“He was out for you,” Jimmy informed. “I don’t know why but maybe you do.”
“Not an idea; never laid an eye on him before,” Carver asserted.
“He’s been waiting two days,” Jimmy said. He removed his hand from beneath the bar and exhibited the long-barreled gun. “I had this shoved against the front side of the bar within a foot of his vitals so I could touch it off through the wood in case of a slip. Them’s only half-inch boards there in front. You and me has been friends a long time and I was half minded to down him before you showed up; only you can’t put a man across just because he’s inquiring about a friend, no matter what you suspect about his intentions—not without getting thirty years or else take to the hills. But I was here to see that things came out all right.”
“I wonder now,” Carver said, looking down at the man on the floor. “I wonder who sent him.”
“You knew, didn’t you, that Freel has been round collecting evidence against Bart in that Wharton affair?” Jimmy asked. “I’ve been hearing that for quite a piece back. Folks get to talking over their drinks. Most always they do.” He recited a few comments which had come to his ears. “Just thought I’d tell you. If you look under that party’s vest you’ll find a deputy’s badge. That’s a hard layout up at the county seat and you’ve had words with different heads of the ring, so I gather.”
“That clears up the reason for his being here,” Carver said. “They sent him. He’d make a clean get-away if he could—flash that deputy’s badge if he couldn’t, and they’d back him up.”
“He don’t know that you’re Carver,” Jimmy said. “I’ll bring him round after you leave and explain that you was a friend of Carver’s and decided that things wasn’t right when I made that incautious remark. That will put me in the clear. I’ll announce how he’s unsafe in these parts; that you brought in twenty-odd friends to view him laying there, face up, on the floor; that they marked well his features and declared open season on him anywheres in this part of the State. If he believes me he’ll high-tail for parts unknown—and if he don’t, why, I’ll send him there.”
Carver rode out to the Half Diamond H and entered the house. When he reappeared he was wearing his gun and he rode on across the ridge to the Lassiters. He found Bart seated on the corral bars, his chin propped in his hands as he gazed moodily across a field of ripening grain.
“How long since you indulged in some thoughtless comments about Freel’s being mixed up in that Wharton hold-up?” Carver asked.
“Two weeks—maybe three,” Bart returned. “He was so satisfied with himself that I just thought I’d tell him.”