But all this was merely a passing phase coincident to the transition period of a new and untried territory during its transformation into an old and proven one. The background was one of enduring solidity. More than thirty thousand families had found homes in a single day and these toiled steadily on, unmindful of the wave of deviltry and corruption that swept the Strip, such circumstances having no particular bearing on their daily lives. Later, when they had more time to devote to affairs outside of the immediate problem of shaping their homesteads up into producing farms, they would rise up and cast out the parasites without apparent effort, for after all the solid citizens were many and the parasites comparatively few.
Freel rode out of Oval Springs and he traveled past occasional fields that were green with waving wheat. Spring had brought fresh evidence that the Strip, now a part of Oklahoma, would eventually prove to be the most productive portion of the State. Spring crops of all sorts were coming up in riotous profusion. Young orchards had been planted round many a homestead cabin; rows of slender saplings marked the site of future stately groves. The scattering fields that had been seeded to winter wheat gave promise of a tremendous yield and an average of more than twenty bushels to the acre was confidently predicted. Orderly garden plots were in evidence on every homestead.
Since his occupancy of the Sheriff’s office Freel had several times stopped at the Lassiters’ cabin. He had haunted Molly Lassiter’s footsteps for a year prior to that day when Carver’s inopportune arrival had put a stop to his advances. In his new guise as a moneyed, influential citizen he saw one more chance of gaining the girl’s favor. His manner was affable and without hint of previous unpleasant relations. Rather his attitude was one of friendly interest which any prosperous person might take in the affairs of a less fortunate acquaintance. Molly, believing that the past had best be left undisturbed, received him as she would any other casual acquaintance. On the occasion of this last visit Freel found Bart at home.
Bart had worked steadily, seldom straying far from home but instead finding relaxation at Carver’s bunk house where the grub-liners still convened. There were times when he exhibited real enthusiasm for his work and on such days he spoke of eventually buying out one or more neighbors and operating a farm which would one day rival Carver’s holdings across the ridge. There were other periods when the monotony of farm life maddened him and he grew moody and restless, conscious of the urge to straddle a horse and be off for some point where distance was not measured by neatly fenced section lines but instead was calculated in terms of a day’s travel on a horse. It was during the darkest moments of one of these moods that Freel dropped in.
Bart listened while Freel commented upon various business and political ventures upon which he was engaged. Bart was frankly disinterested, his one thought for the moment being a desire to step up on a good horse and ride across a sage-brush desert in the fierce glare of the summer sun, or, as an alternative, to ride the same stretch in a screeching winter blizzard; it mattered little which so long as there would be neither fence nor human within a radius of twenty miles. All would have been well except that Freel, equally self-centered, attributed Bart’s abstraction to a feeling of envy induced by the attractive word picture Freel had painted of his own successes. In parting he drew Bart aside.
“Any time I can hold out a helping hand you can count on me,” he assured. “I’m in better shape to help you on your feet than any man in these parts.”
Bart was not actively conscious that he was being patronized but he was aware of a sense of irritation, and the tone as well as the substance of the offer brought his ill humor to a sudden focus.
“Oh, hell!” he said wearily. “You can’t do me any favor except to let me alone.”
“That’s what I’ve been doing,” Freel returned. “Hadn’t you noticed?”
“I haven’t missed you,” Bart confessed. “But keep it up and maybe I will.”