“Water him from the trough,” he ordered.
“After all those Cherokee ponies have been dipping their noses in it?” Bart demanded. “Not this horse.”
“That bucket is for folks,” the marshal patiently explained.
“An’ this horse is folks,” Lassiter insisted. He continued to extend the brimming bucket horseward with his left hand. The spectators shifted, recalling that Mattison’s predecessor had fallen in a street fight near this same well. There was no ill-feeling between the two men, but neither of them would back down publicly under pressure. Carver glanced aside as a voice called Bart’s name. The girl of the Silver Dollar was peering from a window above a store, her gaze riveted on the group at the well.
“Here’s two of my friends working up a grievance over well water,” Carver said, dropping from his horse. “Wherever did the pair of you acquire this sudden interest in it? I’m surprised at you.”
“If this party’s a friend of yours, why you take him,” said Mattison. “He won’t mind me. Let him water his horse till the well goes dry.”
“No such thing,” Lassiter gracefully declined. “I wouldn’t think of letting the critter slosh his muzzle in the town bucket.”
The marshal moved off and Carver reflected that the girl’s sudden appearance in the doorway of the Silver Dollar had been occasioned by Bart Lassiter’s failure to fulfill his appointment. It also accounted for Bart’s hesitation as they had stepped out of the Golden Eagle earlier in the day. He had halted to avoid meeting the girl, not to avoid Freel, as Carver had previously supposed; and Bart’s grievance against Freel rose from this same source, for undoubtedly the girl who was being piloted down the street by the marshal at the moment of their exit was the same who had later stirred Carver so strangely by her unexpected appearance in the doorway.
“A lady was calling your name from a window a minute back,” he said.
“Likely it was Molly,” Bart returned. “That’s who that ten spot was destined for—the one Noll lifted first. That twenty I planted later would also have found its way to her except for Noll. She’s a sweet kid, Molly, but she’s worried sick every minute I’m out of sight.”