“I feel like I’d just come in off a spree,” Carver told himself. “It shakes a man up something fearful to let his temper go running wild all over the lot. I oughtn’t to have lost hold of myself.”
He regarded the closed door. A sharp rap sounded from the inside of it and Carver smiled as he speculated as to how many people of his acquaintance would have respected his unspoken wish that the door remain closed. The rap sounded again.
“Come in,” he called.
She opened the door and answered his smile, her eyes following the marshal as he disappeared in the scattering black-jacks of the bottoms.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m glad you came just when you did. But I’m sorry if you made an enemy of him. I really don’t mind him—much.”
“He’s right harmless,” said Carver. “But apt to be annoying. I don’t surmise he’ll be turning up here again.”
He knew that the marshal operated only on safe ground. Freel had known that both elder brothers would be entirely indifferent to any course he might adopt toward Molly Lassiter if only it afforded a measure of protection for themselves; and she would not mention any such occurrence to Bart lest it precipitate trouble between himself and Freel.
The girl motioned him to a seat on the bench.
“You did remember your promise of the other day,” she commended. “About Bart, I mean. He said you’d pointed out the narrow pathway and invited him to join forces.”
“I never did set up as a reformer,” Carver admitted, “and it likely sounded a mite unnatural, coming from me.”