VIII
A slenderthoroughbred leaped forward with the shots, his rider crouched low along his neck. Carver had a brief glimpse of hundreds of saddle horses fanning ahead of the main bulk of the stampede. Then his view was cut off by the dense fog of black ashes churned aloft.
“Look!” he exclaimed.
In either direction, as far as the eye could reach this murky cloud was sweeping forward. As it eddied and curled he could catch glimpses of the swaying gray tops of covered wagons and the glittering flash of newly painted runabouts. It seemed that a black cyclone belt a hundred yards in width had sucked up thousands of strange land craft and churned them across the prairies over an endless front.
Men shouted frenzied encouragement to their horses, their voices lifting above the rattle of the laboring vehicles. Not infrequently there sounded a splintering crash as some outfit was piled up in a wreck or the sudden smash and subsequent groaning screech which announced that two rival wagons had collided and locked hubs.A shrill cowboy yelp of exultation rose high above the uproar.
“Now we can break through,” Carver stated, and they urged their horses into a lope and passed the wagons that lagged behind, darting past others as opportunity offered.
The girl saw humanity in the raw, the bars of convention lowered by excitement and each man’s true nature standing forth undisguised. She was treated to kaleidoscopic flashes of human avarice and sublime generosity. A heavy wagon came to grief as its owner lashed his horses over the four-foot bank of a dry wash. The tongue was stabbed into the earth, buckled and snapped, piling the outfit up in a tangled heap in the bottom of the dry gulch. A man in a light rig cheered the accident as he made a safe crossing of the wash at a point some few feet away where the banks were less precipitate, shrieking a derisive farewell to the unfortunates as he passed. A chap-clad rider set his horse back on its haunches and dismounted.
“Crawl him, stranger,” he invited. “Give that pony his head and he’ll take you where you’re aiming for. I’ll help the woman straighten out this tangle.”
The man boarded the horse and darted off,leaving the cowboy to care for his wife and children and the struggling team.
Just beyond the wreck a man had leaped from a wagon to plant his flag while his wife held the horses. A single man had unloaded from a runabout with similar intent and as the girl passed them the two were fighting savagely, endeavoring through the medium of physical combat to settle the question as to which one had first placed foot upon the ground. While the wife and family of the one gazed upon the scene from the wagon, the horse of the other was running away with the runabout which was lurching perilously across the dips and sways of the prairie.
They passed old Judd Armstrong, his bony horses surging on at an awkward gallop. The little old lady gripped a staff topped by a white scrap of cloth with which she intended to flag the first scrap of ground they crossed where she could see no others out ahead. But always there was a swarm of scurrying shapes far out in the lead.
Just as Carver pulled out ahead of the last fringe of wheeled conveyances the girl heard again the shrill exultant cowboy yelp and saw the man riding just ahead of them. He was a big fellow with a week-old growth of beard, mounted on a rangy bay horse that wore a Texas brand.He had given the animal its head and was half-turned in the saddle, looking back at the sea of lurching, swaying vehicles. His mouth was extended in a grin and he waved his gun aloft.
“Charge!” he bellowed. “Charge!”
He emptied his gun in the air and waved them on as if he were leading the line into some desperate affray. He bawled facetious commands to all within earshot. His noisy clamor reminded the girl of Noll, and she hated the big Texan from the instant her mind conceived this fancied resemblance. She herself read the pathos that was written in every movement of the mad scramble, the hungry rush of the homeless; and she told herself that the noisy horseman viewed it in the light of a screaming comedy.
A wave of ground cut off her view toward the east, but as the slight crest flattened to merge gradually with the surrounding prairie the objects on the far side reappeared, at first merely the heads and shoulders of those who traveled a parallel course, then their bodies, then the mounts that carried them. One form seemed to progress smoothly but there was a queer crouch to the head and shoulders. As more of him rose into her level of vision, she saw that he rode an antiquated bicycle with one huge wheel in front and a tiny one trailing in its wake. The man washunched over the handle bars and was pedalling desperately, a grotesque figure with coattails streaming out behind, a water bottle slung across his back with the shaft of a small flag thrust through the strap.
