TUMBLEWEEDS

By Hal G. Evarts

The Cross Pull
The Yellow Horde
The Passing of the Old West
The Bald Face: and Other Animal Stories
The Settling of the Sage
Fur Sign
Tumbleweeds

It was quite evident that all her thoughts centered round the younger brother.
FRONTISPIECE. See page [54].

TUMBLEWEEDS

BY
HAL G. EVARTS

WITH FRONTISPIECE BY
W. H. D. KOERNER

BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1923

Copyright, 1923,
By Hal G. Evarts
All rights reserved
Published January, 1923
Printed in the United States of America

TUMBLEWEEDS

TUMBLEWEEDS

I

In all that vast expanse of country west of Fort Riley clear to the Sierras of California there are not over four hundred thousand acres of arable land.

This extract from McClelland’s report, later appearing as preface to some fourteen volumes of Pacific Railroad explorations, evidently acted as a direct challenge to the pioneering spirit of a country that was young. Following immediately upon its publication, as if in a concerted effort of refutation, the great westward trek across a continent set in, the determined advance of a land-hungry horde intent upon seeking out and settling that four hundred thousand acres of arable land; and in the brief space of thirty years there were thirty million acres under fence while the swarming multitude of hopeful settlers continued to surge westward across the face of the earth.

Thus do even wise men frequently fail to vision the immensity of the future which stretches forth ahead within the puny span of their own remaining years.

Another few decades and old Joe Hinman, himself accounted a wise man among his fellows, sat his horse on a little rise of ground and lamented his own lack of foresight. Donald Carver, his younger companion, gazed off across the flat where several riders held some two thousand head of steers. Hinman had come with the vanguard of the invaders and had watched succeeding waves of home seekers swarm past on all the ancient trails, the bull trains stretching almost without a break from the Missouri to the Colorado hills, when Cheyenne, Kiowa and Comanche contested the advance at every crossing of the Republican and the Smoky Hill, at the Great Bend of the Arkansas, and historic Pawnee Rock; had watched the bull teams and the prairie schooner giving way to freight cars that rattled past on steel rails which spanned a continent. He had seen the rolling plains of Kansas, once constituting the first reaches of the Great American Desert, lifted bodily into statehood and wondrous fertility, so long since that younger men had almost forgotten that their native State had ever been other than a prosperous agricultural community. While the main tides of settlement had swept on to the west and north, Hinman had turned aside and traveled south on the Chisholm Trail till he reached a point where the floods of home seekers were halted by some invisible barrier. There he had settled and prospered, but even now, thirty years after driving his first claim stakes through the prairie sod, that same barrier resisted all advance. Just outside his dooryard a vast tract, sixty miles by two hundred in extent, remained undeveloped and untouched. The land was rich and beckoned temptingly to those who sought a scrap of ground which might constitute a home, yet beyond Hinman’s holdings the virgin sod extended to the far horizon with never a ribbon of smoke by day or a twinkling window by night to indicate the friendly presence of a settler’s cabin,—the Cherokee Strip, upon which the white man was forbidden to settle by the terms of an ancient treaty. This great tract had been set aside to serve as insulation between warring whites and reds, its status still the same even though the necessity for such insulation had been long since removed,—an empire lying dormant and awaiting only the magic word which should strike off the shackles and permit its broad miles to blossom into productiveness.

“There she lays, son,” Hinman said, waving an arm in a comprehensive sweep toward the unowned lands. “Some day right soon they’ll open her. Every land-hungry party in four States has his eye on the last frontier and whenever she’s throwed open to settlement you’ll see one hair-raising mad stampede. So if you’re going off somewheres, like I heard it rumored, why I’d cancel the arrangements and sit tight.”

The younger man nodded without comment.

“Fortune always beckons from some place a long ways remote,” Hinman rambled on. “When likely she’s roosting right at home, if only we’d have a look. Now I quit Ohio as a youngster because there wasn’t any land left open but hardwood swamp lands, which could be had for about a dollar an acre, but I couldn’t see its value at a dollar a mile. To-day that Ohio swamp land is selling round two hundred an acre while what ground I’ve got under crop out here would average right at thirty and raw grassland not over three or four.”

“But owning the most part of two countries,” Carver commented, “you can maybe worry along.”

“Likely,” Hinman confessed. “But that’s not the point. I could have stayed right at home with those swamp lands and without ever exerting myself, except maybe to keep entertained with a brace of coon hounds, I could have growed into more wealth by considerable than what I’ve accumulated out here by steady work. That’s the real point; so it appears that my leaving there was sheer lack of foresight. So it’s likely that your best chance to get ahead and lay up an honest dollar is by staying right here instead of stampeding off somewheres. That’s the real reason I sent for you.”

“Since I’ve never even considered leaving, and you well aware of it,” said Carver, grinning, “then the real reason you sent for me was to engage me to perform something you didn’t want to do yourself—which in turn is related to the possibility of my accumulating an honest dollar. We’ve rambled all the way from timbered swamp land on down to the surrounding short grass. What sort of country lays beyond? My curiosity is fairly foaming over.”

Hinman regarded him quizzically and Carver bore the scrunity undisturbed. The older man knew that Carver was dependable; that once committed he would follow any mission to its termination and defend the financial interests of his employer with every resource at his command. It was only in his own affairs that he evidenced supreme carelessness. Older men forgave his irresponsibility in that quarter and accorded him a certain measure of respect for the reason that even in the midst of some bit of recklessness he retained an underlying sense of balance and proportion. And he had worked intermittently for old Joe Hinman for the past twelve years.

“It’s not that I don’t want to do it myself,” Hinman denied, reverting to Carver’s mild accusation. “It’s only that it wouldn’t look right on the surface. Now whatever property is down in the Strip is legally non-existent, you might say, and consequently untaxable,” thereby disproving his oft-lamented lack of foresight. “And it’s drawing right close to the first of March.”

“So you want me to move a thousand head of steers across the line and hold ’em till after you’ve been assessed.” Carver hazarded.

“Two thousand, son,” Hinman corrected. “Two thousand head. You couldn’t hold ’em in the quarantine belt for long without getting jumped, but you know the boss of every outfit off to the south and you could maybe trade deals with one of them. You’ll know how. It’ll save me taxes on two thousand head and give me a few weeks’ free grass. That much for me and a thousand nice dollars for you if you put it across.”

“An hour after dark I’ll be shoving those cows across the line,” Carver promised. “Meantime you might advance a hundred. Unfortunately I’m just out of funds.”

“Unfortunately,” said Hinman, “you’re just always out.” He counted off the money. “You’ve worked for me on and off ever since you was big enough to claw your way up onto a horse and on some occasions you’ve exercised such fair average judgment in looking after my affairs that I’ve wondered why on all occasions you was such a poor hand to look after your own.”

“I’ve been so taken up with your business that I’ve sort of let my own interests drift along,” Carver explained.

“You’re right handy at doing things for me,” Hinman resumed. “But when it comes to doing anything for yourself you’re somewhat the most tinkering, trifling specimen I’ve come acrost. You really ought to settle on some one job and stick at it.”

“That’s my one favorite motto,” Carver confessed. “Stick to your bush—and be exhibited among the vegetables.”

