Two settlers stood in the saloon in Alvin. The proprietor lowered his
voice and leaned across the bar.
“Look you, now--there’s going to be a killing,” he predicted. He jerked
a thumb toward the rear door. “Right out there is where he left his
horse and for two days he set there at that table waiting for Carver to
come in.”
Jimmy had just recited the incident of the stranger’s attempt to take
Carver unawares and was now merely adding a few conclusions of his own
to lend an air of spice and mystery to the tale.
“He knows too much about folks that are running things in the county
seat, Carver does; him and Bart Lassiter,” Jimmy stated. “A bartender
hears things. Folks get to talking over their drinks. Most always
they do. I’ve heard it said for a positive fact that Bart saw Wellman
blow up the bridge out of Oval Springs the night the up-passenger was
ditched and two men killed. Wellman was sheriff at the time.”
It seemed that the two homesteaders had also been hearing things.
“United States mail went up in smoke that night when the mail car
burned,” said one. “I’ve heard that Mattison’s still making inquiries
about that. He never quits, Mattison don’t.”
“Well, then, and who’s the two men that could convict Wellman and get
him hung a mile high?” The saloon man pointed out triumphantly. “Who,
now? Why, Bart Lassiter! And Carver! I’d never want it said that it
come from me; it’s only between us three. But who is it that knows
Freel led the shooting when some of Mattison’s men was killed at the
same time Wellman was wrecking the bridge? Whoever knew that would be
dangerous to Freel, wouldn’t he? See how it all works out?”
The two nodded agreement.
“There’s a dozen of Carver’s close neighbors that swear he was home the
whole day of that Wharton business that Freel was trying to connect him
up with,” one volunteered. “I guess Freel seen it wouldn’t do any good
to have him put under arrest.”
“Arrest! Listen!” and Jimmy leaned farther over the bar. “That was
months back. It’s no arrest that he wants. Didn’t I say there was due
to be a killing? He was just paving the way for it. Mark me, now! Some
day we all will hear that Carver and Bart has been arrested--dead!” He
lowered his voice still farther. “The fellow that left his horse out
there while he waited for Carver was wearing a deputy’s badge under his
vest. But he didn’t appear anxious to arrest Carver alive.”
Jimmy sighed and passed the two men a drink on the house. Later he
would charge that bit of hospitality against the sum Carver had left
with him for the purpose.
“Of course I wouldn’t want to be quoted,” he concluded. “But a
bartender hears things. Folks get to talking over their drinks. Most
always they do.”
It was perhaps the hundreth time he had detailed his conclusions
to different customers in the past two months. In various parts of
the country others of Carver’s friends had been similarly occupied
in breathing their suspicions into willing ears. It was being asked
why no arrests were made in the county except for minor offences.
The settlers, since their first crop was harvested and they had more
leisure time to devote to affairs outside their own personal labors,
were giving thought as to the manner in which the county seat was
managed; and their opinions were being furnished ready made.
A quiet individual turned up in Oval Springs and made a few discreet
inquiries, interviewing perhaps a dozen residents of the town, his
queries in each case the same. He merely asked if they could state
positively that Freel and the Ralstons had been in town on a certain
date some months back; and if they were willing to testify that Milt
and Noll Lassiter had been held in durance throughout that same day.
The date was that of the Wharton hold-up. No man could swear positively
to these facts. Whenever some party volunteered the information that he
was equally unable to swear to the contrary, the inquirer merely nodded
and replied that it would be quite unnecessary. Then, after three days
in the county seat, he left town in the night and was seen no more.
None had witnessed his departure; he had told no man his business and
there was widespread conjecture as to whether or not he was in the
employ of the Wharton bank.
He rode up to the Half Diamond H at daylight on the morning after
the cards had decreed that Carver should remain for another year. He
declined the money which Carver would have given him to cover expenses.
“Just for old times’ sake,” he said, and rode south to catch a train
out of Enid for his home ranch in Texas.
