A few trees, somewhat gnarled and stunted—but every such growth is noteworthy in a treeless country, and the black-jack belt did not extend so far north as this—sprouted in a little dent in the base of the ridge, a level floor of rich ground spread out before them. The little creek, fed by side-hill springs, purred merrily along the foot of the slope.
“It’s wonderful here,” she agreed. “I’d love it if only Bart would stay here and prove up instead of selling out.”
“Maybe we can exert a little pressure and make Bart come to his milk,” said Carver. “This is too good a place to sell out offhand. Wait till I scour a few layers of ashes off my face and we’ll ride up to the ridge so you can see my layout.”
His face was still black from the ride across the burned areas and he repaired to the little creek and splashed face and hands in the clear cold water. The big Texan had come part way up the creek to converse with Bart and his voice carried to Carver as he made boastful comments upon his own farsightedness.
“I don’t know this country but I staked as good a piece as there is in the whole twelve thousand miles. That’s me! Know how? I’ll follow the leather-legs, I decides; the peelers that has rode this stretch. They’ll know where the best ground is. I’ll trail along and be there, for there ain’t no man can outride me when I’m up on this bay horse.”
His voice followed them as Carver and Molly rode up the gentle slope of the ridge and the girl hoped she would not have this man as a neighbor for long. His bluster made her feel that Noll was near at hand. There had been a clean break in their relations since Carver’s recent turn in inexpensive beef, and Noll had asserted that Bart was no relative of his. If only he could convince others of that, she reflected, she would be far better satisfied.
“See,” Carver said, pointing as they topped the ridge. “I’ve bargained for eleven quarters besides my own. That gives me eighteen hundred acres in one block. I’ll leave that first piece in front of the house in grass, just like it is now. Then when old Nate comes down to visit round with me it will seem almost like the same old place he’s lived in for the past twenty years or more.”
“I’m glad, Don,” she said. “But how can you be sure they’ll deed the land over to you after they get their patents. There’s no possible way to pin a man down to turn over his homestead to another.”
“Not a way in the world,” he conceded. “They could keep their place or sell it, once the patent’s issued, and I couldn’t lift a hand. I’d counted on losing maybe a quarter or two that very way. But not now; not with those Box T and Half Diamond H boys on the other end of it. Wouldn’t one of ’em throw me if he was offered ten times the price.”
She hoped that he had gauged them rightly but her experience had taught her to doubt this class of drifting, homeless men. She had met a number of such during the last few years of drifting with Bart, mainly the associates of the two elder half-brothers, and she had come to believe that trustworthiness was an infrequent trait among their kind.