He turned his eye upon a tumbleweed that raced madly past before the wind. The dried skeleton was of the general size and shape of a pumpkin. Two more of these discontented wraiths of the prairies hurtled past.

“Now there goes a vegetable with ambitions,” said Carver. “Every winter the tumbleweed tribe stages a protest against being mere plants rooted forever to one spot.” He chanted a few of the numberless verses of a prairie song:

“Our size and shape is similar,”

Said the tumbleweed to the pumpkin.

“I’ll run you a race from here to there

And all the way back again.

“I’m a wild free blade of the open,

The spirit of all unrest.

I may end up in some worse place

But I’m going to make the test.”

“And I’m the soul of solid content,”

Said the pumpkin to the weed.

“Rather than take any chance at all

I’ll stay here and go to seed.”

But I’d rather be a traveling weed

Than a stationary squash.

“I know,” Hinman said. “You’re a pure-bred tumbleweed and no mistake. But most folks follow one business, and let the rest alone.”

“And it’s my observation that most folks are dissatisfied with what they’re working at but keep on doing it the rest of their natural lives just to try and vindicate their judgment,” Carver said. “Now if I don’t settle on one pursuit there’ll never be any reason for me to be discontented with my choice.”

The old man considered this bit of philosophy.

“If you ever decide to risk a mistake I’ll maybe help you out to a mild extent,” he said, “provided you come through with this present little errand I’m sending you on.”

Carver thanked him, pocketed the bills which constituted the advance upon his venture, and headed his horse off to the east. As he rode he reviewed all possible motives underlying Hinman’s proposal. Tax-dodging on a smaller scale was no unusual thing along the line, but he was morally certain that this motive, though the purported object of the trip, was entirely secondary in Hinman’s considerations.

“The taxes won’t amount to half the expenses of the trip,” Carver reflected. “Now just what is he aiming at?”

He had reached no satisfactory solution when, an hour later, the squat buildings of Caldwell loomed before him. He dismissed the problem temporarily. As he rode down the wide main thoroughfare it seemed that the hand of time had been turned back two decades to the days of Abilene, Hayes and Dodge, when each of those spots in turn had come into its brief day of glory as the railroad’s end and the enviable reputation of being the toughest camp on earth. In their day all those towns had eclipsed the wildest heights of wickedness attained by mushroom mining camps of lurid fame, then had passed on into the quiet routine of permanent respectability as the trading centers of prosperous agricultural communities. But little Caldwell stood unique, as if she were a throwback to an earlier day, nestling in the edge of a state where prohibition and anti-gambling regulations had long prevailed, yet her saloons stood invitingly open by day and night and the clatter of chips and the smooth purr of the ivory ball were never silent in the halls of chance; for just beyond lay No Man’s Land, the stamping ground of all those restless spirits who chafed against restrictive laws that were not of their own making, and wide-open Caldwell reaped the harvest of their free-flung dollars.

Groups of tall-hatted, chap-clad men hailed Carver from the sidewalk as he rode down the wide main street. Scores of saddled horses drowsed at the hitch rails and ranchers’ families rattled past in buckboards drawn by half-wild ponies. The street was thronged with blanketed Indians, for the Government beef issue was parcelled out semi-monthly on the little hill south of Caldwell and every two weeks the whole Cherokee nation made the pilgrimage to receive the largess of the Great White Father. As if to complete the illusion that he had been transported back to the days of Dodge and Abilene, Carver could make out the low-hanging pall of dust which marked the slow progress of a trail herd moving up from the south along the old Chisholm Trail, a thoroughfare now paralleled by the railroad that pierced the Cherokee Strip, but which was still available to those who would save freight charges and elected instead to follow the old-time method of pastoral transportation in marketing their droves.

Carver left his horse in a lean-to shed in rear of a two-room frame house in the outskirts of town. The plot of ground on which it stood, consisting of three corner lots, had come into his possession the preceding winter through the medium of a poker hand. Instead of disposing of the tract for ten dollars—the amount of chips which he had risked against it—it had pleased him to retain it and construct thereon the little board house, performing the work himself during leisure hours.

He headed for the swinging doors of the Silver Dollar, hopeful of finding congenial companionship even though this was the wrong time of day for any considerable activity within doors. A group of men sat along the rear wall and conversed in listless tones. Here were those upon whom fortune had failed to smile the preceding night, waiting for some kindred spirit who, more favored than themselves, might express a willingness to relieve their temporary distress.

“It’s high noon and I’ll wager not a man present has even had his breakfast,” Carver greeted. “But the rescue squad is here to provide nourishment for the losers.”

He tendered a crisp bill to Alf Wellman.

“Fill the boys with food,” he invited. “And in the meantime, while they’re deciding what to order—” and he motioned toward the polished bar.

Wellman jerked a casual thumb in the direction of the three men in the group who were unknown to Carver.

“These are the Lassiter boys,” he announced by way of introduction. “Not bad after you get to knowing ’em.”

The three Lassiters were an oddly assorted crew; Milt, the eldest, a gaunt, dark man who spoke but seldom; Noll, a sandy, self-assertive and unprepossessing individual; while Bart, by several years their junior, was a big blond youngster whose genial grin cemented Carver’s instant friendship.

Noll Lassiter hitched from his chair, his eyes resting on the bank note in Wellman’s hand, and as he attained his feet a slight lurch testified to the fact that even if he had not found food during the morning hours he had at least found drink. Being thus fortified his desire for food was now uppermost.

“Let’s eat,” he said.

“Restrain yourself,” the younger brother admonished. “The gentleman’s giving a party. Besides it’s downright harmful to eat breakfast on an empty stomach—and mine is absolutely vacant.”

“Worst thing you could do,” Wellman seconded. “It will show up on a man if he keeps at it.”

“I expect there have been folks tried it and went right on living till they got kicked by a horse or died some other sort of a natural death,” said Carver. “But what’s the use of taking chances?”

Noll restrained his urge for food while the host paid for two rounds, then reverted to his original contention.

“And now,” said he, “let’s eat.”

“Not until I’ve purchased a return round for our old friend Carver,” Bart dissented.

“How’re you going to manage it without a dime in your pockets?” Noll demanded.

“You ought to be familiar with the state of my pockets,” the blond youth returned, “having conducted a thorough search of them and purloined therefrom my last ten spot before I was awake. Why didn’t you reserve two bits for breakfast before you tossed it off on the wheel if you’re so damn near starved?”

He remained with Carver while the others followed Wellman through the swinging side door that led into the adjoining restaurant.

“And now, since Pete here,” said Bart, indicating the barkeeper, “steadfastly refuses to open a charge account, I’ll have to do some financing. Lend me a couple of quarts of your very worst,” he wheedled. “Not charge, you understand, but just lend ’em to me for a period of three minutes. Something round a dollar a quart.”

The bartender selected a brace of black bottles and shoved them across to Lassiter who moved with them to a rear door that opened on an alley. Several blanketed figures prowled this rear thoroughfare and the copper-hued wards of the Government converged upon the man in the doorway. He exchanged the two quarts for two five-dollar bills, thereby becoming eligible for a protracted stay within the walls of the penitentiary.

“Now we can start even,” he announced, paying Pete for the initial stock and retaining the surplus. “Quick turns and small profits is my rule of life.”

“One day you’ll acquire a new rule—long years and no profits,” predicted the white-aproned philosopher behind the bar. “Unless you learn to transact that sort of business by the dark of the moon.”