And just across the ridge Bart Lassiter was recounting the outcome of
the previous night’s poker session to his sister. The girl experienced
a queer little pang when she heard that Carver had risked the silver
dollar which he had treasured for so long a time. She knew its
associations, also that it rested within her power, and hers alone,
to reinstate them, vested with all their former meaning. A small
thing perhaps, but relatively unimportant events are frequently more
significant than the large and obvious, and this incident in some way
served to fix the conviction that had been growing upon her for weeks
past. After all, what did anything matter but her own viewpoint and
Carver’s? But Hinman and Nate Younger were waiting to ride with her
to Oval Springs for the first county fair, from which point she would
accompany them to Caldwell for a few days before the opening of her
school for the fall term. The two old cowmen had planned this trip for
weeks and she could not disappoint them now. She would be more sure
of herself before the day of her return; would have time in which to
determine whether or not the new-found conviction was permanent. And
suddenly she knew that she was sure of herself now,--very sure; but her
two old friends were waiting. She drew Bart aside.
“Tell Don not to risk it again,” she said. “I want him to keep it
always. Tell him that for me.”
And Bart, deciding that his sister’s whims had already imposed far too
many restrictions upon both his own activities and Carver’s, carefully
refrained from delivering the message. Instead, he registered a protest
when he crossed the ridge to see Carver.
“I’m becoming downright weary of listening to warnings,” he fretfully
declared. “Never a day goes by but what some friendly soul drops past
to inform me that Wellman and Freel are scheming to play it low-down on
me. Every man in the county must know it by now.”
“The most of them,” Carver agreed. “If anything was to happen to us now
there’d be five hundred men rise up and point out to their friends that
they’d been predicting that very thing--that they’d been telling ’em
all along how Wellman and Freel was planning to murder us some night.”
“It’s nice to know that we’ll be vindicated after we’re dead,” said
Bart. “But I was wondering if there maybe wasn’t some method by which
we could go right on living even if we don’t get quite so much credit
for our part in the affair. Personally I don’t approve of trifling
round trying to set the whole county on their trail when one man could
terminate their wickedness in two brief seconds.”
“But it’s paved the way for the clean-up of the county seat,” said
Carver.
“Let’s you and me ride over and clean it up in the old wild way,” Bart
urged.
“Only we’ll let them ride out here,” Carver substituted. “That
background I was speaking about a while back is all arranged.”
“I’m glad you’re satisfied with the background,” Bart returned. “I
still maintain that I ought to secrete myself behind a sprig of scrub
oak and wait until Freel comes riding into the foreground. That
way we’d take ’em front and rear. But anyway suits me, if only it
transpires soon.”
“Real soon now,” Carver promised. He turned to a grub-liner who was
saddling his horse in the corral.
“You’ll find Mattison waiting in the hotel at Casa,” he informed.
“He’ll be expecting the message. Tell him just this: That my time has
come to deputize him. He’ll know what to do. Then you forget it.” He
turned back to Bart. “Real soon now,” he repeated. “That’s the chief
reason why Hinman and old Nate insisted on taking Molly over to enjoy
herself at the fair.”
The girl was, in all truth, enjoying herself at the fair. It was as
old Joe Hinman remarked to a group of friends in the lobby of Wellman’s
hotel.
“Nate and me are giving the little girl a vacation,” he said. “First
time she’s been away from that homestead overnight since Bart filed on
it. She thinks a lot of that little place, Molly does. Even now she
won’t be persuaded to stay away but one night. We’ll take her up to
Caldwell this evening to buy a few women’s fixings and show her the
best time we can but she’ll come traipsing back home to-morrow. Can’t
keep her away. Carver had to promise to go over and stay all night with
Bart so no one could steal that homestead while she’s gone.”
Nate Younger remarked similarly in Freel’s saloon within earshot of the
two Ralstons who were refreshing themselves at the bar. In fact, the
two old cowmen mentioned the matter to a number of acquaintances whom
they chanced across in a variety of places throughout town and it was
within an hour of noon before they took Molly out to the fair.
The girl found the fair a mixture of the old way and the new. The
exhibits were those of the settlers but the sports and amusements
were those of an earlier day, a condition which would prevail for
many a year. Every such annual event would witness an increase of
agricultural exhibits, fine stock and blooded horses as the country
aged; but at fair time, too, the old-time riders of the unowned lands
would come into their own again for a single day. Then would bartenders
lay aside their white aprons, laborers drop their tools and officers
discard their stars, donning instead the regalia of the cowboys. Gaudy
shirts and angora chaps would be resurrected from the depths of ancient
war bags. Once more they would jangle boots and spurs and twirl old
reatas that had seen long service. The spirit of the old days would
prevail for a day and a night and fairgoers would quit the exhibits
to watch the bronc fighters ride ’em to a standstill, bulldog Texas
longhorns and rope, bust and hog-tie rangy steers, to cheer the relay
and the wild-horse races and all the rest of it; then a wild night in
town, ponies charging up and down the streets to the accompaniment of
shrill cowboy yelps and the occasional crash of a gun fired into the
air,--then back to the white aprons and the laborer’s tools for another
year.
