed across the board sidewalk and relieved the gloom

of the street. Scores of horses stood at the hitch rails. The blare of

a mechanical piano sounded from an open doorway, accompanied by the

scrape of boots and clank of spurs. The shrill laughter of a dance-hall

girl rose momentarily above the din. From another door there issued the

clinking of glassware at the bar and drunken voices raised in song; the

smooth purr of the roulette wheel and the professional drone of lookout

and croupier. The new county seat was a wide-open town.

Carver visited one place after another in search of Noll Lassiter. He

discovered him in a saloon near the end of the street but the man he

sought was in the center of a group near the bar. Carver nodded but

did not join them. What he had to say to Noll must be imparted when

there were no others to hear.

Noll was discoursing at some length to his companions and at the sight

of Carver he raised his voice with palpable intent to include Carver in

the circle of his hearers,--wherefore Carver listened.

“They hadn’t no business to throw me in,” Noll stated aggrievedly. “I

ask you now! Of course Crowfoot and Alf Wellman never was any special

friends of mine but they had no call to lock me up.”

“This may prove worth while. He’s anxious to have me get it,” Carver

decided, and as the case was restated he gathered the cause of Noll’s

grievance.

Two days before, in mid-afternoon, the two Lassiters had become openly

conspicuous and Noll had indulged in target practice in the street,

whereupon Crowfoot, acting town marshal, had declared that such sports

were out of season during the daylight hours and with the help of

the sheriff had conducted the two Lassiters to the county jail--that

structure serving also as a city prison--where they had languished

till noon of the present day. Their urgent representations, delivered

verbally to acquaintances who had chanced to pass the jail during the

morning, had resulted in their release at noon.

“The alibi club is in session,” Carver told himself. “It’s real

accommodating of Noll to stage a monologue just to deceive me. It’s

cleared up some points I was hazy on. The town marshal, the sheriff

and his deputies are still trailing with the old crowd. It works out

like this: Wellman and Crowfoot jail the two Lassiters in view of the

populace. After nightfall the two prisoners depart by the back stairs

and make a hard ride to some point near Wharton, hole up there till

afternoon and raid the bank, hide out again till after dark and make

another hard ride back to Oval Springs. They’re safe in jail before

dawn. This morning they comment through the bars to pedestrians passing

the jail. A perfect alibi--unless Noll overacts his part and talks

himself into trouble.”

He mused further on the subject as he waited for Noll to detach himself

from the group.

“This deal signifies that every man round the sheriff’s office is

cutting in with the boys,” he reflected. “Wellman has appointed the two

Ralston brothers deputies in addition to Freel. The fourth party in

that Wharton hold-up was likely one of the Ralston boys.”

Noll eventually moved toward the door but the others accompanied him.

Carver followed them out and called to Noll.

“Just a minute,” he said. “I have a bit of news to impart.”

Noll turned back and stood facing him while the others halted a few

feet away. Carver lowered his voice so his words would not reach them.

“You’ve tried for me twice,” he said. “From now on it’s reversed.”

“What d’you mean?” Noll demanded.

“That I’m going into action the next time you loom up anywhere within

range,” Carver stated. “I’m just telling you so that you’ll know how to

act the next time we meet. Right soon after we next sight each other

there’ll be one of us absent from human affairs.”

The group on the sidewalk saw nothing unusual in this interview,--merely

a low-voiced conversation between two acquaintances.

“Absent!” Noll repeated. “That one will be you!”

“Maybe,” Carver assented and turned off up the street.

He spent the night at the hotel and in the morning sought the deputy

United States marshal whose posse guarded against the destruction of

railroad property and the consequent interference with the delivery of

the United States’ mail.

“You helped me into this job,” Mattison greeted. “Now it’s up to you to

help me hold it. You’re to be my right-hand assistant until this mess

is cleared up. Did you know it?”