“Necessity,” Lassiter advanced in extenuation of his lack of caution. “Suppose you set us out a sample of something a few shades more palatable than what we just peddled to the old chief.”

The two pooled their resources and pursued their casual carefree way, all sense of responsibility discarded for the moment, as one might shed an uncomfortable garment with the idea of donning it again at some future time. The youthful Lassiter, who deplored all things serious while at play, found in Carver a delightful companion who seemed sufficiently light-minded and irresponsible to satisfy the most exacting. The wheel in the Silver Dollar, the faro bank in the Senate and the crap layout in the Gilded Eagle, each contributed modestly to their swelling bank roll in response to a few casual bets. As they left this last-named resort Bart halted suddenly. Carver glanced up to determine the cause of this abrupt halt. Freel, a deputy United States marshal, had just passed, and Carver, recalling the incident of the two black bottles, concluded that Lassiter had decided against meeting the Federal officer at just that moment lest the news of the transaction had reached him. Freel walked with a girl, his hand clasping her arm familiarly as he piloted her through the crowd. Bart frowned after the couple.

“I wouldn’t let the valiant marshal fret you,” Carver counselled. “I don’t know much about him except that he strikes a flat note in me, but I suspect he’s a pussy-footer and real harmless. I’ve heard things about Freel.”

“That’s what I know,” said Lassiter. “So’ve I; and it’s the things I’ve heard which keeps him on my mind. One day I’ll have to slip my twine on him and canter off across a few thousand acres of country with him dangling along behind.”

“Tell me when,” said Carver. “I’ll dab my noose on his off leg and bounce my horse off the opposite direction like we was contending for the biggest piece of a turkey’s wishbone. If half I hear is true he’s got it coming and folks will hail us as public benefactors.”

Twice within the next hour Carver noticed Noll Lassiter conversing with Freel. It was evident, that, whatever Bart’s grievance against the marshal, the feeling was not shared by the elder brother. The mid-afternoon crowd had gathered in the Silver Dollar by the time Carver returned to the starting place. Men banked deep round the roulette layout as it was whispered about that Carver and Bart Lassiter were winning heavily from the bank. The professional chant of lookout and croupier rose above the hum of conversation as the ivory ball purred smoothly round the wheel of chance. Noll Lassiter shouldered his way through the crowd and stationed himself between the two favorites of fortune.

“Luck’s with us,” he genially proclaimed thereby identifying himself with the winnings. “We’ll break this wheel between the three of us. She’s running our way strong.”

Carver suddenly realized that the pair had become a trio as Noll supplied himself with chips from the accumulation before the other two. When these had joined their fellows in the check rack he appropriated a fresh supply. Carver was conscious of a growing dislike for this uninvited partner. He tapped Noll’s hand with a forefinger as the man reached for a third stack of chips.

“Try keeping it in your pocket,” he mildly advised. “It’s as active after chips as a sand rat after a beetle; and it makes me restless.”

“Half of these chips belong to Bart,” Noll insisted. But this sudden assumption of the close-knit bond of brotherhood failed to rouse any corresponding enthusiasm in the younger Lassiter.

“You’re blasting our luck,” he asserted. “Not to say annoying us. Take yourself off somewheres.”

Noll, however, declined to heed this bit of counsel. Bart and Carver pushed their chips across the board and cashed in.

“Cheerful companion, Noll is, when he’s packing a skinful,” Bart commented as the doors of the Silver Dollar closed behind them. “And he’s equally genial when he’s sober.”

“Offhand I’d pass unfavorable judgment on your relative,” Carver confessed. “I don’t see much family resemblance. How come you’re brothers?”

“Half-brothers,” Bart amended. “We had the same father. I came along a dozen years late. Spoiled younger son, you know. Leastways I was always spoiled in spots where Noll had been working on me. When I turned sixteen I set out to spoil Noll. Since his convalescence he’s had a notion I might declare another open season on the dove of peace so we get along nowadays in regular family style. Say; now since we’re rolling in wealth you wouldn’t mind if I held out twenty in case fortune failed us? It’s not quite the thing to do but——”

“Bury it,” Carver agreed, waving his hesitancy aside. “Tuck it away somewhere.” He knew his man and was certain that the twenty was destined to fill some urgent necessity. “We’ll never even miss a little piece like that.”

Lassiter led the way to a rooming house above a store and turned into a dimly lighted room on one side of the narrow hall. Articles of man’s attire lay scattered about the place.

“The three of us headquarter here when we’re in town,” Bart explained. “I’ll plant these two tens in a dresser drawer.”

He opened the drawer in question and Carver, standing just to his right, found himself gazing down upon a scrap of black cloth from which two eyeholes stared blankly back at him. Lassiter placed the two gold pieces beneath the old newspaper with which the drawer was carpeted, closing it without comment, and they returned to the street and sought the wheel in the Gilded Eagle. For a time fortune smiled on them. Then a reverse tide set in. At the end of an hour each one shoved a stiff bet upon the board. There was the usual brief hush as the ball neared the end of its spin.

“The even losses to the odd and the red defeats the black,” the croupier chanted. “The middle column pays the gambler and the others pay the house. Place your bets for another turn.” He twisted the wheel and snapped the ivory marble in the reverse direction. “The little ivory ball—she spins! the flitting pill of fortune. Off again on the giddy whirl.”

He glanced expectantly at the two chief players but they had explored their pockets and failed to invoice sufficient resources with which to purchase a white chip between the two of them.

“Odd how rapid a man can shed it if he sets out to exert himself,” Carver commented.

Lassiter grinned and turned suddenly toward the door. It occurred to Carver that the youth was starting forth to retrieve that twenty-dollar reserve which was cached in the dresser drawer.

“Don’t you,” he admonished; but Lassiter had passed out the door.

Carver made a move to follow but met Carl Mattison, town marshal, coming in.

“You recollect that extra saddle,” Carver greeted without parley. “The one you was admiring, with all those silver trappings. If you still admire it fifty dollars’ worth——”

“Sold,” said the marshal and counted out the money. “Send it round to my room above the Boston Store.”

“I would,” said Carver, “only my delivery boy, the shiftless little wart, is out somewhere spinning his top. Here’s the key to my shack. You saunter past and collect it.”

Carver headed for Lassiter’s room. The door stood ajar and as he entered he observed a stooping figure whose hand was busily exploring the drawer of the dresser.

“We won’t need that twenty,” Carver said. “Let her ride where she is.”

The figure straightened and whirled to face him in the dim light. It was Noll Lassiter, not Bart.

“Where’s Bart?” Carver asked.

“Haven’t seen him,” Noll returned.

“Then where’s Bart’s twenty dollars?” Carver inquired. “I mistrust that you’ve got it—and I want it. S’pose you hand it over.”

“Make it out of here!” Noll ordered. “This is my room and I don’t want you in it.”

“Someway you haven’t inspired me with any ardent fancy,” Carver stated. “Right at present the feeling is mild, but it will grow acute if you keep exploring in that drawer for Bart’s last twenty.”

Lassiter made a swift move behind him but his arms fell back at his sides as Carver’s gun was jammed suddenly against his floating ribs.