The girl and her two old companions spent the day at the fair and in
the early evening took a train to Caldwell some two hours before Freel
and Wellman rode out of town. The evening’s festivities were in full
swing and none observed their departure. Freel was nervous and excited.
“We’d better have sent some one else,” he said.
Wellman turned on him angrily.
“And have the thing bungled again!” he said. “Damn your roundabout
planning and never doing anything yourself. If you hadn’t sent that
fool over to Alvin without letting me know we’d have had it all over by
now. Crowfoot told you we’d have to do it ourselves. So did I. And if
you’d only waited we’d have found an opening months back but that Alvin
fluke made Carver take cover and he’s never give us a chance at him
since. We wouldn’t even know there was one to-night if those two old
fossils hadn’t let it out accidental.”
“But maybe that talk of theirs was--” Freel began, but his companion
interrupted and cut short his complaint.
“We’ve give Carver time to do just what we was to head him from
doing--getting our names linked with every deal we wanted kept quiet.”
“He couldn’t prove a sentence of it in the next fifteen years,” Freel
asserted.
“He’s started folks thinking--and talking,” said Wellman. “They’ll talk
more every day. It’s right now or never with me!”
“But it’s too late to make out that it’s an arrest,” Freel protested.
“After all that’s been said.”
“That’s what I know,” said Wellman. “So we’ll hurry it up and slip back
into town. With all that fair crowd milling around, there won’t be one
man that could testify we’d ever left town; and I can produce several
that’ll swear positive that we’ve been there all along.”
They rode on in silence and they had not covered a distance of three
miles from town when Mattison rode into the county seat at the head of
a half-dozen men,--men who, incidentally, knew nothing whatever of his
mission except that they had been deputized to follow wherever he led.
As the marshal entered the outskirts of town a figure detached itself
from the shadows. Mattison joined the man who reported in tones that
did not carry to the rest of the posse.
“They’ve gone,” he informed. “I followed Freel every living minute till
he and Wellman slipped out of town together a half-hour ago.”
“Sure they didn’t change their plans and come back?” Mattison asked.
“Dead sure,” the man stated positively. “Not a chance.”
Mattison led his men direct to the county jail and left them just
outside the office while he entered alone. The two Ralstons occupied
the place at the time.
“Where’s Freel?” the marshal demanded.
“Couldn’t say,” one of the deputies answered. “Out around town
somewheres likely.” His eyes rested apprehensively on the group of men
standing just outside the door. “You wanting to see him?”
“Yes. I was--somewhat,” Mattison admitted. “I surmise you all know what
about.”
The Ralstons denied this.
“We’ll go out and look him up,” Mattison decided. “You two stay here. I
might be wanting to question you later.”
But the Ralstons failed to tarry. Within five minutes after the
marshal’s departure they set forth from town and the county was minus
the services of two deputies who neglected even to hand in their
resignations before quitting their posts.
A similar scene was enacted at Wellman’s hotel. The crowd in the lobby
turned suddenly quiet as Mattison led his men in and inquired at the
desk for Wellman. The proprietor was not to be found. The county
attorney reclined in a chair at one side of the lobby and Mattison
crossed over and addressed him.
“Any idea where I could locate Wellman and Freel?” he inquired.
The county attorney moistened his lips and disclaimed all knowledge of
their whereabouts. A voice rose from the far end of the lobby, a voice
which Mattison recognized as that of the man who had accosted him in
the outskirts as he rode into town.
“They got out ahead of you, Colonel,” the man stated. “Your birds has
flown.”
“What’s that?” Mattison asked, turning to face the informer. “How do
you know?”
“Just by sheer accident,” the man reported. “I see one party holding
two horses just outside of town. Another man joined him afoot. One of
’em touched off a smoke, and in the flare of the match I made out that
they was Wellman and Freel. They rode west.”
“That’s downright unfortunate,” Mattison said. “But it don’t matter
much. I was only wanting to see them to gather a little information
they might be able to give. Another time will do just as well.”