“Oh, Don! Bart! Do look,” Molly implored. She was laughing in sheer delight yet she was conscious of a swift, hot resentment when the big Texan raised his voice in a joyous whoop as he sighted the strange apparition and gave chase. He veered his mount to the left, unbuckling his rope strap, and as the animal stretched into a full run behind the speeding cyclist he shook out a few coils of his rope and whirled his loop aloft. He did not make his throw but contented himself with giving voice to a wild yelp with every jump of his horse. His victim turned to cast an apprehensive glance over his shoulder and the front wheel collided with a dog mound and threw him. Even in the act of rising he thrust his flag into the ground and staked his claim, the big fellow cheering him as he passed.
Hundreds of riders were scattered out in the lead of the line of oncoming vehicles that was strung out as far as the girl could see toward the east and west. Whenever one horseman attained the lead in his own particular section of the field he flung from the saddle and planted his flag.Scattered at intervals through it all Molly could make out moving specks of color—bright reds and purples, brilliant orange and softer effects of lavender—and she knew these for the gaudy regalia of the cowboys. These were not dismounting but riding steadily ahead, each with some particular destination in mind, saving their horses for the last wild spurt. Little by little the field thinned out. Some few of the cowmen had dashed suddenly ahead to stake their claims in some of the better valleys but the majority of them were still holding on. They swept down into a wide brown valley untouched by the fire and three times during the crossing of it Molly saw riders dismount far ahead—too far; and she knew that these were sooners who had been hiding in the unowned lands and who had now put in an appearance as the peak of the run came in sight.
The Texan had lost ground in his chase of the cyclist but eventually Molly heard him off to the right and rear, his big voice raised in a song which she thought fitted him exactly.
“I’m a wild, wild riderAnd an awful mean fighter,I’m a rough, tough, callous son-of-a-gun.I murder some folks quickAnd I kill off others slow,That’s the only way I ever take my fun.“I’m a devil with my quirt,A terror with my knife,A fearsome fiend when out for pistol practice,I wield a wicked spur,Twirl a nasty ten-foot loopAnd curry out my red mane with a cactus.”
“I’m a wild, wild riderAnd an awful mean fighter,I’m a rough, tough, callous son-of-a-gun.I murder some folks quickAnd I kill off others slow,That’s the only way I ever take my fun.“I’m a devil with my quirt,A terror with my knife,A fearsome fiend when out for pistol practice,I wield a wicked spur,Twirl a nasty ten-foot loopAnd curry out my red mane with a cactus.”
“I’m a wild, wild riderAnd an awful mean fighter,I’m a rough, tough, callous son-of-a-gun.I murder some folks quickAnd I kill off others slow,That’s the only way I ever take my fun.
“I’m a wild, wild rider
And an awful mean fighter,
I’m a rough, tough, callous son-of-a-gun.
I murder some folks quick
And I kill off others slow,
That’s the only way I ever take my fun.
“I’m a devil with my quirt,A terror with my knife,A fearsome fiend when out for pistol practice,I wield a wicked spur,Twirl a nasty ten-foot loopAnd curry out my red mane with a cactus.”
“I’m a devil with my quirt,
A terror with my knife,
A fearsome fiend when out for pistol practice,
I wield a wicked spur,
Twirl a nasty ten-foot loop
And curry out my red mane with a cactus.”
When they had covered some ten miles Molly noted that the brilliant specks were forging steadily forward through the scattered ranks of their more somberly clad fellows and gradually attaining the very fore fringe of the run. Another two miles and the bright dots were out in the lead and it was apparent that many were converging upon the line which Carver followed toward a distant dip in the landscape. Every cowhand was up on a horse that had proved its speed and endurance in many a hard round-up circle. The clatter and crash of vehicles had died out behind. Carver glanced both ways along the line.
