Time was passing,—time which meant nothing to him and meant much to Lassiter. Noll must be wondering if any others of Mattison’s men had set forth on his trail. Perhaps they were working it out bit by bit and were even now nearing the spot. A dozen other contingencies might arise. A stray horseman might sight the two riderless horses and set forth to discover the reason. Carver had nothing to lose by discovery. He would profit from such intervention instead, but the injection of any such chance element would seal Lassiter’s doom. By thus dwelling upon Noll’s discomforts Carver was able to partially assuage his own,—all save that gnawing desire for a smoke. Another hour had passed. Then Carver’s mind snapped back from abstract imaginings to the world of realities.
A tuft of grass over across twitched sharply. It jerked again and Carver slid his gun out before him to the length of his arm. For a space of five minutes there was no other move and Carver relaxed, that insane urge to have a smoke at all costs mounting again. A bird hopped close to inspect him, its bright little eyes fixed on his own as it turned its head from side to side for a better view of him. The peak of a hat appeared above the grass tops sixty yards to the east. More of the hat was lifted slowly into view until the whole crown was visible. Carver pictured Noll’s eyes just beneath it, peering from under the brim.
But of course the thing was a plant. Noll would not lift his head with eight inches of hat above it to announce his position. He was raising the hat into sight with a stick to lure Carver into firing as Carver had decoyed him with the coat. Carver restrained the desire to shoot through the grass tops four inches below the crown of the hat. The thing disappeared only to come into view once more at a point some ten feet from the first. Again the move was repeated and this time the hat was thrust up abruptly as if its wearer could no longer exercise sufficient restraint to elevate it an inch at a time. Noll was becoming nervous, breaking under the strain. On the fourth event Carver saw a clear space between the grass and the hat. It dropped back but the crown remained in his range of view and for a space of ten minutes he kept his eyes on that dark spot in the grass.
A movement ten yards to the left of it challenged his attention. A second dark blot showed in the brown of the grass. It moved upward a fraction, the top of a head. Carver noted the slight sidewise motion as the man shifted for a better view. His gun hand contracted as he lined down the barrel but he loosened his fingers again. It would not do to shoot until he was sure, leaving him in the same state of uncertainty which now handicapped Noll. The sun was swinging low in the west. Another two hours and it would be too dark to see. If Noll could hold out until then he could make a clean get-away. If Carver gave a sign too soon Noll would know that his shot of two hours past had failed to locate its mark and he would stay under cover till nightfall and then make a run for it. It was the uncertainty that was breaking him down. Noll couldn’t go against another two hours of that sort of thing, Carver told himself.
He repeated this assurance a score of times after the head disappeared. Two hours of uncertainty for Lassiter—two hours of craving for just one cigarette for himself—which would win out? He composed himself for another long wait.
Then Noll’s head and shoulders appeared as he rose to his knees, only to be as quickly withdrawn from view as he dropped once more on his face. His voice rose from the opposite depression, hoarse and unsteady as he reviled Carver, hoping to taunt him into some answer,—the first sound of a voice in nearly three hours. There came a crashing report from the dip and Carver’s horse went down in a heap, shot through the shoulders. The animal screamed once as it struggled on the ground. A spurt of blue smoke revealed the rifleman’s position but Carver knew that he was well below the danger line. The horse ceased struggling. A bubbling rattle announced the death of his favorite mount. The voice of the man who had fired the wanton shot rose with the sound.
“How do you like the sound of that?” he demanded. “That’s what will happen to you between now and dark.”
He leaped to his feet and stood facing Carver, then dropped back out of sight.
“He’s going to pieces,” Carver told himself. “He’ll make a break now most any time.”
The exertion and relief from inaction apparently had lessened the strain under which Noll had been laboring and he made no other move for many long weary minutes. Then, without warning, he was up and running toward Carver’s position, his rifle half raised before him. He was within forty yards; thirty. Then Carver lifted his forearm and fired. Lassiter tottered drunkenly and shot into the haze of smoke that floated before Carver’s gun. The ball plowed a furrow three inches from Carver’s ear and spattered fresh earth in his face. Carver shot twice again. For a space of twenty seconds he held his place in the grass, then sat up on his heels and twisted a cigarette.