Part 14

Crowfoot, even before the run, had acquired moderate wealth but neither Freel nor Wellman had been possessed of any considerable means. Freel now owned the largest and most remunerative saloon in Oval Springs. He had occupied the sheriff’s office since the first election in the county, Wellman, the original appointee, having endorsed his candidacy instead of running for the office himself. Wellman was proprietor of the hotel, had been elected mayor of Oval Springs and was a stockholder and director in the bank, of which Crowfoot was president.

It was generally conceded that the money of the ex-cowman was responsible for the rise of the other two but there were some who, knowing Crowfoot, doubted that he would use his own means for the advancement of another. The three men were closely associated nevertheless, a power to be reckoned with in business and political circles, rated as influential and public-spirited citizens.

There was no longer necessity for Freel to associate himself closely with the wild bunch, many of whose operations he had formerly planned. The years he had served as marshal had fitted him for this work. He could visualize a scene in advance, discount its dangerous features and perfect an alibi that would stand the test. His was the mind that planned but he had seldom been present to witness the execution of those plans. His actual participation in the Wharton hold-up, the one misdeed of its kind where he had been present in person, had been occasioned by a desire to impress upon his associates that he was of the same fiber as themselves. He had gone out in a spirit of bravado and returned in a nervous panic. His main source of revenue was now derived from protection money which he levied against the lawless who operated in the county, these assessments collected through the agency of the two Ralstons who were his deputies as they had been Wellman’s before him. Protection came high and both Freel and Wellman profited accordingly. Oval Springs was a hotbed of lawlessness and a concession for any known transgression could be purchased for a price, a state of affairs confined not merely to Oval Springs alone but prevalent throughout the Strip.

The line between the law and the lawless was but vaguely defined. Instances of the apprehension of any wrong-doer were decidedly infrequent. Petty graft and crooked gambling flourished. As a carcass attracts scavenger birds so conditions in the Strip drew the vicious of the whole Southwest. Express messengers conveyed word of valuable consignments to friends who would make sure that the shipments failed to reach their destination. There were bankers who handled securities at stiff discounts without inquiry as to their source, jewelers who were equally incurious about the previous ownership of gems or gold, judges and county attorneys who were open to reason and sheriffs who followed false trails.

But all this was merely a passing phase coincident to the transition period of a new and untried territory during its transformation into an old and proven one. The background was one of enduring solidity. More than thirty thousand families had found homes in a single day and these toiled steadily on, unmindful of the wave of deviltry and corruption that swept the Strip, such circumstances having no particular bearing on their daily lives. Later, when they had more time to devote to affairs outside of the immediate problem of shaping their homesteads up into producing farms, they would rise up and cast out the parasites without apparent effort, for after all the solid citizens were many and the parasites comparatively few.

Freel rode out of Oval Springs and he traveled past occasional fields that were green with waving wheat. Spring had brought fresh evidence that the Strip, now a part of Oklahoma, would eventually prove to be the most productive portion of the State. Spring crops of all sorts were coming up in riotous profusion. Young orchards had been planted round many a homestead cabin; rows of slender saplings marked the site of future stately groves. The scattering fields that had been seeded to winter wheat gave promise of a tremendous yield and an average of more than twenty bushels to the acre was confidently predicted. Orderly garden plots were in evidence on every homestead.

Since his occupancy of the Sheriff’s office Freel had several times stopped at the Lassiters’ cabin. He had haunted Molly Lassiter’s footsteps for a year prior to that day when Carver’s inopportune arrival had put a stop to his advances. In his new guise as a moneyed, influential citizen he saw one more chance of gaining the girl’s favor. His manner was affable and without hint of previous unpleasant relations. Rather his attitude was one of friendly interest which any prosperous person might take in the affairs of a less fortunate acquaintance. Molly, believing that the past had best be left undisturbed, received him as she would any other casual acquaintance. On the occasion of this last visit Freel found Bart at home.

Bart had worked steadily, seldom straying far from home but instead finding relaxation at Carver’s bunk house where the grub-liners still convened. There were times when he exhibited real enthusiasm for his work and on such days he spoke of eventually buying out one or more neighbors and operating a farm which would one day rival Carver’s holdings across the ridge. There were other periods when the monotony of farm life maddened him and he grew moody and restless, conscious of the urge to straddle a horse and be off for some point where distance was not measured by neatly fenced section lines but instead was calculated in terms of a day’s travel on a horse. It was during the darkest moments of one of these moods that Freel dropped in.

