Part 13

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.

XII

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!”

XIII

Both Wellman and Freel had prospered. It was quite generally believed, though it could not be proved, that both men had “sooned” before the opening of the Strip, which fact accounted for their two filings adjoining the town site of Oval Springs, property which would eventually prove extremely valuable. However, they could not yet realize on these holdings so it was evident that their present affluence was derived from some other source.