Molly Lassiter followed her usual daily routine, visiting back and
forth with the Cranstons, Lees and other neighbors, yet beneath it all
she was conscious of a certain uneasy expectancy, a sense of waiting
for something to transpire. There had been no word from Bart and his
whereabouts were unknown to her. Somewhere Bart was making a relentless
hunt for Noll and she expected hourly to hear news of their meeting.
She knew of Carver’s having joined the marshal’s posse at Oval Springs
and there was ever the possibility that she would get word that he had
fallen in the county-seat war. She had once told Carver that it was
the woman’s portion to wait for bad news,--and now she was waiting. In
another three weeks her school would open for the mid-winter term. A
few days past her interest had centered entirely on this great event
but now she found it had been relegated to a position of secondary
importance in her mind; would retain its minor significance until such
time as both Bart and Carver were safe home once more.
Then a sympathetic grub-liner dropped past with the word that Noll had
been killed in the county-seat fight. The bearer of the tidings, in an
awkward effort to lessen the shock of what he must impart, prefaced
his announcement with a rambling admonition to prepare herself for the
worst, and she was ready to shriek out to him to hasten on to the point
of his message. She found time to wonder at the fact that her chief
concern was a terrible dread that something had happened to Carver.
Then, at last, the man haltingly explained that Noll had passed out of
this world, one more victim of the county-seat feud.
Her reaction was so intense that she dropped to a seat on the doorsill
and stared mutely at her informer. The man rode away cursing himself
for breaking the news so abruptly. After his departure she accused
herself of great wickedness for the reason that she could not wring one
atom of regret from the fact of Noll’s passing. Rather, after the fear
for both Carver and Bart which had been roused by the man’s lengthy
preamble, she had experienced a positive relief to find that the news
concerned Noll. She hoped that the man had not divined this, and
again she accused herself of a callousness which she had never before
suspected as a part of her make-up.
She had known that it was only a question of time until Noll would
come to his end during some piece of outlawry, a bank hold-up or some
brawl in town, and it was infinitely preferable that it should have
happened in this way instead,--as the victim of the county-seat war in
which good men had gone down on both sides. It eliminated the certainty
of a fratricidal shooting between Noll and Bart in the very near
future. It was better this way.
The following day Bart rode up the lane and within an hour after his
arrival he had started upon the construction of the three-room house
which he had planned a month or more back. She observed that Bart,
notwithstanding the wounded shoulder which still bothered him slightly,
went about his work with a purposefulness which had not characterized
his activities in the past. A week had passed without his having shown
any evidence of restlessness or desire to ride into town.
Now that she had Bart safe at home it seemed that her anxiety should
have been decreased by more than half but instead it was augmented
by each bit of news pertaining to the intensity of the trouble round
Oval Springs. Another week passed without the least lessening of
Bart’s daily labors. The house was completed with the help of a few
grub-liners who were stopping at Carver’s to look after his affairs
during his absence.
They moved into the new house and Molly’s spirits soared. She sang
light-heartedly as she went about her work. She had a permanent home of
her own and Bart’s tendency to roam was becoming less pronounced. There
was no longer reason to dread the consequences of any possible rambles
he might take in the future, since Noll’s influence was now a thing of
the past. Her new school would soon open; and besides all these things
Molly had made a discovery which eclipsed all the rest. She had told
Carver that she did not feel quite up to having a third tumbleweed on
her hands to worry about, already having had two, her father and Bart,
but she had found herself worrying every minute since his departure;
and since it seemed that she was to have the worry in any event, she
had as well have her tumbleweed too. She knew that fact now and she
wanted to tell him. It was to be expected that Bart would feel the need
of relaxation after completing the house and she had decided that when
these symptoms became manifest she would suggest Oval Springs as his
destination and send a message to Carver. She had thought much over the
substance and wording of the message. She would send merely the word
that she was worrying over his connection with the marshal’s posse.
Carver would divine what lay behind the words and return to the ranch,
she reflected; he understood her so thoroughly.
Bart, however, failed to fulfill his part in her plans.
“You needn’t worry about my prowling off somewheres,” he informed her
one morning at breakfast. “I’m one tumbleweed that’s quit roaming.
There’s been a windbreak erected on all four sides of me that’ll
restrain me from drifting for one solid year. When I make a contract I
keep it--even if it only came about through a mistake in the wording.”