He turned and stared absently at the county attorney and that
gentleman’s florid countenance turned a shade lighter.
“Don’t matter,” the marshal repeated, rousing from his seeming
abstraction. “Nothing of any importance.”
He led his men from the lobby and rode west out of town. And out in the
country toward which he was heading were Carver and Bart Lassiter, both
prone in the grass a few yards apart and as many from Bart’s homestead
cabin.
“This is growing real tedious,” Bart stated. “Whatever leads you to
suspect that they’re due to pay their call on just this particular
night?”
“They won’t if you keep on talking,” Carver returned. “If you keep
quiet they might.”
Bart lapsed into silence. He had already spent a long hour in his
present location and would have preferred to be up and stirring about.
Another twenty minutes dragged by and he was on the point of addressing
Carver again when his intended utterance was cut short by a slight
sound close at hand. Five more interminable minutes passed and he heard
a single soft footfall a few feet away.
Two dim figures approached the house and slipped silently to the door.
The night was so black that they seemed but two wavering patches that
merged with the surrounding obscurity. One tested the latch and the
door opened on noiseless hinges. For a space both men stood there and
listened. Then one entered while the other remained at the door.
Carver spoke.
“What was you expecting to locate in there?” he asked softly.
The man in the door whirled and fired at the sound of his voice, the
flash of his gun a crimson streak in the velvet black of the night.
Carver shot back at the flash and Bart’s gun chimed with the report of
his own. There was a second flash from the doorway but this time the
crimson spurt leaped skyward for the shot was fired as the man sagged
and fell forward. There was a splintering crash of breaking glass as
the man inside cleared a window on the far side of the house. Bart shot
twice at the dim figure that moved through the night, then rose to his
feet intent upon following but Carver restrained him.
“Let him go!” he ordered. “One’s enough!”
“But just why the hell should I let Freel get away?” he demanded,
pulling back from the detaining hand which Carver had clamped on his
shoulder.
“It’s Wellman. Freel’s there by the door,” Carver said.
“How can you tell? It’s too black to see,” Bart insisted.
“Wellman would be the one to go in. Freel would be the one to hang
back,” Carver said. “That’s why I planned for you and me to stay
outside in the grass instead of waiting inside. Wellman and me used to
be friends--likely would be still if it wasn’t for Freel. It makes a
difference, some way. Wellman’s harmless to us from now on, outlawed
for this night’s business. He’ll be riding the hills with the wild
bunch till some one comes bringing him in.”
He stopped speaking to listen to the thud of many hoofs pounding down
the trail from the ridge.
“Now I wonder who that will be,” he speculated.
“You know now,” Bart accused. “You always know. Whoever it is didn’t
come without you had it planned in advance. But I’ll never tell what I
think.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Carver advised.
Mattison reached the foot of the trail with his men.
“What’s up?” he inquired. “We’d just stopped at the Half Diamond H to
ask you to put us up for the night. Nobody home. I thought I might find
you here so we’d just started over when all that shooting set in and we
hustled along. You two out hunting for owls?”
“Yes,” Carver said. “There’s one by the door. The other one flew out
the window. Bart and I was reclining out here in the grass talking
things over when the pair of them eased up to the door and one slipped
on in. I asked how about it and the man in the door started to shoot.
Then we did some shooting ourselves. The party there by the door is our
amiable sheriff.”
“Then the one that got off is Wellman,” one of the posse spoke up.
“Right from the first shot I guessed it. I’ve heard it whispered round
that they was planning to get you, and when the ruckus broke I was
looking to find you two dead when we got here. I’m glad they got it
instead. That whole county seat bunch needs cleaning out.”
There was a chorus of assent from the posse and under its cover Carver
murmured to Bart.
“So much for background,” he said.
“It’s a right queer bit of business for them two to be at,” Mattison
stated. “I’ll have to put off gathering that information from Freel.
You’d better saddle up and ride on into town with me, Carver, and we’ll
report this affair to the county attorney. You boys bring Freel in with
you. He’s likely got a horse tied round somewheres close. Scout around
till you find him. Yes, we’ve been needing a change of officials at
the county seat for some time and it does look like the alteration has
been effected to-night.”
Carver rode off with the marshal.
“Thanks for going to all that bother,” Carver said. “I’m indebted a
lot.”