“Tut, tut,” Carver admonished. “You’re way too awkward for that sort of thing. Sometime you’ll do that and some excitable soul will shoot you three or four times while you’re starting your wind-up.”

He removed Noll’s weapon and tossed both it and his own upon the bed.

“Now we can converse at our ease until Bart comes,” he said.

But Lassiter, angered beyond precaution, jumped for him the instant he relinquished the weapons, and being heavier than Carver he sought to bear him down by sheer weight. Carver rocked his head with two solid smashes but Noll sought only to come to grips where he could exert his strength, clutching at his opponent instead of returning his blows. They fought in cramped quarters and Carver could not step to either side lest he should give Lassiter access to the two guns reposing on the bed. The huge paws clamped on his shoulders and Lassiter crushed him back against the dresser. Carver elevated one knee between them, planted his boot against the other’s paunch and propelled him violently doorward. With a single step he retrieved his gun with intent to discourage Lassiter’s return, but he had no need of it. The big man’s head collided forcibly with the door jamb and he sprawled in a limp heap just outside in the narrow corridor.

Bart Lassiter, just mounting the stairway, witnessed this strange exit of his relative. He peered inside and discovered Carver, so he entered and seated himself on the edge of the bed, twisting a cigarette while he sought to reconcile the evidence before his eyes with the mental picture of the empty room as he had left it not five minutes past.

“Incidentally, there seems to be a corpse on the threshold,” he presently observed. “What did it die of?”

“General malignancy that set in right after birth and just now came to a head,” Carver diagnosed. “He was prospecting for your cache when I arrived.”

“He’d already located it,” Bart stated. “It was gone when I came up. Likely he came back to hunt for more as I went down, and your trails converged, sort of. Wellman said you’d just turned up the stairs, so I came on back.”

He crossed over to inspect the sprawled figure in the hallway.

“I’d say he was totally defunct,” he reported; but as if to refute this assertion Noll stirred an arm and grunted. “Unfortunately resuscitation is already setting in,” Bart revised his statement. “Let’s be off before he opens one eye and tries to borrow ten.”

An hour later the proceeds derived from the sale of the saddle had faded in the face of the bank’s per cent and their finances were totally exhausted except for a few small coins in Carver’s pocket. Lassiter leaned rather heavily against the bar in the Silver Dollar and straightened himself with an effort.

“It’s time for me to dangle,” he announced. “Hate to break up the party and all that sort of thing, but I’m overdue right now. Meet you here in an hour.”

He proceeded toward the door which opened into the adjoining restaurant but Carver overhauled him while he was yet some ten feet from his goal.

“Now don’t you go trickling out on me,” he reproved. “I’ll be gone in an hour—riding off for three weeks. Stay with me till then and we’ll both move out together.”

Lassiter turned uncertainly and Carver, looking past him, discovered that the swinging door into the restaurant stood half-open. The young girl framed in the doorway was gazing straight into his eyes. Oddly enough his first thought took the form of an intense desire to expend large sums of money in buying things for her, this impulse coupled with a swift regret that such amounts as he wished to squander were not for the moment available. The eyes that looked back into his were gray eyes, bordering on blue; and he gathered that they regarded him with a mixture of doubt and pity. He straightened resentfully, never having been doubted and refusing to be pitied, flooded with a sense of having been detected in some bit of wickedness. For the first time in his life his own eyes dropped before the direct gaze of another’s yet in his whole past career there was not one deed for which he felt any particular regret or shame. He lifted his eyes again with a hint of defiance, but found himself staring at the blank swinging door; in that split-second of averted glance the vision had disappeared, leaving him with a vague impression of its unreality,—and with a pronounced disinclination for continuing the party. Lassiter had not seen, and Carver dispelled the blond youth’s hesitation.

“Maybe we’d better call it a day,” he said. “See you when I get back from the Strip.”

Carver was conscious of a distaste for his surroundings, once the door had closed behind his companion. These carousals in town always palled on him in the end, giving way to the urge to straddle a horse and be off through the clean outdoors while the wind fanned the fumes from his head, but heretofore this state of mind had come about through gradual transition instead of descending upon him in a single second as had been the case to-day.

He gravitated to the roulette wheel through force of habit and risked his handful of small coins, playing absently and placing his bets without care or consideration. Now just why, he wondered, had he been struck with a wild wish to buy things for a girl he had never glimpsed before in his life. He was not conscious that she had been shabbily clothed, for to save his immortal soul he could not have testified to the color, texture or state of preservation of one single item of her attire, but someway he felt that she was needing things and he wanted to see that these things were provided. He cashed in his few remaining chips and the banker handed him a single silver dollar in return.

II

Carver repaired to the shack to retrieve his horse and as he rode back through town he observed a group round the town well in the center of the wide main street. Mattison had laid aside his personal pursuits and had donned his official rôle of town marshal, in which capacity he was instructing Bart Lassiter in no uncertain terms as to the impropriety of watering his horse from the oaken bucket attached to the well rope.

“Water him from the trough,” he ordered.

“After all those Cherokee ponies have been dipping their noses in it?” Bart demanded. “Not this horse.”

“That bucket is for folks,” the marshal patiently explained.

“An’ this horse is folks,” Lassiter insisted. He continued to extend the brimming bucket horseward with his left hand. The spectators shifted, recalling that Mattison’s predecessor had fallen in a street fight near this same well. There was no ill-feeling between the two men, but neither of them would back down publicly under pressure. Carver glanced aside as a voice called Bart’s name. The girl of the Silver Dollar was peering from a window above a store, her gaze riveted on the group at the well.

“Here’s two of my friends working up a grievance over well water,” Carver said, dropping from his horse. “Wherever did the pair of you acquire this sudden interest in it? I’m surprised at you.”

“If this party’s a friend of yours, why you take him,” said Mattison. “He won’t mind me. Let him water his horse till the well goes dry.”

“No such thing,” Lassiter gracefully declined. “I wouldn’t think of letting the critter slosh his muzzle in the town bucket.”

The marshal moved off and Carver reflected that the girl’s sudden appearance in the doorway of the Silver Dollar had been occasioned by Bart Lassiter’s failure to fulfill his appointment. It also accounted for Bart’s hesitation as they had stepped out of the Golden Eagle earlier in the day. He had halted to avoid meeting the girl, not to avoid Freel, as Carver had previously supposed; and Bart’s grievance against Freel rose from this same source, for undoubtedly the girl who was being piloted down the street by the marshal at the moment of their exit was the same who had later stirred Carver so strangely by her unexpected appearance in the doorway.

“A lady was calling your name from a window a minute back,” he said.

“Likely it was Molly,” Bart returned. “That’s who that ten spot was destined for—the one Noll lifted first. That twenty I planted later would also have found its way to her except for Noll. She’s a sweet kid, Molly, but she’s worried sick every minute I’m out of sight.”

Carver was conscious of a sense of irritation toward his friend, a vague resentment at this implied familiarity between the boy and the lady of the doorway.

“Then I wouldn’t be letting her wait around,” he reproved. “Damned if I would.”

“But a man can’t tag his sister every living second,” Bart expostulated. “I ask you now!”

“No,” said Carver. “Maybe not.” His irritation had evaporated. “But if she was my sister I’d put in considerable time with her.”

The brother grinned unrepentantly.

