“One more small favor before you put me to work,” Carver requested. “I wish you’d pass out the word, quiet like, among the boys that the first time Bart Lassiter shows up here he’s to be arrested and sent up to Caldwell.”
“What have you got against Bart,” Mattison asked. “I thought you was friends.”
“That’s why I want him tossed into jail and kept out of trouble till I give the word to free him again.”
“All right. We’ll toss him if he shows up in town,” Mattison agreed. “Let’s head for the tracks and I’ll explain your job as we travel.”
For the next three nights Carver patrolled the railroad tracks for a distance of over a mile north of town, visiting the six men stationed in couples at intervals throughout that stretch. Mattison conducted a similar patrol to the south. Throughout that period no move had been made to tear up the tracks. Trains rolled through without a halt and no incident transpired which would furnish the least surface indication of the existence of a bitter feud. But both Carver and Mattison knew that the undercurrent of lawlessness had not subsided; that it merely smoldered, waiting an opportunity to break forth.
During the past month there had been five men killed and as many wounded in the progress of the county-seat war. Three of the slain had been members of the marshal’s posse, for Mattison’s operations were handicapped by red tape, his instructions prohibiting the firing of a shot except in case his own men were attacked. The participants on the reverse side of the question were burdened by no such restrictions. The marshal was unable to gather a single shred of information as to the identity of the men concerned in any one of the wrecking parties. The population of Oval Springs was solidly in favor of any move whatsoever, if only it should result in the stopping of trains at that point.
In mid-afternoon of the fourth day Carver sat cross-legged on the ground in the marshal’s camp beside the tracks a few hundred yards north of town. He leaned back against a bed roll and inspected the general surroundings through half-closed eyes. There was the usual congestion round the three town wells which furnished the only supply of water for the county seat. Tank wagons plied between these wells and the surrounding country, supplying settlers with moisture at fifty cents a barrel. Carver straightened, suddenly alert, as a rider dropped from his horse at the end of the street. His left arm was bound stiffly at his side.
“Bart couldn’t wait for that shoulder to cure before he started hunting for Noll,” Carver said. He noted that two men had stepped in behind Bart. They were Mattison’s men and Bart had not progressed a distance of fifty yards from his horse before he was under arrest.
“That much accomplished,” Carver said. “Bart’s safe out of the way as soon as they get him to Caldwell. Now it’s narrowed down to Noll and myself. I don’t care overmuch for my job but she’d rather it would be me than Bart to go through with it—some one outside the family; and this will rule me outside for all time.”
Bradshaw rode into camp and joined Carver, leaving his mount with several other saddled horses that grazed close at hand. Mattison’s posse, down to the last man, was composed of old friends of Carver’s, former riders of the Strip. Their old calling gone, they now gravitated to any point which promised to afford a touch of excitement.