The girl and her two old companions spent the day at the fair and in the early evening took a train to Caldwell some two hours before Freel and Wellman rode out of town. The evening’s festivities were in full swing and none observed their departure. Freel was nervous and excited.
“We’d better have sent some one else,” he said.
Wellman turned on him angrily.
“And have the thing bungled again!” he said. “Damn your roundabout planning and never doing anything yourself. If you hadn’t sent that fool over to Alvin without letting me know we’d have had it all over by now. Crowfoot told you we’d have to do it ourselves. So did I. And if you’d only waited we’d have found an opening months back but that Alvin fluke made Carver take cover and he’s never give us a chance at him since. We wouldn’t even know there was one to-night if those two old fossils hadn’t let it out accidental.”
“But maybe that talk of theirs was—” Freel began, but his companion interrupted and cut short his complaint.
“We’ve give Carver time to do just what we was to head him from doing—getting our names linked with every deal we wanted kept quiet.”
“He couldn’t prove a sentence of it in the next fifteen years,” Freel asserted.
“He’s started folks thinking—and talking,” said Wellman. “They’ll talk more every day. It’s right now or never with me!”
“But it’s too late to make out that it’s an arrest,” Freel protested. “After all that’s been said.”
“That’s what I know,” said Wellman. “So we’ll hurry it up and slip back into town. With all that fair crowd milling around, there won’t be one man that could testify we’d ever left town; and I can produce several that’ll swear positive that we’ve been there all along.”