“Not for sure,” Carver said. “But I suspected it somewhat when you sent

over for me. I’ll make a deal with you. You can deputize me now till

we iron out this fuss, provided that some future time you agree to let

me deputize myself on some occasion when I may have to go into action

right rapid and you not at hand; when it’s a case where county officers

wouldn’t fit in and a deputy marshal would. I’d proclaim that I was

acting under orders from you, meantime having dispatched word for you

to make haste toward the spot. You arrive and assume command.”

“What’ve you got in mind?” Mattison inquired a bit doubtfully.

“Not anything special,” Carver returned. “I may never avail myself of

my end of the bargain. If ever I do I’ll guarantee that the parties I

move on will be eligible to arrest for shattering some Federal law and

I’ll be able to prove it. That will let you out.”

“Yes. Likely it will let me out of my job,” Mattison said. “But you’re

responsible for my getting it and I oughtn’t to object if you should

also be responsible for my losing it. We’ll close the deal.”

“One more small favor before you put me to work,” Carver requested. “I

wish you’d pass out the word, quiet like, among the boys that the first

time Bart Lassiter shows up here he’s to be arrested and sent up to

Caldwell.”

“What have you got against Bart,” Mattison asked. “I thought you was

friends.”

“That’s why I want him tossed into jail and kept out of trouble till I

give the word to free him again.”

“All right. We’ll toss him if he shows up in town,” Mattison agreed.

“Let’s head for the tracks and I’ll explain your job as we travel.”

For the next three nights Carver patrolled the railroad tracks for a

distance of over a mile north of town, visiting the six men stationed

in couples at intervals throughout that stretch. Mattison conducted a

similar patrol to the south. Throughout that period no move had been

made to tear up the tracks. Trains rolled through without a halt and no

incident transpired which would furnish the least surface indication

of the existence of a bitter feud. But both Carver and Mattison knew

that the undercurrent of lawlessness had not subsided; that it merely

smoldered, waiting an opportunity to break forth.

During the past month there had been five men killed and as many

wounded in the progress of the county-seat war. Three of the slain had

been members of the marshal’s posse, for Mattison’s operations were

handicapped by red tape, his instructions prohibiting the firing of a

shot except in case his own men were attacked. The participants on the

reverse side of the question were burdened by no such restrictions. The

marshal was unable to gather a single shred of information as to the

identity of the men concerned in any one of the wrecking parties. The

population of Oval Springs was solidly in favor of any move whatsoever,

if only it should result in the stopping of trains at that point.

In mid-afternoon of the fourth day Carver sat cross-legged on the

ground in the marshal’s camp beside the tracks a few hundred yards

north of town. He leaned back against a bed roll and inspected the

general surroundings through half-closed eyes. There was the usual

congestion round the three town wells which furnished the only supply

of water for the county seat. Tank wagons plied between these wells

and the surrounding country, supplying settlers with moisture at fifty

cents a barrel. Carver straightened, suddenly alert, as a rider

dropped from his horse at the end of the street. His left arm was bound

stiffly at his side.

“Bart couldn’t wait for that shoulder to cure before he started hunting

for Noll,” Carver said. He noted that two men had stepped in behind

Bart. They were Mattison’s men and Bart had not progressed a distance

of fifty yards from his horse before he was under arrest.

“That much accomplished,” Carver said. “Bart’s safe out of the way as

soon as they get him to Caldwell. Now it’s narrowed down to Noll and

myself. I don’t care overmuch for my job but she’d rather it would be

me than Bart to go through with it--some one outside the family; and

this will rule me outside for all time.”

Bradshaw rode into camp and joined Carver, leaving his mount with

several other saddled horses that grazed close at hand. Mattison’s

posse, down to the last man, was composed of old friends of Carver’s,

former riders of the Strip. Their old calling gone, they now gravitated

to any point which promised to afford a touch of excitement.

“They’ve let us alone for quite a spell now,” Bradshaw said. “Time

something was breaking.”

A stiff wind screeched across the country and the two men sought

shelter behind a pile of baled hay, sprawling comfortably in the sun

until Mattison located them there and reported a bit of news.

“Headquarters has thrown off the bridle and issued orders to shoot down

every man that tampers with the tracks,” he informed. “I just got the

word. Now that we’ve got free rein we’ll clean up this mess.”