“All right; you do that,” he urged. “Maybe she’ll take to worrying about you instead of losing sleep over me. Appears to me like a nice arrangement for all hands concerned.”

The girl appeared suddenly beside Lassiter and rested a hand on his arm.

“Put up your horse and stay here with me,” she urged.

“Can’t, Molly,” Bart declined. “I promised the boys I’d go and they’re waiting now. We’re due to help Crowfoot gather a little bunch of beef stuff to-morrow and we’ll have to ride all night if we make Turkey Creek by morning.”

The girl turned to Carver.

“Thanks for interceding with your friend the marshal,” she said. “But please go now. You’ve had Bart to yourself all day.”

Carver nodded assent, mounted and rode off down the street. As he passed the Silver Dollar he felt the single coin in his pocket.

“That’s what I’m capitalized at,” he said. “Just one little measly silver dollar. That’s my invoice. This morning I could have added a horse, a house and an extra saddle to the statement. Now I’m out the saddle and owe Hinman a sum sufficient to offset the value of both horse and house. I’d sell under the hammer for a single dollar bill. The lady read my face value at a glance and dismissed me offhand without another look.”

He saw the two elder Lassiter brothers riding south at the next street intersection. It was quite dark when he cleared the town and as he rode on through the night he was conscious of a mild dissatisfaction. He drew forth his last coin and addressed it.

“I’ve rode into town with a many a dollar on me,” he said. “But this is about the first time I ever rode out and packed one away with me. That shows I’m growing more conservative right along. You must be a lucky little devil or else you wouldn’t have stayed with me till I got out of town.” He slipped the coin back into his pocket. “Little lonely dollar, you must mount up to a million.”

He heard the low rumble of animal voices and knew that Hinman’s cows were being held on the bed ground somewhere just ahead. The old man greeted him as he rode up.

“I’m sending Bradshaw and four others with you,” he announced. “One of the boys is holding the pack outfit back behind. He’ll follow. I’ll help you get ’em on their feet and moving.”

The men spread out at intervals to the north of the herd, riding along its edge and crowding the cows on the near fringe to their feet. They worked cautiously, for any slight commotion of an unusual nature, the weird flap of a garment or any cry too startling, might serve to throw a few cows into a panic which would be swiftly communicated to the rest and put the whole herd off the bed ground in a mad stampede. Their chief concern was to prevent a disastrous night run. The affair was skilfully handled and the near fringe of cows rose reluctantly, crowded back through the ranks of their reclining fellows and raising them in turn till eventually the whole herd was up and drifting south.

The moon rose sharp and clear as they crossed into the Strip and for hours they forged slowly ahead, their course a trifle south of west. When they had covered ten miles the forward drift of the herd was arrested and the tired cows bedded down at once.

“From now on they’re in your hands, son,” Hinman said to Carver. “I’ll back any deal you make with the outfits off to the south, so play her the best you know.”

He turned his horse back toward the State line and left Carver to solve the problem as best he might. Their present stand was in the quarantine belt, a strip some miles wide which paralleled the State line; this to protect the stock of the Kansas cowmen from Texas fever and other contagious afflictions so prevalent among the trail herds brought up from the south. All southern cattle must be held in this quarantine area until declared free of all disease before proceeding on their northward course to market. This was the off-season for the pastoral transportation of trail herds from the Texas cow country, and the only official intervention against which Carver must guard was the possible appearance of one of the infrequent cavalry patrols sent out from old Fort Darlington on the southern extremity of the Strip.

The unowned lands were tenanted only by a few big cow outfits whose owners had made satisfactory arrangements with the Cherokees, paying their tribute in the shape of grazing fees, a custom so long established that it was recognized by Federal authorities, and government agents now collected the money and passed it on to the territory tribes.

Carver stood his turn on first guard and as he rode round the herd he pondered the problem in hand and sought for a solution which would give him an insight into Hinman’s purpose. It was not so much from the authorities but from the common themselves that he might expect prompt interference. Those who leased range in the Strip did not often wait upon the slow process of official intervention when outside brands encroached upon their interests but took the law into their own hands at once. Hinman was well aware of that condition, Carver reflected. He circled the herd and sang to soothe his charges on the bed ground. Off across he could hear the voice of another night guard raised in song. He produced his one last coin and studied it in the moonlight.

“Little lonely dollar, you must mount up to a million,” he chanted. “And we’ll mount the first step upward if only I can fathom what Hinman expects of me. He don’t care a dime about saving taxes on this bunch, and he knows that I can see the costs will outweigh the profits two to one even if everything goes through without a quiver. He and Nate Younger, while they get along personal, have been whetting their tomahawks for each other as far back as I can remember. Now he leads us down here due north of the center of old Nate’s leases and stresses the point that I can maybe trade deals with any outfit off to the south—and Nate the only possible one I could deal with from this point. What time I haven’t worked for Hinman, I’ve been working for Nate, and Old Joe knows that Nate’s the best friend I’ve got outside himself. Now what’s he aiming at?”

His shift on guard duty was half over before he found the slightest ray of light on the problem.

“Joe must know that Nate will pounce down on us right off,” he mused. “If they open the Strip for settlement, like Joe predicts, then Younger will be forced out of the game. Now just why does Hinman provide him with this opportunity for a big final disturbance with all the odds on Nate’s side? He couldn’t have done it accidental and it appears more and more like he’s deliberately throwing himself wide open.”

His mind traveled back over the events of the day and settled upon the scene which had transpired near the town well just prior to his departure.

“There now,” he suddenly remarked. “That’s sure enough the answer. Bart and Mattison didn’t want to carry that altercation to a finish but neither one would back down with folks looking on. These two stubborn old pirates are likely in a similar frame of mind. It’s always seemed to me someway, that they didn’t either one feel half so hostile toward the other as they made it appear. Joe’s giving Nate one final chance to show his hand—to take a whack at him or quit, hoping to cancel this old feud before Nate’s crowded out. He didn’t send me down here to keep out of trouble but shoved me right into it, knowing I’d do my best to make it as light as possible when it came. That’s all the idea I’ve got to work on.”

The men breakfasted in the first light of day and the cows were allowed to scatter through the breaks on the far side of the creek.

“You boys hold ’em within fair limits,” Carver instructed Bradshaw. “I’ll join you up here this evening. If a patrol should jump you by any off chance, you just explain that you’re driving them down to the Half Diamond H and laid over here a day to rest them.”

“They’d be sure to believe us,” Bradshaw commented skeptically. “Old Nate Younger wouldn’t let a Kansas cow graze on the Half Diamond H for the price of it. Leastways not one of Hinman’s.”

“He’s maybe changed his mind,” said Carver. “I’ll ride down and see.”

He headed for the home ranch of the Half Diamond H, located on a branch of Cabin Creek some miles above that stream’s confluence with the Salt Fork of the Arkansas. Younger met him halfway, a rider having already reported the presence of the herd.

“Now just what are you doing with a bunch of Joe Hinman’s cows in the quarantine strip and messing along the edge of my range?” he demanded. “You’ve rode for me on enough different occasions to know better than that.”

“They just came fogging down here of their own accord,” Carver testified. “And I came after them.”