“The boys are drawing in toward the Cabin Creek bottoms,” he called to Molly. “Best land in the Strip. There’ll be many a friend of mine in the lot. Here’s hoping they stake near the old home ranch.”
He glanced along the scattered line again as they rode across a low wave of the prairie and the broad bottoms of Cabin Creek opened out belowthem, spared by the fire and carpeted with grass that was only now turning brown.
“Now!” he said. “Run for it!” and they let their horses out and raced down the gentle pitch.
Carver kept his eye on the low point of a ridge that thrust its nose into the edge of the valley three miles below. Just beyond that shoulder the Curl Fork of Cabin Creek joined in and the buildings of the Half Diamond H nestled under the hill. Below that point the bottoms widened out to twice the width of the part they now traversed. More than thirty riders were strung out across the level floor of the valley, careening down both sides of the creek.
Some dropped from the saddle and drove their flags, but a dozen or more on Carver’s side of the creek held straight on. This last spurt was a contest between seasoned riders and tried horses. Carver urged his mount and the animal drew on his last reserve of speed. Molly felt the smooth play of powerful muscle sweeping her on toward the goal as her own horse, fresher from having carried less weight over the long miles, ran nose to nose with Carver’s. Bart was twenty feet to their left and as far in the rear.
As they thundered down upon a tiny spring-creek flowing on the near side of the shoulder Carver waved a hand.
“Up there!” he shouted to Bart. “Flag it!”
Bart whirled up the course of the spring-creek and the girl wheeled her horse to follow him while Carver held the straight course for the low jutting point. As Bart and Molly turned aside, the big Texan dropped from his horse a hundred yards down the little stream and planted his flag.
A dozen riders were almost abreast of Carver as he rounded the point and flung from his saddle in the ranch yard of the Half Diamond H. He had staked the old home ranch.
He turned to watch the rest flash past and recognized a big paint horse as a circle mount of Bradshaw’s string. The group that had clung so persistently instead of staking farther up the valley was composed of old friends to a man. He picked them one by one as they fanned out through the widening bottoms and staked them from the creek to the valley slope for two solid miles below the Half Diamond H.
“Box T riders or former Half Diamond hands,” he said. “Every man. I needn’t have put on such a strenuous last spurt if I’d only looked back to see who made up the bunch that was crowding me so hard on the final lap. I see old Joe Hinman’s hand in this.”
He turned at a sound behind him. A manstood calmly by a lathered horse some thirty yards back among the sod outbuildings.
“You’ll have to get off,” the stranger announced. “This is my ground. I staked it first.”
Carver stared for a brief space, unable to grasp the fact that another had rounded the point ahead of him. He certainly had not arrived since Carver reached the spot so he must have been there first. Then Carver’s comprehension cleared and he led his horse back toward the other.
“Looks like you had beat me here for a fact,” he said.
“By three minutes,” the stranger stated.
Carver glanced at the man’s horse. The animal’s shoulders and flanks were lathered white, as if from a long hard run, but its breathing was smooth and regular and its sides were steady. He glanced at his own mount with its heaving flanks; listened to the animal’s heavy labored breathing.
“Beat you by three minutes,” the stranger reasserted.
Carver touched the lathered horse with one forefinger, carried the member to his mouth, then spat the soapsuds out.
“Yes, you beat me by three days,” he said.“Which is just a shade too broad a margin. Now you step up into the middle of that pony, and start working up a real sweat on him while you’re getting away from here.”
The sooner faced him defiantly, a black scowl on his countenance, but he read the same purpose in Carver’s eyes that Freel had discovered in them on the day the marshal had offered to make Molly Lassiter respectable.
“I’ll sell out for five hundred,” he offered.
“In less than that many seconds you’ll be headed for some place where money can’t follow you,” Carver returned evenly. “You climb that horse and amble.”
The sooner swung to the saddle and rode off toward the eastern slope of the valley. It would have availed him little to head down country, for already the bottoms were filled with riders. Those left behind in the last mad dash for the Half Diamond H were now pouring through in hundreds. The side hills that flanked the western edge of the valley were being staked and other riders streamed along their crests.