These instructions were passed out to all of the marshal’s men. Two

hours after midnight Carver stood on the tracks with Mattison.

Both men turned to view a vague light that seemed to flicker up from

near a string of buildings at one end of the main street. The high wind

which had prevailed throughout the day had died down within the past

hour and in the resulting hush sounds could be heard at a considerable

distance. The light increased and shed a pinkish glow over a portion

of the sleeping town. A similar light, smaller and less evident, as if

but a reflection of the other, appeared near the courthouse at the far

end of the town. From somewhere there sounded the muffled thud of many

hoofs.

“I wonder now,” Carver said, as he caught this sound. “An hour ago,

before the wind went down, a fire would have wiped Oval Springs off

the map--no water.” He listened again to the rumble of hoofs. “It’s

come,” he announced. “Casa has been in a ferment for weeks, threatening

to ride over and sack Oval Springs. Now they’re at it.”

Black smoke rolled above the pink glow which was rapidly swelling into

a lurid glare. Tongues of scarlet flame now leaped above the buildings

as the fire, started in the rear of them, licked hungrily up the

back of the frame structures. There was a sudden clamor of voices as

sleeping citizens were roused by the glare of the fire, then a roar of

hoofs as forty horsemen thundered the length of the main street and

emptied their guns at the store fronts. They wheeled and rode back

through the street, shooting as they came, this last demonstration

for the purpose of keeping citizens within doors until the flames had

attained sufficient headway to spread beyond control.

The rumble of hoofs died out as the raiders pounded away toward the

north and the population of Oval Springs boiled out to check the spread

of the fire.

“It’s no affair of ours,” Mattison said. “Dog eat dog. Let ’em go.

Wellman, our good sheriff, hasn’t exerted himself to help find out

who’s been shooting my boys at night. Let him handle this deal

himself.”

The Casa raiders had planned well and if the wind had held Oval

Springs would have been reduced to ashes in an hour. But the fates had

intervened. The wind had slacked off, then died, and now a reverse wind

blew up and piled the flames back upon themselves. The fire at the

courthouse had not attained sufficient headway and a determined body of

citizens checked the spread of the flames. The blaze at the north end

of town was confined to the one section in which it started, the strong

wind from the south beating back the flames which leaped high above

the buildings. Men on adjacent structures stamped out the sparks which

were belched far and wide as each burning roof sagged and fell with a

hissing roar.

The conflagration lasted till dawn, was still smoldering when Carver

retired to the bed tent where he slumbered till high noon. An hour

after rising he sauntered along the tracks to the north for the purpose

of chatting for an hour with Bradshaw, who was stationed within a short

distance of camp. His friend was nowhere in sight.

“The sun’s nice and warm,” Carver said. “I’ll find Brad napping on the

sunny slope of the grade.”

A bare flat extended for four hundred yards on the east side of

the tracks. Beyond it the country was broken and rolling, studded

with dwarf brush and scattered thickets of scrub oak. Carver located

Bradshaw reclining on the west slope of the railroad embankment in the

sun, his hat pulled over his eyes. When within a few feet of Bradshaw’s

position Carver flinched convulsively as a rifle ball snapped past

within a foot of his head. The thin crack of a rifle accompanied the

sound and a faint spurt of blue smoke drifted hazily from a black-jack

clump on the far edge of the flat. Carver cleared the edge of the grade

at a bound.

No matter what else might occupy Carver’s mind, the thought of Noll

Lassiter was ever in the foreground of his consciousness, would remain

there until the matter between them was settled, and he knew without

question who had fired the shot from the black-jacks.

“Close shooting for four hundred yards. That didn’t miss me an inch,”

Carver said. “Get down!” he called sharply; for Bradshaw, thirty feet

farther north, had been roused by the sound of the shot and Carver’s

plunge down the sheltered side of the grade, and he had risen to his

knees to peer off to the east. “Down, Brad! Duck under the bank!”