Bart listened while Freel commented upon various business and political ventures upon which he was engaged. Bart was frankly disinterested, his one thought for the moment being a desire to step up on a good horse and ride across a sage-brush desert in the fierce glare of the summer sun, or, as an alternative, to ride the same stretch in a screeching winter blizzard; it mattered little which so long as there would be neither fence nor human within a radius of twenty miles. All would have been well except that Freel, equally self-centered, attributed Bart’s abstraction to a feeling of envy induced by the attractive word picture Freel had painted of his own successes. In parting he drew Bart aside.

“Any time I can hold out a helping hand you can count on me,” he assured. “I’m in better shape to help you on your feet than any man in these parts.”

Bart was not actively conscious that he was being patronized but he was aware of a sense of irritation, and the tone as well as the substance of the offer brought his ill humor to a sudden focus.

“Oh, hell!” he said wearily. “You can’t do me any favor except to let me alone.”

“That’s what I’ve been doing,” Freel returned. “Hadn’t you noticed?”

“I haven’t missed you,” Bart confessed. “But keep it up and maybe I will.”

“You’re somewhat in debt to me on that score right now,” Freel stated, and recited a few details to prove his point.

Bart’s home-coming with a wounded shoulder the day following the Wharton affair had created comment. His saddled horse had been found by a farmer near the point from which a second mount had been stolen, this last animal later recovered by the Kansas sheriff’s posse after its rider had made good his escape. Rumor had linked Bart’s name with these events and the news had trickled to the sheriff’s office.

“Do you think I’m asleep on the job?” Freel demanded. “I’ve known that all along. Don’t you call that letting you alone? It all dovetails right nicely, a clear case against you on both counts, robbery and horse stealing--two cases of horse stealing, in fact.”

“Oh, I didn’t bother to steal the second one,” Bart stated. “Don’t make your case too strong or maybe you’ll lose it. I run across Carver out there and we swapped mounts, me escaping while he led that Kansas outfit astray. Maybe you hadn’t heard that it was Carver’s horse I came riding home on--but I can cite you to a few witnesses who saw it.”

Freel pondered this point. He had not heard the name of the man picked up by the posse after the party they sought had presumably stolen his horse.

“I’ll make it a point to cover any such little details as that,” he said. “But you’re safe enough as long as you meet me halfway.”

“I’ll come the full distance and a few steps beyond,” Bart volunteered. “I could throw some light on that Wharton affair myself and some day I will.”

Freel experienced a recurrence of that apprehension which had assailed him at intervals since his participation in the Wharton event. He had never considered it possible that Bart could have determined the identity of any one of the four men who had chanced across him that night. It had all happened with such suddenness; a voice from the darkness ahead. Then Noll had shot. Freel had been unaware of the identity of Noll’s victim till after they had left the spot and Noll had announced that the voice was Bart’s. Even then he had not been sure of the point until hearing the rumors which he had just now recited to Bart. It had seemed equally certain that Bart could not have recognized him.

“You’ll have a chance to tell all you know to a jury,” Freel predicted.

“And right after I speak my piece they’ll cast a ballot to stretch your neck a foot long,” Bart announced.

“Mine!” Freel said. “What fool notion are you working on now?”

“I’m not working--just resting,” said Bart. “Here you come with all this patter about how you’ve befriended me by not having me jailed for something you did yourself. That’s real generosity. Maybe it’s never occurred to you that I recognized the four of you when you came riding up on me that night when Noll tried his damnedest to kill me.”

Freel’s apprehension increased but he remained silent until Bart had finished.

“If I start remarking broadcast about that little event just how long do you imagine it would take folks to divine where the four of you had come from?” Bart inquired. “A few minutes back you was reciting about what a high place you’d attained in human affairs. Keep right on mounting--only keep it in mind that some day when time hangs heavy and I’m craving entertainment I’ll pull out your props and let you down hard.”

He turned his back on Freel and retired to the house. Freel returned to Oval Springs and sought a hasty conference with the mayor and the president of the bank. He was palpably nervous as he recounted the details of this complication.

“Get hold of yourself!” Wellman ordered. “You’re jumpy. What does it signify anyhow? One man’s wild yarn about hearing your voice in the dark wouldn’t even shake that alibi. It’s water-tight.”

Crowfoot nodded agreement and chewed placidly at his cigar. He could face such a situation without turning a hair--as could Wellman.

“Bart’s in no shape to do any commenting,” Crowfoot amplified.

“But I tell you he will,” Freel insisted.

“Sit down,” Wellman instructed. “Plant yourself in a chair and quit prowling in circles. You’ll wear out the rug.”

“Bart might be feeling a trifle venomous since Noll tried to down him,” Crowfoot conceded. “It would have been preferable if Noll had quit living before he took that shot at Bart. But in order to link you with it he’d have to convince folks that he recognized your voice at night, then prove that you’d come from Wharton instead of any one of a hundred other points on the map. Not a chance in ten thousand.”