When Carver looked again he saw that the sooner had planted his flag a half-mile up the little spring-creek that trickled past the doors of the ranch house and on down to the parent stream, a mate for the one that flowed on the farside of the ridge where he had sent Bart Lassiter. The sooner’s present holding would be just across the ridge from Bart. But Carver was not concerned over the future actions of the man. If he succeeded in holding a piece of ground which should have gone to some legitimate stampeder it was no affair of his, Carver reflected, and dismissed it from his mind. For thirty minutes the home seekers continued to pour through in gradually diminishing numbers. Most of the wheeled conveyances had dropped out, their owners either having won their goal at some point farther back or given up the race, but a few buckboards rattled past in the wake of the last straggling horseman.
Then Carver turned to the work in hand. Those in his immediate vicinity who had made the run for the purpose of realizing a quick turn on their relinquishments were the ones he sought. The cowhands were the logical parties to interview.
Bradshaw was sprawled comfortably on the ground on the next quarter section below.
“Old Joe is responsible for this,” Carver said, as he rode down toward his friend. “He sorted out the Box T boys that were going to make a filing just to sell it, and such of the old Half Diamond H boys as he could locate. This wayit helps us all. They find me a ready buyer and I find them ready sellers, roosting on the very ground I want. Then, too, Joe was thinking of old Nate. Younger lived here for twenty years. With me on the Half Diamond H he can come down and find at least a part of it the same.”
Bradshaw grinned as Carver neared him.
“What’s your offer?” he demanded. “Speak in big figures now or I’ll stay here and farm this piece myself. Joe tipped us off to swarm in and settle in a flock just below Nate’s old home ranch. Well, what do you bid?”
“Two hundred and fifty,” Carver stated.
“Too much—but I’ll take it,” said Bradshaw. “Give me a commission and I’ll buy the others out for you anywheres from fifty to a hundred.”
“Two hundred and fifty is my flat price to every man,” said Carver. “That’s a good fair figure for both sides. They’ll have to take my notes for it, dated eighteen months ahead at six per cent. They can either wait and live off the interest meantime or discount them at the bank—provided they can locate a banker who’s optimistic enough to make an investment in my paper.”
“I’ll ride along with you to see the others,” Bradshaw volunteered.
“You all can go and make your filings in the next few days,” Carver said. “Then I’ll furnish each of you with scrip to lay on your quarter. You can deed it over to me when you get your patent.”
Two hours later Carver rode across the low ridge in search of Molly Lassiter.
“Ever see a prettier nook than this?” he asked, as he dismounted. “I told Bart I had just the place picked out for you and him.”
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 acrossthe 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 piecein 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.
Bart mounted the ridge and joined them.
“What’s offered for my farm?” he greeted.
“I’m not buying on the far side of the ridge,” said Carver. “Only down below.”
“Then I’ll present it to you,” Bart returned cheerfully. “By the way, you’re owing me three hundred or thereabouts on our little flier in steers. If you could let me have a piece of it I’ll trickle into Caldwell in the morning. I’ve got pressing business there in town.”
“I’ve invested that money for you,” Carver said. “I’ve reserved scrip to cover your hundred and sixty acres. I’ll turn it over to you when you make your filing. They’ll issue a patent and then you and Molly will have some place to come back to whenever you get weary of moving round. You’ll be owing me a little extra on the cost of the scrip but you can pay it off whenever it comes handy in the future.”
Bart sighed gustily.
“I always did lean towards owning a farm that I didn’t have to live on,” he stated, “and you’ve showed me the way. You always did treat me all right, Don, and I thank you. As long as I already owe you money I’d as leave owe you more. I’ll remember it better that way. Lend me twenty. I suspect the boys will be looking at their hole cards somewhat in your bunk house this evening and I’m always curiousto see which one of the fifty-two cards each man has got in the hole.”