She pondered over this assertion while Bart finished his breakfast.
“Carver tricked me, sort of,” Bart amplified. “He couldn’t dissuade
me from setting out after Noll, but I made a rash statement that I’d
stay here on the place for one year from the day Noll’s case was
settled, having in mind, of course, that I’d do the settling myself but
neglecting to state it that way. Well, Noll’s case is settled, though
not just the way I’d planned it, and here I am. No more trips to town
until Don says the word.”
“I’m glad, Bart,” Molly said. “It’s so much better this way instead of
your being mixed up with it yourself. Don’t you see?”
He pushed back his chair and regarded her.
“I’ll never be convinced but what I’d ought to have done it myself,”
Bart insisted. “I would have too, if you hadn’t talked Don into beating
me to it. He knew you’d rather it would be him than me.”
Bart rose and moved about the room, commenting upon certain angles of
the case and from these fragments she was able to piece out the whole
picture. Bart spoke casually, believing that she had already become
acquainted with every phase of the affair. The girl sat very still, her
hands clenched in her lap. So it had been Carver. She had never given
that a thought until now, had not entertained even a suspicion of the
truth, and Bart was assuming that she knew every detail; that she was
responsible for having sent Carver. An hour past she had told herself
that Don understood her so well while in reality he understood her so
little that he had imagined she was sending him forth on such a mission
as that.
“But why in God’s name didn’t he let the posse go out instead of going
alone?” she asked at last.
“That’s just what he couldn’t do,” Bart dissented. “He knew that it
was on account of his own personal disagreement with Noll that Bradshaw
had been shot down, that it didn’t have any relation to the county-seat
squabble whatever. If the marshal’s boys had gone boiling across into
the brush after Noll there was a good chance that some other good men
would go the same route that Brad had. Don couldn’t chance that. It was
his own personal trouble and he felt obliged to take all the risks on
himself.”
She knew that Carver’s action, judged by the standards of his kind,
would command respect. But if only he had been content to stand back
and let the marshal’s men go out as a whole! It would then have seemed
an impersonal sort of affair instead of becoming openly known as a
personal issue between the two men. Even though she herself had always
refused to look upon Noll as a relative the world at large would not
hold that view. Centuries of custom decreed that such an occurrence
as this should operate as an insurmountable barrier between Don and
herself. There would always be that between them. Tongues would wag
until the end of time if they should violate that age-old tradition
by permitting any relationship deeper than mere acquaintance between
them. She must see Don and explain it all to him. He had made such an
unalterable mistake; had understood her so little. But she could not
see him till after the trouble at Oval Springs had been settled and he
returned to the ranch.
Even at that moment the county-seat war was nearing an abrupt
termination. Oval Springs had grown with amazing rapidity and there was
no longer an object in the refusal of the railroad company to halt its
trains at that point, the reverse now being true.
Carver watched the south-bound passenger train come to a halt for the
first time in weeks. The assembled population of Oval Springs cheered
this unexpected event. A group of officials descended to look over
the ground and one man announced to the crowd that they had come to
select a site for the new station, construction of which was to begin
on the morrow. Surveyors were unloading equipment. A work train crawled
into town and a hundred men swarmed off the cars to begin work on a
switch track. The feud was ended and Oval Springs had won out in the
fight. Years later it would break out again and again until Casa should
eventually come into her own.
Crowds of cheering citizens swarmed the streets of Oval Springs
throughout the rest of the day and there was every symptom that it
would be a wild night in town. Carver considered plunging into the
festivities. Someway the thought of returning to the ranch held forth
no appeal; this strange lack of interest was equally true when he
contemplated joining the celebration over the victory of Oval Springs.
He didn’t care a hang which town had won out.
“There don’t seem to be much of anything that I do want to indulge
in right now,” he remarked. “So I guess I’ll ride home. You won’t be
needing me any longer,” he said to Mattison. “If you don’t mind I’ll
resign and be on my way.”
He rode out of town in mid-afternoon and he failed to stop by the
Lassiter’s place as was his usual custom but held straight on to the
Half Diamond H.
Molly heard through Bart that he had returned. She expected to see
him waiting for her in the little saddle in the ridge where formerly
they had met of evenings but she watched the shadows fall on three
successive nights and failed to see him skylined there. Her school
opened with twenty pupils of assorted sizes, ages and degrees of
intelligence and she threw herself into this new work. As she rode home
on the second night after the opening she saw Carver in the field. He
waved his hat but made no move to cross over. The next evening she
motioned to him and he joined her in the road.