“But Carver’s into it now,” Freel pointed out. “You know what that means. He’s been waiting for a chance at me.”

“What you mean is that you’ve been waiting for a chance at him,” Crowfoot corrected. “And you’re crediting him with holding the same sentiments toward you.” Crowfoot was not one to allow personal differences or dislikes to obscure his judgment. “He’s the kind that’ll not interest himself in your affairs unless you go romping over onto his reservation and prod him into hostilities that he’d likely be wanting to avoid if only you’d let him. You’d better let this man Carver strictly alone. He’ll do the same by you.”

Neither Wellman nor Freel was prepared to accept this bit of advice.

“Then I’ll just tender one more suggestion,” Crowfoot announced, after finding himself overruled. “If you’re set on this business, then I’d urge that you do it yourselves, just the two of you, instead of hiring it done.” He was familiar with Freel’s roundabout methods.

Wellman endorsed this last suggestion.

“Absolutely,” he agreed. “Me and Freel will tend to this matter in person.”

Freel failed to state whether or not these sentiments met with his full approval. Crowfoot regarded him closely, then stretched and rose from his chair.

“Once there was three men in a town,” he remarked. “The rest didn’t count overmuch. One of the three had sand but no brains. Another was equipped with cunning but was totally minus of nerve. The third had both sand and brains.”

“And which one was you?” Freel inquired.

“I mentioned myself last,” Crowfoot answered without hesitation. “And being equipped like I explained, it does look like I could do better to trail by myself instead of being mixed up with a pair of rat-brained miscreants like you. If you’re set on stirring up Carver, you can just count me out.”

He departed and left Freel and Wellman to perfect their own plans.

They conferred at some length and as a result Freel spent several days in making quiet investigations among the homesteaders north and west of the Half Diamond H. Another evidence of the change that was taking place in the country was the fact that the code of silence and refusal to divulge information no longer prevailed. Many of the newcomers were willing, even eager, to impart any possible scrap of information. Freel found some who had noted Bart’s return with a crippled shoulder; others that would testify that the horse upon which he was mounted belonged to Carver. He discovered one man who had seen Bart ride up the Half Diamond H lane in the evening. In each instance Freel shook his head and commented upon the fact that it looked as if the two of them had been mixed up in it; that it certainly seemed inevitable that he should have to place them under arrest and charge them with the crime if the evidence kept piling up. In each case also he requested secrecy. In reality he gathered insufficient evidence to hold either of them overnight but he had created an abundance of witnesses to serve his purpose.

Some two weeks thereafter a man rode up to the rear door of the one saloon in the little town of Alvin a few miles down the valley from the Half Diamond H. He dropped his reins over a post a few feet from the door and entered. For an hour he loitered at a table, playing solitaire and making an occasional trip to the bar for a drink and a chat with the bartender.

“Nice place,” he commented after he felt that their acquaintance had ripened somewhat. “You own it?”

The man behind the bar nodded.

“Man by name of Carver live round here close?” the stranger inquired.

“A piece up the valley,” the bartender assented. “Not far.”

“Drop in here often, does he?” the man asked.

“Whenever he’s in town--couple of times a week average,” the proprietor informed. “Drops in for a glass of beer before riding home. Mostly he’s in of afternoons; once in a while of nights when some of the boys gather here. You wanting to see him?”

“Yes,” the other man admitted.

“You can ride out to his place in half an hour.”

“Rather see him first and size him up,” the stranger stated. “Harvest is coming on and he might use a hand. But I always like to look a man over before I hire out to him.”

The saloon keeper nodded without comment. This was no harvest hand. The stranger’s face was stamped with ruthlessness; straight thin lips, and above them a pair of wide-set cold black eyes.

“Point him out to me when he comes in, will you?” he requested. “So’s I can sort of size him up.”

Again the barman nodded. He noted the convenient arrangement; the open back door with the saddled horse just outside.

“Sure,” he laconically assented. “I’ll tip you.”

Carver failed to appear and when the usual evening crowd began to assemble the stranger departed. The following afternoon he reappeared, leaving his horse at the same convenient post just outside the rear entrance.

“You’d never recognize me if you was to see me again, now would you?” he asked the proprietor. “You couldn’t accurately describe me right now; and for all you can remember that bay horse of mine is a sorrel.”

He shoved two gold coins across the bar and fixed the other man with his black eyes. The saloon man pocketed the money.

“Correct on all counts,” he agreed.