“I’ll see that you get plenty of help when it comes to running them back,” Younger offered. He waved an arm toward a group of approaching riders. “Here come my boys now. I’ll throw ’em in behind those cows and jam them back across the line and scatter ’em over the whole west half of Kansas; or else take charge and hold ’em till I can get a detachment sent up from Fort Darlington to keep the whole mangy layout in quarantine till they’re fined more’n their market price. I’ll——”

“I wouldn’t adopt either one of those courses you just mentioned Nate,” Carver counselled. “If a patrol jumped us I was going to proclaim that Joe was short of range and that you, being an old friend of his, had volunteered to run this bunch on your leases till the grass greened up next month. That was my idea.”

“I’ve got another idea that beats yours all to hell,” Younger retorted. “About fifteen years back a bunch of my stuff drifted off in a storm and fed out a few sections of Joe Hinman’s land that had blowed clear of snow. He thought I’d shoved ’em on there to eat him out. This is the first real good chance I’ve had to play even for what shape he left those cows of mine in after hazing ’em at a run through a foot of snow. What I’ll do to this bunch of Box T steers will be sufficient.”

He motioned his grinning riders to fall in behind him as he headed up country with Carver.

“Then it does look as if I’d soon be out of a job,” Carver said, “if you go and mess up my detail. Maybe you’d take me on for the summer.”

“You was top hand for me once,” Younger returned. “And you could be again if you’d only stay at it. Anyway, I’ll put you on for the summer.”

“This season will likely see the last big round-up of all history,” Carver predicted. “And I want to be part of it. I’d sort of planned to go in with your wagon. I guess this is the last. The order is out to comb every hoof from the unowned lands.”

The old man’s face clouded. Two years before all cowmen had been ordered to clear their stock from the Cherokee Strip. They had grimly refused, and now the order had been issued again.

“They mean business this time,” Carver predicted. “There’ll be cavalry patrols riding to keep an eye on the round-up, likely, and make sure that everything’s gathered and shoved outside. There’ll be upwards of two hundred thousand cows collected and marketed this summer in order to clear the Strip.”

“Maybe you’re right, son,” Younger said. “It’s beginning to look that way. You don’t want to miss the round-up. The likes of it will never be seen again on this old footstool. All wiped out in a single season. It ain’t right. It just can’t be right.”

The old man’s thoughts strayed from the immediate matter in hand, that of evening the old score with Hinman, and he nodded abstractedly to the comments of his younger companion. He was possessed of cows in plenty and if forced to market them he could cash in for a fortune; but this game was his life. Take away his cows and money would mean little.

“I was just thinking, Nate,” Carver said. “It’ll take a long time to settle all this country up after you folks are ordered out with your stock, and there’ll be worlds of good range going to waste with nothing to eat it off. A man could hold a dodge-bunch down here on good feed and keep ’em moving from point to point. If we were questioned we could explain that we were trail herding ’em through when they up and made a night run off to one side; that we are just gathering ’em up again to move them on up to the Box T range.”

“Box T!” Younger scoffed. “Joe Hinman, that wrinkled old pirate, wouldn’t let a second elapse before he’d be spreading the news that I had a bunch down here. He’d never let a Half Diamond H cow set foot on his range and ever get off with its hide on.”

“But if you’d help him out now, like I said a while back, he’d be bound to return it out of sheer human decency,” Carver pointed out. “I could hold a bunch down here easy. If you help Joe out now he can’t go back on you then.”

“Can’t be?” Nate inquired. “I don’t know.” The blank wall of a cowless future loomed just ahead. In a few more months his old brand would be but a tradition. The only alternative would be to buy out another brand in some distant part where open range was still available. But this was his chosen territory and a move did not appeal. “One time and another I’ve dealt him a hell-slew of trouble.”

“He’s put in fifteen years handing it back to you,” Carver said. “That’s part of the game, the way the pair of you has played it. Joe’s not the man to stick at trifles like that.”

Younger shook his head.

“Then maybe he was mistaken about how you felt,” said Carver. “He gave me my instructions straight enough. ‘If you strike trouble down there just go right to the Half Diamond H and get in touch with Nate Younger,’ he says. ‘He’ll put you straight, and if he can’t fix you up then there’s no way out.’ That’s the last words he told me.”

“He didn’t,” Nate returned doubtfully. “You got mixed in the names. He didn’t ever instruct you to look to me for anything but trouble.”

“Those were my orders,” Carver affirmed. “Word for word, as near as I can recall, just as I recited them to you. That’s what he says, looking right at me, just what I told you he did.”

“I don’t know what he’s driving at,” Younger stated. “But I’ll certainly hand him a surprise. I’ll take him up—which’ll be exactly the last thing he’d counted on.”

He tugged his hat over his eyes and turned to the nearest of the riders who trailed behind him.

“You boys dangle along back and take down the north fence for a few hundred yards west of the creek,” he instructed. “Pull the staples and lay the wire flat on the ground so Carver can cross in with his bunch any time.”

The men gazed in blank astonishment at thus being deprived of their contemplated sport but they turned back without comment.

“That Carver now,” one youth remarked. “He’s the silver-tongued little fixer. He’s somehow managed to reverse old Nate in mid-air. Once in Caldwell he talked me out of my last dollar. He did, honest.”

“But he spent it on you later,” another testified. “That’s him. But now he’s gone and ruined my whole day. I’d prefer to be jamming them cows north at a run to coaxing staples out of fence posts.”

Some days thereafter Freel rode northward through the leases of the Half Diamond H, crossed the Salt Fork and stayed overnight at the home ranch of that brand. For several days the marshal had been visiting the widely scattered outfits operating in that portion of the Strip and making inquiries as to the whereabouts of certain men on a day of the preceding week. Freel knew the customs of the men with whom he had to deal, being familiar with the evasiveness which was a country-wide characteristic whenever one citizen was questioned concerning the possible operations of another. The marshal’s queries were therefore more or less desultory and wholly unproductive.

On the date in question four masked horsemen had surrounded a box car recently planted beside the railroad track in the Cherokee Strip. This car had served as a station and the word “Casa” had been painted in white letters upon either end. The stockmen had stubbornly resisted all attempts to establish stations in the unowned lands, foreseeing in such moves another possible link toward the dreaded settling of the Strip. These wild riders had evicted the two men stationed there and applied the torch to the box car which seemed to presage a future settlement at that point. The embryo city of Casa was no more. Freel was conscious of no particular regret over the fate of this defunct metropolis, but in view of the fact that only Federal officers were vested with authority in the Cherokee lands he felt it expedient to make a few perfunctory inquiries.

When he rode away from the Half Diamond H he elected to wend his way up Cabin Creek and so chanced across two thousand head of Joe Hinman’s cows grazing in the quarantine strip. Freel sought out Carver and acquainted him with the details of the Casa raid.

“The Lassiters rode out of Caldwell Tuesday night, you recollect,” he said. “They’re a shifty bunch of boys, the Lassiters. But Crowfoot assures me that they turned up at his place on Turkey Creek early Wednesday morning and this Casa raid was Wednesday night. Crowfoot says they’ve been there straight through. That lets the Lassiters out.”

Carver recalled the black scrap of cloth he had seen in the dresser drawer in the Lassiter’s room, its eyeholes staring up at him. Crowfoot’s testimony to the marshal did not cause Carver to revise his former estimate of the cowman; rather it served to strengthen his previous opinion as to Crowfoot’s character.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, that lets the Lassiters out.”