“It just evens that score,” said the marshal. “And the whole thing
worked out nice. It’ll make a clean sweep in Oval Springs. Wellman
won’t show up any more. I’ll venture to predict that the two Ralstons
will have vanished from these parts before morning and the county
attorney is scared into a state of palpitation right now. He’ll attend
to all the necessary formalities to see that you’re given honorable
mention instead of a trial.”
“Then after we’ve finished with him I’ll take the night train for
Caldwell and loaf around a few days,” Carver announced. “I haven’t
traveled to any extent for some time.”
It was nearly morning when the train pulled into Caldwell.
“No use to go to bed now,” Carver decided. “I’ll find some of the boys
and set up.”
The Silver Dollar, now conducted in the rear of a cigar store which
had been fashioned across the front of the building since the old,
wide-open days had become a thing of the past in Caldwell, was still
operated as an all-night place of amusement. But Carver found that its
grandeur had vanished, the whole atmosphere of the place was different.
There were a dozen men in the place, but of them all Carver saw not one
of the riders that had been wont to forgather here.
He drew a tarnished silver coin from his pocket.
“Here’s where I got you and right here is where I leave you,” he said.
“You’ve sewed me up for one year now and I’m about to get shut of you
before you cinch me for another. We’ll spend you for a drink to the
boys that used to gather here. Back to your namesake, little silver
dollar.”
As he crossed to the bar he glanced at the swinging side door that
led into the adjoining restaurant. It opened and a girl stood there,
motioning him to join her. He followed her outside. Two horses stood at
a hitch rail down the street.
“Come on, Don; we’re going home,” she said. Then, as he seemed not
quite to understand, “Didn’t Bart tell you?”
“No,” he said. “Whatever it was, Bart didn’t tell me.”
“Then I’ll tell you myself on the way home,” she promised.
She linked an arm through his and moved toward the two horses at the
hitch rail.
“Tell me now,” he insisted, halting and swinging her round to face him.
“You can’t mean--but I must be reading my signs wrong, some way.”
“You’re reading them right,” she corrected. “All those outside things
don’t matter. I know that now. We’re going home, Don, just you and me.
That’s all that counts.”
He had a swift, uneasy vision of the occurrences of the night just past.
“But you haven’t heard--,” he commenced.
“Oh, yes; I’ve heard,” she interrupted. “The news was telephoned up
here and was spread all over Caldwell before you even took the train
from Oval Springs. That doesn’t matter either. Hinman phoned to
Mattison at the hotel and found that you were coming. That’s how I knew
and why I was waiting up. I’ve rented those two horses so we could ride
instead of taking a train to Oval Springs. I’d rather, wouldn’t you?”
“We’ll start in just one minute, Honey,” he said. “But first--”
She looked the length of the street and nodded, for there was no one
abroad.
Some miles out of Caldwell the girl pulled up her horse where the road
crossed the point of a hill.
“You remember?” she asked.
“I won’t forget,” he said.
For it was from this same point that they had watched the last of the
herds of the big cow outfits held in the quarantine belt awaiting
shipment, the riders guarding them, the trail herds moving up from the
south, while over across had been that solid line of camps where the
settlers were waiting to come in.
“We saw the sun set on the old days here,” she said. “Let’s watch it
rise on the new.”
For as far as they could see the lights were flashing from the windows
of early-rising settlers. A boy was calling his cows. A rooster crowed
triumphant greeting to the red-gray streaks that were showing in the
east. There came a flapping of wings as a flock of turkeys descended
from their perch on the ridgepole of a barn, then their querulous
yelping as the big birds prospected for food in the barn lot.
“It’s different,” he said.
Then, from the road below them, came the clatter of hoofs and riotous
voices raised in song; a few wild whoops and a gun fired in the air.
“The last few of the tumbleweeds, rattling their dry bones to impress
the pumpkins,” Carver said.
The words of the song drifted to them.
I’m a wild, wild rider
And an awful mean fighter,
I’m a rough, tough, callous son-of-a-gun.
I murder some folks quick
And I kill off others slow;
It’s the only way I ever take my fun.
The girl’s thoughts drifted back to the big Texan who had led the
stampede and then presented his claim to another. She leaned over and
rested a hand on Carver’s arm.
“I’m very much contented right now, Don,” she said. “But so terribly
sorry for the poor tumbleweeds that have been crowded out.”