“They tell me you’ve got a family of youngsters ranging all the way
from Mexicans to Bostonese,” he greeted. “How’s the new school?”
“Perfect,” she said. “I love it.”
“Now me, I’d lose my mind after the first day,” he said. “Has Johnny
begun to shed his milk teeth yet? It’s a downright shame the boy has to
lose ’em again after all the trouble he had cutting his first ones.”
The girl remained silent while he made inquiries concerning a number
of her charges, recalling incidents from their past lives which she
had heard from fond parents and passed on to him at various times.
He had dropped into his old casual vein as easily as if nothing of
an unusual nature had occurred since their last meeting. But Molly
found it difficult to meet his mood and chat on trivial topics. She
was conscious of a certain restraint. It was fully to be expected that
he would mention the one thing which was uppermost in his mind and
hers, attempting to explain it by the code of his kind, but it became
increasingly evident that he did not intend to refer to it. She cast
about for something to say but could discover no topic. Her mind was
too exclusively occupied with that other.
“That’s a good-looking new shirt you have on,” she stated at last, and
was angrily conscious of the inanity of the observation in view of all
that was left unsaid between them. But she forced herself to go on. “I
like gray. You never affect red shirts like the most of the tumbleweeds
wear.”
She could have screamed at the idiocy of it all and found herself
unable to proceed but Carver inspected the sleeve of the shirt in
question and took the conversation away from her, dwelling upon the
topic as if her observation had been the most natural one in the world.
“Gray’s not a bad color for everyday wear,” he admitted. “I don’t run
much to red. Reason is this: There’s eleven or twelve of us children at
home; I forget without counting--but plenty--and the old man sometimes
buys assorted job lots of clothing that has gone maybe a bit out of
style. One day he turns up with an assortment of shoes. There’s gray,
black, bay and buckskin shades in that lot--and one pair of red button
shoes.”
He paused to chuckle softly at some recollection.
“The old man takes a squint at those red ones and begins to size up
my feet. I stage one frenzied protest. After they’d choked me into
submission and crowded my feet into those red button shoes they start
me off to school and my worst fears are realized. Right down to this
day I can’t set round in company without wanting to shove my feet
somewhere out of sight. Well, that same night I steal the old man’s
pistol and drop out the window. I ain’t ever been back. That seems to
have soured me on red for all time. I wouldn’t even put red paint on my
barn. That’s why I don’t run to loud colors; a quiet lavender shirt,
maybe, for Sundays, or a soft black-and-orange check if I want to dress
up, but no red for me.”
It was quite evident that he intended to hold the conversation to
purely casual channels. She knew now that he had not misunderstood
her; that he had assumed full responsibility for the affair, realizing
that it would react against him but believing that it would be easier
for her in the end if he were the one to go through with it instead
of Bart. He had known that he was locking himself outside and that
explanations would be of no avail so he was deliberately avoiding the
topic.
“That’s how I came to leave home,” he resumed. “If ever you note any
symptoms of madness in one of your pupils, why instead of chastizing
him regardless, I’d suggest that you institute a search for the red
button shoes in the background. Big events hinge on such trifles.
Now if I’d have stepped on a bee like Ella Cranston did--I forgot to
mention that I left those shoes behind in exchange for the pistol and
set out barefooted--it’s likely I’d have turned back and developed
into a first-rate barber or a banker in place of winding up as a bronc
fighter. Does Ella still persist in wearing shoes even in bright balmy
weather?”
“Oh, Don! Why did you?” Molly interrupted suddenly.
“It was due to come sometime; he’d already tried for me twice,” Carver
said, instantly altering his vein of speech to accord with her own. “So
I might as well have it out right then, I figured, and keep Bart out of
it all. Then he got Brad. Brad was my friend.”
“I’m sorry, Don; terribly sorry,” she said.
“Don’t you!” he admonished. “It just had to come up the way it did,
seems like. You’d rather it was me than Bart.”
“I wouldn’t!” she denied fiercely. “Oh! I wouldn’t! I’d a thousand
times rather it was Bart!”
She hung her spurs up into her pony’s flanks and the little horse
darted off up the road.
Carver stood looking after her.
“And I didn’t know,” he said. “I didn’t find out till it was just too
late. Don’t that beat hell!”