The stranger returned to his table and the bartender, under pretense of arranging glassware and bottles, placed a long-barreled forty-five on a shelf just under the bar. One never could tell. He had been old-time rider of the unowned lands and could rightly read his signs. A few stray customers dropped in and departed. The liveryman lingered over two glasses of beer. The banker stepped in for his afternoon nip the moment the bank was closed for the day, and the keeper of the general store came in with the proprietor of the lumber yard. Three neighboring farmers entered together and shook the dice to determine who should pay for the round. The stranger surveyed each new arrival, peering from beneath the brim of his hat while apparently absorbed in his game. Each time the man behind the bar shook his head. When the last of these patrons had departed Carver came in alone.

“A pint bottle of your best beer for me, Jimmy,” he greeted. “An’ another one for you.”

As Carver crossed to the bar the proprietor noted that he was not wearing his gun. He had discarded the weapon the day of his return from Oval Springs the preceding fall and had never worn it since. The bartender gazed fixedly at the man at the table, then slowly shook his head again, a signal which Carver could not fail to observe.

Carver accorded the stranger one casual glance. He could see the rump of the horse that stood outside the open rear door. Jimmy spoke to the stranger.

“That fellow Carver you was wanting to see just rode up the street,” he said. “He’ll likely be in any time now.”

The man at the table nodded, frowning slightly at this reference before a third party. Carver turned, apparently noting his presence for the first time.

“Step up,” he invited. “I’ve only time for one; have to be dangling along toward home; but you can linger over yours. Name it.”

The stranger was anxious to be rid of him before the man he expected came in, so he moved to the bar in order to hasten proceedings. Jimmy set his drink before him. The man nodded his thanks and remained silent, not desiring to open a conversation lest it should cause his host to alter his decision to depart at once. Jimmy was slouching against the rear of the bar directly across from him, one hand resting on the shelf beneath it as if to support his weight. Carver picked up the pint of beer as if to drink from the bottle; then, as the stranger reached for his drink, Carver swung the heavy bottle by the neck. The man went down as the weapon struck him behind the ear.

“After your opening remarks it looked like the wise thing was to lay him out first and make inquiries later,” Carver said as he retrieved the fallen man’s gun.

“He was out for you,” Jimmy informed. “I don’t know why but maybe you do.”

“Not an idea; never laid an eye on him before,” Carver asserted.

“He’s been waiting two days,” Jimmy said. He removed his hand from beneath the bar and exhibited the long-barreled gun. “I had this shoved against the front side of the bar within a foot of his vitals so I could touch it off through the wood in case of a slip. Them’s only half-inch boards there in front. You and me has been friends a long time and I was half minded to down him before you showed up; only you can’t put a man across just because he’s inquiring about a friend, no matter what you suspect about his intentions--not without getting thirty years or else take to the hills. But I was here to see that things came out all right.”

“I wonder now,” Carver said, looking down at the man on the floor. “I wonder who sent him.”

“You knew, didn’t you, that Freel has been round collecting evidence against Bart in that Wharton affair?” Jimmy asked. “I’ve been hearing that for quite a piece back. Folks get to talking over their drinks. Most always they do.” He recited a few comments which had come to his ears. “Just thought I’d tell you. If you look under that party’s vest you’ll find a deputy’s badge. That’s a hard layout up at the county seat and you’ve had words with different heads of the ring, so I gather.”

“That clears up the reason for his being here,” Carver said. “They sent him. He’d make a clean get-away if he could--flash that deputy’s badge if he couldn’t, and they’d back him up.”

“He don’t know that you’re Carver,” Jimmy said. “I’ll bring him round after you leave and explain that you was a friend of Carver’s and decided that things wasn’t right when I made that incautious remark. That will put me in the clear. I’ll announce how he’s unsafe in these parts; that you brought in twenty-odd friends to view him laying there, face up, on the floor; that they marked well his features and declared open season on him anywheres in this part of the State. If he believes me he’ll high-tail for parts unknown--and if he don’t, why, I’ll send him there.”

Carver rode out to the Half Diamond H and entered the house. When he reappeared he was wearing his gun and he rode on across the ridge to the Lassiters. He found Bart seated on the corral bars, his chin propped in his hands as he gazed moodily across a field of ripening grain.

“How long since you indulged in some thoughtless comments about Freel’s being mixed up in that Wharton hold-up?” Carver asked.

“Two weeks--maybe three,” Bart returned. “He was so satisfied with himself that I just thought I’d tell him.”

“And right after that he started connecting you and me up with it,” Carver said. “He’s been exerting himself to inquire among folks about your horse being found up near where you departed with that old crow-bait you was on when I met you; about that Kansas outfit jumping a wounded outlaw and picking me up instead, and how you turned up on my horse, you being shot in the shoulder.”