The warning command came too late. Bradshaw sprawled on his face and

slid loosely down the embankment as the rifle spoke again from the

thicket. Carver ran to his friend but Bradshaw was beyond need of

assistance. He opened his eyes with an effort as Carver knelt over him.

“I’m sorry, Brad,” Carver said. “He was out after me and got you

instead when you raised up in sight. I’m sorry, old man.”

Bradshaw essayed a smile and made a feeble move to extend a hand for a

farewell shake with his friend.

“It’s all right,” he said--and passed out.

Carver ran back toward the camp, keeping under cover of the embankment.

Several men had heard the two shots and had mounted the tracks to

determine their source. They saw Carver running toward camp and knew

that the two stray reports had carried at least some significance.

“What’s up?” one man called as Carver came within hailing distance.

He did not answer till after reaching the spot where a half-dozen

saddled horses were grazing just outside camp, his own mount among

them. He slowed to a walk lest he stampede the horses by a too

precipitate approach. Mattison had come from the bed tent. Carver

jerked a thumb back in the direction from which he had come.

“Some one downed Brad from the bush out across the flat,” Carver

informed. “I’m going out to bring in the party that did it.”

The marshal turned to the men standing round.

“Saddles!” he ordered. “On your horses! Go bring him in!”

But Carver lifted a hand.

“This is my job,” he said. “I want him myself. He was trying for

me--and Brad’s been my friend for fifteen years. Hold ’em back!” he

insisted, as the men headed for their horses. He swung to the saddle.

“Send up word to let Bart Lassiter out,” he called back, as he jumped

his horse toward the tracks.

Mattison countermanded his previous order and the other men stayed

in camp, cursing fretfully over this sudden turn in affairs which

prevented their going.

Carver rode without caution, knowing that Noll would have departed

immediately after firing the shots. The man would have a mile lead by

now. The country to the southeast was a stretch of good land, solidly

settled and thoroughly fenced. A rider heading that way would find his

route confined to fenced section lines. Noll would head northeast where

the country was rough and mostly unfenced. Carver lined his horse out

at a run and after two miles he sighted his man, off to the left and a

half-mile ahead.

When he saw him again the distance between them had lessened. Noll

would hold on without stopping till he discovered the fact that a man

followed him. Even then he would hesitate to dismount and attempt to

bushwhack his hunter through fear that Mattison had turned the whole

posse loose on his trail. Another half-mile and Carver glimpsed him

again, this time less than four hundred yards in the lead. They passed

out of the brush-covered area into a country that, while still rough,

was covered only with coarse grass. It occurred to Carver that another

few miles would bring them out into a good-land district, settled and

fenced. Noll would never be crowded out into that section if he knew

Carver followed, for he would be forced to travel along fenced roadways

and settlers would witness his flight, establishing his identity.

As Carver crossed over a ridge he saw Noll again, only his head and

shoulders visible as he rode straight away a scant two hundred yards

ahead. Apparently he had no suspicion that there was a man on his

trail, yet it seemed certain that before now he would have halted under

cover of some ridge to scan his back track and ascertain if he were

followed. If he discovered a rider behind him he would halt again at

some other point to determine if others rode with the first.

It suddenly occurred to Carver that the swift lessening of distance

between them was occasioned by this very thing. Noll had stopped under

cover to view his back track; had halted again to make sure that but

one man followed his trail. Even as this thought flashed into his mind

Carver flung from the saddle and dropped flat on the ground.

He had ridden the length of a shallow draw and he left it only to

discover that the landscape had flattened out into low waves of ground.

It was the sight of the upper half of a riderless horse standing in

the shallow depression beyond one of these waves which had occasioned

his sudden fling from the saddle. Noll had dismounted in the next dip

ahead, intending to shoot as Carver rode into sight.

Carver lay flat on his face and crawled thirty feet to the north

through the shallow basin that sheltered him, then lifted his head

cautiously and inspected his surroundings. His range was limited to

a distance of fifty yards north and south. He might crawl back west

for some twenty yards. The character of his surroundings rendered it

impossible for him to move beyond this restricted area without showing

himself to the man who was cached in a similar depression somewhere

less than seventy yards east of him. And in all the shallow dip there

was not one point of sufficient depth to permit of his straightening up

on his knees without danger of bringing his head into view of the man

who waited for him over across.

