The conflagration lasted till dawn, was still smoldering when Carver retired to the bed tent where he slumbered till high noon. An hour after rising he sauntered along the tracks to the north for the purpose of chatting for an hour with Bradshaw, who was stationed within a short distance of camp. His friend was nowhere in sight.
“The sun’s nice and warm,” Carver said. “I’ll find Brad napping on the sunny slope of the grade.”
A bare flat extended for four hundred yards on the east side of the tracks. Beyond it the country was broken and rolling, studded with dwarf brush and scattered thickets of scrub oak. Carver located Bradshaw reclining on the west slope of the railroad embankment in the sun, his hat pulled over his eyes. When within a few feet of Bradshaw’s position Carver flinched convulsively as a rifle ball snapped past within a foot of his head. The thin crack of a rifle accompanied the sound and a faint spurt of blue smoke drifted hazily from a black-jack clump on the far edge of the flat. Carver cleared the edge of the grade at a bound.
No matter what else might occupy Carver’s mind, the thought of Noll Lassiter was ever in the foreground of his consciousness, would remain there until the matter between them was settled, and he knew without question who had fired the shot from the black-jacks.
“Close shooting for four hundred yards. That didn’t miss me an inch,” Carver said. “Get down!” he called sharply; for Bradshaw, thirty feet farther north, had been roused by the sound of the shot and Carver’s plunge down the sheltered side of the grade, and he had risen to his knees to peer off to the east. “Down, Brad! Duck under the bank!”
The warning command came too late. Bradshaw sprawled on his face and slid loosely down the embankment as the rifle spoke again from the thicket. Carver ran to his friend but Bradshaw was beyond need of assistance. He opened his eyes with an effort as Carver knelt over him.
“I’m sorry, Brad,” Carver said. “He was out after me and got you instead when you raised up in sight. I’m sorry, old man.”
Bradshaw essayed a smile and made a feeble move to extend a hand for a farewell shake with his friend.
“It’s all right,” he said—and passed out.
Carver ran back toward the camp, keeping under cover of the embankment. Several men had heard the two shots and had mounted the tracks to determine their source. They saw Carver running toward camp and knew that the two stray reports had carried at least some significance.