“Not one,” the sheriff denied. “He’s in the clear as far as identity is concerned. Nobody’s set eyes on him from the time they rode out of Wharton till we jumped him this morning—excepting the man who reported that he’d seen four men ride this way after night. That crippled shoulder may give him away. We’ll be riding on back. I’ll want that horse you’re on so we can trace its ownership. May get it on him that way.”
“I’ll nurse him along over to Engle’s place on Slate Creek,” Carver offered. “Engle will lend me a horse to ride home.”
When Carver reached the home ranch a man waited there to inform him that Carl Mattison desired his presence in Oval Springs.
“Tell him I’ll be with him between now and to-morrow noon,” Carver instructed the messenger.
Bart Lassiter rode up to the house an hour before dark. Carver had expected him to wait until after nightfall before riding in and had planned to intercept him before he reached the house.
“Why didn’t you lay out somewhere under cover till it was dark?” he demanded. “Any of the neighbors see you straddling my horse?”
“A few of ’em, likely,” Bart returned. “What if they did? I was half starved and got dead sick of waiting out there in the creek bottoms.”
Carver took him into the house and dressed the wounded shoulder. It proved to be a clean hole, the ball having passed through the fleshy parts without touching a bone. Bart spoke but seldom while the wound was being dressed. He seemed gloomy and morose, his usual carefree outlook entirely lacking for the time.
“It was the devil’s own luck, getting jumped just when I did,” he stated at last.
“Your bad luck set in prior to that,” Carver returned. “It started when you met Noll and Milt.”