Inch by inch, Carver worked his way toward a spot where a few

straggling stems of tall grass were scattered about. Poor cover this,

yet even a few spears of grass break up the view to a surprising extent

when one is prone on the ground. In thirty minutes he had covered as

many feet. He removed his hat and elevated his head.

First he studied the character of Noll’s retreat,--a depression similar

to the one which afforded him shelter, a trifle deeper perhaps and of

slightly greater area. But Noll could not progress a hundred yards in

any direction without coming into his view. Carver knew that somewhere

over there Noll was watching for the first glimpse of him. He could see

the empty scabbard on Lassiter’s saddle and knew that he was armed with

a rifle. His own rifle remained on the saddle of the horse he could not

reach without showing himself to Noll and he was armed only with the

gun on his belt.

“He’s got me handicapped a trifle on location and weapons,” Carver

reflected. “It’ll narrow down now to which one has the other

out-guessed for patience. What happened to Brad has put me in the humor

to go through with my job.”

There was no breath of wind and the sun glared down into the depression

with summerlike warmth. Carver crawled back to the lowest point in his

basin and divested himself of his jacket. An old brake block, dropped

from some chuck wagon in the old days of the round-up, was grown

half over with grass. He pried the block from its resting place and

regarded it, then set to work, first draping his jacket the length of

the twenty-inch slab of wood and observing the effect from one side.

Then he padded one shoulder with matted dead grass. His knife, its

point stabbed solidly into one edge of the block, served as a handle.

He crawled north through the depression, one arm extended, his hand

clasping the knife and holding the contraption two feet before him and

elevated to a point some ten inches higher than his own head as he

lay flat on the ground. He progressed slowly, squirming forward a few

inches at a time, wondering meanwhile if any one peering through the

grass from a short distance away would mistake it for the flat of a

man’s back and the hump of his shoulders. He covered ten feet; fifteen.

When one peered through the grass from a prone position the view was

none too distinct at best. He hitched forward another two feet. Surely

he was holding the decoy sufficiently high to bring it into Noll’s

range of vision. Another hitch of two feet, and suddenly his wrist

was jarred by the sharp sidewise wrench of the knife as a rifle shot

crashed forth from sixty yards to the eastward and the heavy ball tore

through the jacket and the block across which it was draped. Carver

emitted a single coughing gasp. A split-second later he flung one arm

aloft, the fingers outstretched, closing them tightly as the hand

was withdrawn. Then he turned back and crawled to his first point of

vantage where the scattering stems of coarse grass would tend to break

up the view.

An hour passed without a sound save the stamp of a hoof or the creak

of leather as the two horses moved about a few yards away. A huge

black buzzard wheeled high overhead. His spirals narrowed and a second

vulture joined him. The two great birds soared on motionless wings a

half-mile above the two quiet figures sprawled in the grass a stone’s

throw apart, each invisible to the other but quite visible to the

carrion birds that hovered over the spot. Carver longed for a smoke.

The craving for a cigarette became almost irresistible and in order to

combat this urge he forced himself to speculate as to the sensations of

the man in the opposite dip in the ground. He concentrated on this line

of thought until the study assumed actual interest.

Noll, being uncertain on several points, would soon become restless,

Carver reflected. He was half-convinced that Carver was dead. His

thoughts would constantly revert to that coughing gasp that had

followed his shot, that up-flung arm with the fingers clutching

spasmodically at nothing. Carver had no such uncertainty to disturb him

and congratulated himself upon this fact. Point by point he compared

his own plight with that of the enemy.

Time was passing,--time which meant nothing to him and meant much to

Lassiter. Noll must be wondering if any others of Mattison’s men had

set forth on his trail. Perhaps they were working it out bit by bit

and were even now nearing the spot. A dozen other contingencies might

arise. A stray horseman might sight the two riderless horses and set

forth to discover the reason. Carver had nothing to lose by discovery.