“But it don’t have any particular bearing on the fact that Hinman’s cows are grazing in the quarantine strip,” the marshal commented.

“Joe’s short of range,” Carver returned. This was according to formula. “We’re resting ’em over here for a day before taking ’em on down to the Half Diamond H.”

“That’s nice,” said Freel. “But of course it’s my duty as an officer to report their presence to the Federal authorities. Then they can use their own judgment as to quarantine proceedings and maybe even a trespass suit. Tax-dodging, is he?”

“I’ll bet fifty even that you go and do that very thing,” Carver stated.

“How do you know?” the marshal retorted. “I’ll bet you a hundred I don’t.”

“A hundred is way beyond my depth,” said Carver. “Even fifty would strain me most to pieces, but I could manage to pay it the day I land in Caldwell if I lost.”

“Fifty’s a bet,” the marshal accepted. “I’ll take you on. And don’t forget to have the money in your clothes next time you show up in Caldwell.”

Carver gazed after Freel’s retreating back as the worthy marshal rode northward toward the line.

“There goes a part of my profits,” he observed. “This petty larceny milking process enlightens me as to why I never could warm up to Freel. I’d rather he’d held me up, but the man that’ll do one won’t do the other—not ever. It all comes of my being too honest. If I’d neglected to make that losing bet, he’d have made a report that might have caused old Joe some grief. My conscience has let me down for fifty. Honesty is maybe the best policy for the long pull but it’s ruinous in short spurts.”

Someway he regretted the loss of that fifty dollars, a sentiment hitherto unknown to him, for he had never valued dollars except as a means to an end and the end was in each case the same,—the swift squandering of the means. But of late, while riding his lonely way in charge of Hinman’s cows, he had pondered the possibilities of various projects in which he might engage, the accumulation of dollars, not their spending, constituting the ultimate objective in each case.

When the marshal had disappeared Carver rode a few miles north to the crest of a high ridge, from which point of vantage he could sweep a considerable area. Off across the State line he could make out white points of light at intervals of a mile or more, and he knew them for the covered wagons of squatters who were camped just outside the Strip. He knew too that as one neared Caldwell he would find the intervals between these camps considerably decreased and he made a tentative estimate that there were fifty such outfits camped along the line in the twenty miles between himself and Caldwell. For three months these homeless ones had been rolling up to the edge of the unowned lands and making camp. These were but the vanguard, the first to respond to the persistent rumor recently set afloat to the effect that the Strip would soon be thrown open for entry and free homes be made available for all.

Carver allowed his mental vision to travel far beyond the horizon which cut off his physical view, and he saw other wagons coming. He pictured them scattered along the roads of Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri, of Illinois and Iowa. From far and near the landless of a vast country were converging upon this last corner left unsettled, their worldly effects crowded into the bulging beds of old-time prairie schooners, their live stock trailing behind and the tousled heads of their youngsters peering curiously from the wagons as they rolled through country strange to them. Their pace was slow and plodding but intensely purposeful, a miniature reproduction of that general movement which had resulted in reclaiming the Great West from savagery a few decades before,—a movement which Carver felt could not long be forestalled. He addressed his luck piece in prophetic vein.

“It’s coming and we can’t head it off. In ten years there’ll be a squatter on every second section and the old free range cut up with fence. Little lonely dollar, what will you and me be doing then? That’s the prospect that’s looming just ahead of us.”

In fact this prospect seemed nearer still when he crossed back with Hinman’s cows some weeks thereafter. With the first warm days of approaching spring the slow stream of incoming squatters had increased and there were more outfits camped along the line. Carver rode up to the ranch house in the gray light of dawn to report that the herd was back on Hinman’s own range once more. He found old Joe at breakfast and was invited to sit in.

“Draw up your stool and toss a feed in you,” the old man greeted. “Tell me how everything came to pass.”

“It was a right uneventful trip,” Carver reported. “There was only one patrol came messing through and we shifted the bunch down on to the Half Diamond H for a week or more.”

“The Half Diamond H!” Hinman exclaimed. “Then Nate Younger must have died without me getting word of it. I’ll send over some flowers right away. It’s a moral certainty that roan-whiskered old lizard wouldn’t let one of my cows have a spoonful of grass if he was alive and kicking.”

“On the contrary,” said Carver; “he put himself out to invite us down in case we thought best to pull off the quarantine belt. He ordered his north fence laid flat as soon as he gets word we’re in the country with your cows, and announced that he’d be palsied and paralyzed and even worse than that before he’d be found lacking in hospitality toward a friend in need.”

“Yes,” said Hinman. “Go right on. What else did he say?”

“Nothing to speak of,” Carver said. “He did sort of mention that you was welcome to throw as much stuff as you liked on the Half Diamond H as long as he was running it. So you might say the trip was more or less of a holiday.”

Hinman allowed his gaze to rove through the window and settle upon a covered wagon crawling slowly southward.

“He’ll be crowded clear off the map inside another year,” Hinman said. “I don’t suppose you told him about how glad I’d be to have him swarm over here on my grass with all his cows whenever he’s finally ordered out down there; now did you?”

“I did sort of intimate that your range would always be wide open,” Carver stated. “I was straining every little point to save the taxes on that bunch of cows. I’ll bet it would have totalled up to anyhow six hundred dollars, those taxes would.”

“Well, that’s all you agreed to do,” said Hinman. “And I guess I’d better pay you off and have it over with, even if you did get me into considerable of a snarl. Only one thing I can do now, since you made all those arrangements, and that’s to back up anything you told Nate. I never figured you’d let me in for anything like this.”

“I’d prefer to take my pay in some other form than cash,” Carver announced as Hinman produced his check book. “Suppose you give me a bill of sale for a hundred head of coming yearlings instead of nine hundred cash and let ’em range with your stuff up on the west place till November.”

“You can’t spend calves,” said Hinman.

“I could borrow against them if I was needing money,” Carver explained.

“But coming yearlings are worth twelve dollars a head,” Hinman objected.

“I’ll owe you the rest,” Carver offered.

“And when I deliver in November they’ll be worth more’n that. They’ll bring round sixteen dollars a head by then.”

“That’s what I was counting on,” said Carver. “I like to feel every morning that I’m worth just a little more than I was the night before.”

Hinman laid down the check book and regarded him.

“Now it’s always struck me that you put yourself out to be worth just a mite less each morning than you was the night before,” he stated. “Surely you haven’t gone and deserted the ranks of the tumbleweeds in favor of the pumpkins. I never knew you to set a value on a dollar.”

“That’s because I never chanced across just the right sort of dollar,” Carver explained. “Now this is different.” He produced his lucky coin and handed it over for inspection. “I’m aiming to accumulate a number of others just like this to keep it company.”

Hinman inspected the silver dollar.

“Yes,” he said. “This is a right unusual appearing sort of coin. Don’t know as I ever see one just like it. Now if you really think there’s a chance for you to collect some more like this and take an interest in holding on to them, why we might make a deal. You’ve just effected quite a saving on my taxes, so I can maybe stretch a point. But if I don’t deliver till November, and run ’em meantime on my grass, those critters will cost you fourteen apiece instead of twelve. You’ll be owing me five hundred in place of three.”

“I don’t mind owing you,” said Carver. “We’ll close the deal.”

