Freel laughed and slapped Carver on the shoulder.
“Matter of fact, that inquiry was for another party, wanting to know if he’d turned up in these parts,” he said. “I went and got the names mixed. The joke’s on me—likewise the drinks, and I’ll buy right now.”
He slowly tore up the letter to Webb.
“And here I’ve been worried almost sick,” Carver said. “It’s a big relief to have it all cleared up. I still owe you fifty on that little bet. Here’s an agreement to pay in ninety days, just as an evidence of good faith.”
He handed Freel a folded paper and the marshal frowned as he read it.
“You’ll notice I stated why I owed it,” Carver amplified. “You’ve always played square with the boys—and there’s maybe a half dozen that’s willing to step forth and declare how you’ve always met them halfway the same as you did with me.”
During the next hour Carver accosted a dozen intimate acquaintances and told each in turn, quite confidentially, that there was a rumor afloat to the effect that Freel was about to resign as deputy marshal and that Mattison was making application for the post.
“By this time to-morrow every man in Caldwell will have commented on this matter to Mattison and Freel,” Carver said to Hinman. “Not because they take any special interest in it but just to make conversation. But the principals, being only human and therefore self-centered, will decide that the whole town is breathless over their affairs. Mattison will feel his ambition mounting and Freel will suspect that there’s been a fire kindled under him. Now if only you and Nate will put in your pull with Webb to give Mattison the appointment, it looks as if things would come out right.”
He rented an extra saddlehorse and invited Molly to join him in an afternoon ride. They jogged out past the stockyards where cowhands prodded unwilling steers through the loading chutes, on beyond the sound of the wheezing switch engine and the rattle and smash of cars, then angled westward through the quarantine belt where riders guarded thousands of head of cows. In the gathering dusk they rode out on the point of a lofty knoll which afforded a view throughout a great expanse of country.
“Have a last look at all this, Molly girl,” Carver said, extending an arm to the south. “There’s yesterday.”