He would profit from such intervention instead, but the injection of

any such chance element would seal Lassiter’s doom. By thus dwelling

upon Noll’s discomforts Carver was able to partially assuage his

own,--all save that gnawing desire for a smoke. Another hour had

passed. Then Carver’s mind snapped back from abstract imaginings to the

world of realities.

A tuft of grass over across twitched sharply. It jerked again and

Carver slid his gun out before him to the length of his arm. For a

space of five minutes there was no other move and Carver relaxed, that

insane urge to have a smoke at all costs mounting again. A bird hopped

close to inspect him, its bright little eyes fixed on his own as it

turned its head from side to side for a better view of him. The peak of

a hat appeared above the grass tops sixty yards to the east. More of

the hat was lifted slowly into view until the whole crown was visible.

Carver pictured Noll’s eyes just beneath it, peering from under the

brim.

But of course the thing was a plant. Noll would not lift his head with

eight inches of hat above it to announce his position. He was raising

the hat into sight with a stick to lure Carver into firing as Carver

had decoyed him with the coat. Carver restrained the desire to shoot

through the grass tops four inches below the crown of the hat. The

thing disappeared only to come into view once more at a point some ten

feet from the first. Again the move was repeated and this time the

hat was thrust up abruptly as if its wearer could no longer exercise

sufficient restraint to elevate it an inch at a time. Noll was becoming

nervous, breaking under the strain. On the fourth event Carver saw a

clear space between the grass and the hat. It dropped back but the

crown remained in his range of view and for a space of ten minutes he

kept his eyes on that dark spot in the grass.

A movement ten yards to the left of it challenged his attention. A

second dark blot showed in the brown of the grass. It moved upward a

fraction, the top of a head. Carver noted the slight sidewise motion as

the man shifted for a better view. His gun hand contracted as he lined

down the barrel but he loosened his fingers again. It would not do to

shoot until he was sure, leaving him in the same state of uncertainty

which now handicapped Noll. The sun was swinging low in the west.

Another two hours and it would be too dark to see. If Noll could hold

out until then he could make a clean get-away. If Carver gave a sign

too soon Noll would know that his shot of two hours past had failed

to locate its mark and he would stay under cover till nightfall and

then make a run for it. It was the uncertainty that was breaking him

down. Noll couldn’t go against another two hours of that sort of thing,

Carver told himself.

He repeated this assurance a score of times after the head disappeared.

Two hours of uncertainty for Lassiter--two hours of craving for just

one cigarette for himself--which would win out? He composed himself for

another long wait.

Then Noll’s head and shoulders appeared as he rose to his knees, only

to be as quickly withdrawn from view as he dropped once more on his

face. His voice rose from the opposite depression, hoarse and unsteady

as he reviled Carver, hoping to taunt him into some answer,--the first

sound of a voice in nearly three hours. There came a crashing report

from the dip and Carver’s horse went down in a heap, shot through the

shoulders. The animal screamed once as it struggled on the ground. A

spurt of blue smoke revealed the rifleman’s position but Carver knew

that he was well below the danger line. The horse ceased struggling. A

bubbling rattle announced the death of his favorite mount. The voice of

the man who had fired the wanton shot rose with the sound.

“How do you like the sound of that?” he demanded. “That’s what will

happen to you between now and dark.”

He leaped to his feet and stood facing Carver, then dropped back out of

sight.

“He’s going to pieces,” Carver told himself. “He’ll make a break now

most any time.”

The exertion and relief from inaction apparently had lessened the

strain under which Noll had been laboring and he made no other move

for many long weary minutes. Then, without warning, he was up and

running toward Carver’s position, his rifle half raised before him.

He was within forty yards; thirty. Then Carver lifted his forearm and

fired. Lassiter tottered drunkenly and shot into the haze of smoke that

floated before Carver’s gun. The ball plowed a furrow three inches from

Carver’s ear and spattered fresh earth in his face. Carver shot twice

again. For a space of twenty seconds he held his place in the grass,

then sat up on his heels and twisted a cigarette.