Carver watched the south-bound passenger train come to a halt for the first time in weeks. The assembled population of Oval Springs cheered this unexpected event. A group of officials descended to look over the ground and one man announced to the crowd that they had come to select a site for the new station, construction of which was to begin on the morrow. Surveyors were unloading equipment. A work train crawled into town and a hundred men swarmed off the cars to begin work on a switch track. The feud was ended and Oval Springs had won out in the fight. Years later it would break out again and again until Casa should eventually come into her own.
Crowds of cheering citizens swarmed the streets of Oval Springs throughout the rest of the day and there was every symptom that it would be a wild night in town. Carver considered plunging into the festivities. Someway the thought of returning to the ranch held forth no appeal; this strange lack of interest was equally true when he contemplated joining the celebration over the victory of Oval Springs. He didn’t care a hang which town had won out.
“There don’t seem to be much of anything that I do want to indulge in right now,” he remarked. “So I guess I’ll ride home. You won’t be needing me any longer,” he said to Mattison. “If you don’t mind I’ll resign and be on my way.”
He rode out of town in mid-afternoon and he failed to stop by the Lassiter’s place as was his usual custom but held straight on to the Half Diamond H.
Molly heard through Bart that he had returned. She expected to see him waiting for her in the little saddle in the ridge where formerly they had met of evenings but she watched the shadows fall on three successive nights and failed to see him skylined there. Her school opened with twenty pupils of assorted sizes, ages and degrees of intelligence and she threw herself into this new work. As she rode home on the second night after the opening she saw Carver in the field. He waved his hat but made no move to cross over. The next evening she motioned to him and he joined her in the road.
“They tell me you’ve got a family of youngsters ranging all the way from Mexicans to Bostonese,” he greeted. “How’s the new school?”
“Perfect,” she said. “I love it.”
“Now me, I’d lose my mind after the first day,” he said. “Has Johnny begun to shed his milk teeth yet? It’s a downright shame the boy has to lose ’em again after all the trouble he had cutting his first ones.”
The girl remained silent while he made inquiries concerning a number of her charges, recalling incidents from their past lives which she had heard from fond parents and passed on to him at various times. He had dropped into his old casual vein as easily as if nothing of an unusual nature had occurred since their last meeting. But Molly found it difficult to meet his mood and chat on trivial topics. She was conscious of a certain restraint. It was fully to be expected that he would mention the one thing which was uppermost in his mind and hers, attempting to explain it by the code of his kind, but it became increasingly evident that he did not intend to refer to it. She cast about for something to say but could discover no topic. Her mind was too exclusively occupied with that other.
“That’s a good-looking new shirt you have on,” she stated at last, and was angrily conscious of the inanity of the observation in view of all that was left unsaid between them. But she forced herself to go on. “I like gray. You never affect red shirts like the most of the tumbleweeds wear.”