“But it’s paved the way for the clean-up of the county seat,” said Carver.
“Let’s you and me ride over and clean it up in the old wild way,” Bart urged.
“Only we’ll let them ride out here,” Carver substituted. “That background I was speaking about a while back is all arranged.”
“I’m glad you’re satisfied with the background,” Bart returned. “I still maintain that I ought to secrete myself behind a sprig of scrub oak and wait until Freel comes riding into the foreground. That way we’d take ’em front and rear. But anyway suits me, if only it transpires soon.”
“Real soon now,” Carver promised. He turned to a grub-liner who was saddling his horse in the corral.
“You’ll find Mattison waiting in the hotel at Casa,” he informed. “He’ll be expecting the message. Tell him just this: That my time has come to deputize him. He’ll know what to do. Then you forget it.” He turned back to Bart. “Real soon now,” he repeated. “That’s the chief reason why Hinman and old Nate insisted on taking Molly over to enjoy herself at the fair.”
The girl was, in all truth, enjoying herself at the fair. It was as old Joe Hinman remarked to a group of friends in the lobby of Wellman’s hotel.
“Nate and me are giving the little girl a vacation,” he said. “First time she’s been away from that homestead overnight since Bart filed on it. She thinks a lot of that little place, Molly does. Even now she won’t be persuaded to stay away but one night. We’ll take her up to Caldwell this evening to buy a few women’s fixings and show her the best time we can but she’ll come traipsing back home to-morrow. Can’t keep her away. Carver had to promise to go over and stay all night with Bart so no one could steal that homestead while she’s gone.”
Nate Younger remarked similarly in Freel’s saloon within earshot of the two Ralstons who were refreshing themselves at the bar. In fact, the two old cowmen mentioned the matter to a number of acquaintances whom they chanced across in a variety of places throughout town and it was within an hour of noon before they took Molly out to the fair.
The girl found the fair a mixture of the old way and the new. The exhibits were those of the settlers but the sports and amusements were those of an earlier day, a condition which would prevail for many a year. Every such annual event would witness an increase of agricultural exhibits, fine stock and blooded horses as the country aged; but at fair time, too, the old-time riders of the unowned lands would come into their own again for a single day. Then would bartenders lay aside their white aprons, laborers drop their tools and officers discard their stars, donning instead the regalia of the cowboys. Gaudy shirts and angora chaps would be resurrected from the depths of ancient war bags. Once more they would jangle boots and spurs and twirl old reatas that had seen long service. The spirit of the old days would prevail for a day and a night and fairgoers would quit the exhibits to watch the bronc fighters ride ’em to a standstill, bulldog Texas longhorns and rope, bust and hog-tie rangy steers, to cheer the relay and the wild-horse races and all the rest of it; then a wild night in town, ponies charging up and down the streets to the accompaniment of shrill cowboy yelps and the occasional crash of a gun fired into the air,—then back to the white aprons and the laborer’s tools for another year.