“Then I’ll take to surveying my back track,” Carver promised. “Because if we meet it will likely be from the rear.”
“That’s where,” Bart agreed.
“What’s to hinder my taking you on as a bodyguard, sort of?” Carver suggested. “I’m going in with the Half Diamond H wagon. Old Nate would put you on.”
“The three of us are leaving for the X I L in a day or two,” said Bart. “Otherwise I’d go with you. Milt has been trail boss for the X I L for the last four summers and brought their trail herds through. Always before we’ve gone on back and wintered there, but this season we laid over to help Crowfoot.”
Carver turned this arrangement over in his mind. The X I L was a Texas brand running south of the Washita country.
“I’ll have a little deal on this fall after round-up,” he said. “And I’d like to have you cut in with me, provided you don’t hang out at Crowfoot’s. I’m not over-squeamish and there’s one time and another when I’ve rode for outfits whose methods was open to question. Most riders have. But folks are coming to frown on irregularities and it’s time a man reads his signs right and quits before it’s just too late.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Bart agreed easily. “I can see that plain.”
“It’s my surmise that there’s a right small percentage of the meat that goes to fill Crowfoot’s contracts with the railroad that is dressed out of steers wearing his own brand,” Carver said. “Of course, he’s too smart to cut in on his neighbors, and they don’t bother to get curious as long as they know their own strays are safe on his range. But it’s my guess that if a steer from some foreign outfit turns up on the Turkey Creek range he’ll get converted into beef overnight.”
Lassiter grinned and wagged a negative head.
“Now you wouldn’t go and suspect Crowfoot of filling his beef contracts at other folks’ expense,” he reproved. “Besides, how could he when it’s the law that whenever a cow critter is butchered its hide must be hung on the fence till it’s been inspected and passed?”