As he rode away from the Box T he sang:

“Oh, I’ve risked many dollars

On the rambling tumbleweed

And only one on pumpkins

But that one went to seed.”

III

The crest of the watershed separating the flow between the Salt Fork and the Cimarron was also the dividing line between Crowfoot’s range and the leases of the Half Diamond H. Carver crossed over this low divide and angled toward Turkey Creek to intersect its course at a point near Crowfoot’s place. Here the majority of the range stock wore the straggling brand intended to represent a bird’s claw, the badge of Crowfoot’s ownership.

Carver viewed the ranch buildings from the shoulder of a hill, noting particularly the corral which was fashioned as a solid stockade some ten feet high. Crowfoot had entered into a beef contract with the railroad and his slaughtering was conducted within this small enclosure. Carver entertained positive convictions as to the purpose of this arrangement but in common with others of his kind he made a religion of remaining strictly incurious regarding the calling or customs of acquaintances except in so far as they might affect his own immediate affairs.

He turned his horse up the Turkey Creek bottoms and followed that stream for a dozen miles, then angled away to the right toward the Half Diamond H range. When well up the gentle slope he rode out on to the rim of a pocket. The scattering trees in the bottoms indicated the presence of water. A spring branch probably headed in the pocket and drained back toward Turkey Creek, he reflected. He pulled up his horse as a woman’s voice floated up to him. Somewhere down below him a girl was singing, and Carver headed his horse down the slope toward the sound.

A sod house nestled under the hill beside the trickling spring-creek. The singing ceased abruptly and a girl appeared in the door of the sod house at the sound of his horse’s hoofs in the yard.

For the second time Carver saw her framed in a doorway and he was conscious of a sudden pleased conviction that she should always choose a similar setting. The drab surroundings served only as a background to hold her vivid youth and charm in more startling relief. Carver recollected that he had mauled one brother in no gentle fashion and was held accountable for another’s day of transgressions; in consequence he feared a cool reception from the sister. Instead, her face lighted with sudden recognition.

“Oh, it’s you!” she greeted. “Bart will be coming home any time now and he’d be so sorry if he missed you. Won’t you step down off your horse and wait?”

She sat on the doorsill and motioned Carver to a seat on a bench against the cabin. He removed his hat and tilted back against the sod wall as she explained that Bart was even now overdue. As they talked it was quite evident that all her thoughts centered round the younger brother. Carver found the tones of her voice as pleasant to his ear as the sight of her was pleasing to his eyes, and he was content to listen, hoping meanwhile that Bart would never come.

He knew this for a Crowfoot line camp, recently installed, which accounted for the fact that he had not chanced across it the year before. The Lassiters, therefore, must ride for Crowfoot, he decided.

“Bart and I only came down last week,” she said. “We’ve been living in your little house in Caldwell. Did you know?”

“I gave him the key and told him the place was his,” Carver said. “But I’d have straightened it up a bit if I’d known he was going to install you there.”

“It was supremely tidy,” she complimented. “Which was a distinct surprise. Most men’s housekeeping is rather the reverse.”

Her gaze kept wandering off down the bottoms for some sign of Bart’s return.

“I do hope he comes,” she said.

“I’m real anxious to see Bart,” he confessed. “I certainly hope he turns up sometime inside of the next three or four hours for this is my busy day and I couldn’t conscientiously wait on him longer than that.”

His tones expressed only a mild anxiety over the possible non-arrival of his friend.

“Do please stay the very limit, at least,” she urged, and laughed up at him. “You know, you’re like Bart in a great many ways.” Carver someway felt that he knew her better after that laugh. “Don’t you think you two are somewhat alike?”

He had divined the close bond between this girl and her brother and now made swift use of the knowledge.

“Bart and I are so similar that we might easy be mistaken for twins,” he admitted. “You might say we’re almost identical.”

“He means a lot to me Bart does,” she said. “In most ways he’s a lovable youngster, but——”

Carver leaned back with an audible sigh.

“Tell me all about Bart,” he urged.

“I will,” she agreed. “In most ways he’s likable but he’s as wild as a hawk. He is absolutely irresponsible and will commit any reckless folly on a second’s notice without a thought of future consequences. The future means not one thing to him. He’s sublimely confident that every new day stands by itself, entirely unrelated to either yesterday or to-morrow. And he’s too easily led. Now don’t you think you two are considerably alike?”

Carver considered this at some length.

“There’s some few particulars wherein our make-ups branch way out apart,” he testified. “On those points we’re altogether dissimilar. Now me, I just can’t be led. I’m sometimes misled, maybe, but never plain led. And so far as the relation of one day to another”—he produced a silver dollar and regarded it—“why nothing could possibly convince me that five weeks ago last Tuesday wasn’t close kin to to-day.” The girl’s mind flashed back to that first meeting as he smiled across at her and continued: “And I’m hoping that there’ll be other days in the future that’ll belong to the same family group. You’d be downright surprised to know how far my mind wanders into the future—and you accusing me of not looking ahead.”

“He’s told me a lot about you,” she said. “You’re the supreme chief of the tumbleweeds, from what I gather; openly irresponsible.”

“On the contrary, I’m apt to take my responsibilities too much to heart if I don’t watch myself,” he defended. “Do you consider a state of responsibility one to strive for?” Then, as she nodded, “Hereafter I’ll track down responsibilities like a duck collects Junebugs, and assume one after the next.”

“I’ve raised Bart from a baby,” she said. “And I don’t want to see him go over to the wild bunch. He likes you a lot. Use that influence to steady him, won’t you, instead of the other way?”

“Just what is the main thing you want Bart to stay clear of?” he asked.

“I want him to run straight,” she said.

Carver rose to take his leave, his departure hastened by the sight of a horseman through the trees far down the bottoms. And the rider was not Bart. He had no desire to meet Noll Lassiter during his first real visit with the girl, and he somehow knew the identity of the man who approached.

“Maybe I can do Bart a trifle of good in spots,” he said, as he stood before her. “And I’ll guarantee not to do him any great amount of harm.”

“Thanks,” she said, rising to face him and extending her hand. “I knew you’d do it.”

Carver retained the hand and leaned to kiss her as she stood looking up at him. The girl stepped back and studied him, evidencing no annoyance but seeming rather to try to determine the thought which had occasioned the act and searching for a possible trace of disrespect. Carver met her eyes fairly.

“You oughtn’t to have smiled just at that particular moment,” he said.

“You see, you are irresponsible,” she pointed out. “That’s exactly what Bart would have done. You yield to any passing whim.”

“That wasn’t any passing whim,” he corrected. “It was one powerful impulse; and it’s permanent—not passing. It’s related to to-day and five weeks ago Tuesday, and I’m hoping it’s related to to-morrow.”

She disregarded this except for an almost imperceptible shake of her head.

“But you will remember about Bart,” she urged.

“I’ll try and collect all Bart’s loose ends and shape him up into one solid pattern of propriety,” he promised. “You won’t hardly know him for the same party after I’ve worked him over.” He swung to the saddle. “But I’ll have to put in considerable time over here conferring with you if we’re going to make a success out of Bart.”

He turned his horse to leave but the approaching rider had hastened through the last belt of trees and he now held up a hand and signalled Carver to wait. Lassiter pulled up his horse abruptly as he discovered Carver’s identity.