Carver laughed and handed him the money.
“We’ll turn the house over to Molly to-night,” he said. “I’ve got a tent cached in the bunk house that you can pitch over there on your place to-morrow.”
The girl rested her hand on Carver’s arm as Bart left them.
“That was a wonderful thing to do for Bart,” she said. “Oh, Don! Don’t you suppose he’ll stay there and keep it?”
“Sure, Honey,” Carver assured her. “You can’t clamp down on a range colt too sudden and put him on the picket. We’ll keep an eye on him and gradually decrease his range. Don’t you fret about Bart.”
He was peering off across the country and she followed the direction of his gaze. A wagon had just crawled into view on the ridge on the far side of Bart’s filing and near the upper edge of it. The last rays of the setting sun caught the tattered canvas top. Even at a distance of three quarters of a mile both Carver and the girl recognized the outfit as old Judd Armstrong’s, the horses moving slowly, their heads drooping dejectedly.
“You wait here, Molly,” Carver said. “I’llride over and help them pick a good place to camp. Then we’ll stir up a bite for the boys to eat.”
He intercepted the outfit as it pulled into the bottoms. The little old lady still clasped the staff of her flag.
“Staked your piece yet, Uncle?” Carver greeted.
“Not yet,” said old Judd. “We’ll likely locate one to-morrow. These horses is about played out and we’ll have to make camp here, I reckon.”
The woman nodded serene agreement. Ever since she could remember they had been making camp.
“Maybe they can make one more drag of it over this next rise,” Carver said. “It’s not much of a pull. There’s a nice little creek over across and a ripping good piece of ground that hasn’t been staked. They all run clear on acrost it and never noticed. It’s the next piece up the creek from mine.”
He uncoiled his rope and made it fast to the wagon tongue, took a short snub on his saddle horn and pulled in ahead of Judd’s weary team. The horse buckled sturdily to his task and they made the crossing.
“You make camp right here on this creek,”Carver instructed. “This is your claim. I’ll see you to-morrow, Aunty.”
“Thank you, son,” she said. “You’ve done us a big favor. This is better ground than any we’ve crossed through. I was beginning to be just a mite worried for fear we mightn’t find a piece. It was real nice of you to tell us.”
Carver turned his horse up towards where the sooner reclined on the creek bank.
“I instructed you to high-tail it out of the country,” he announced. “So you put forth from here sudden.”
“Do you imagine you’re in charge of this whole territory?” the man demanded.
“I was once,” said Carver. “Foreman of the old Half Diamond H. In lack of any better authority I’ve elected myself temporary head of the district so I can choose my own neighbors. I don’t pick you.”
He handed the man a ten-dollar bill.
“I’m sorry to see your efforts wasted but maybe you can drown your grief in that,” he said. “There’s not a chance in the world for you to make your claim stick—and I’ll see that you come to a bad end if you try to file. You can use your own judgment about when you flit from these parts.”
He turned back toward Molly but the girlhad gone down her own side of the ridge as a second wagon rolled into the bottoms and halted on the upper end of the Texan’s filing. The outfit of the ample soul and her solemn spouse had been wrecked in the early stages of the run and the repairs had required too great a time to permit of their overtaking the other stampeders. As Molly joined them she heard the voice of the Texan lifted in his war song as he returned from a boastful visit with some near-by homesteader.
“I’m a wild, wild riderAnd an awful mean fighter——”
“I’m a wild, wild riderAnd an awful mean fighter——”
“I’m a wild, wild rider
And an awful mean fighter——”
The song ceased abruptly as he spied the wagon on his claim and headed his mount for the spot. He leaned from his saddle and inspected the ample lady who still smiled through the grotesque mask of black ashes that had settled on her face, then let his eyes rove over the children in the depths of the wagon.
“This your claim?” the solemn man inquired. “We just want to wash up a bit and camp here for the night.”
Molly waited for the abrupt refusal. The Texan gazed helplessly from one to another of the group.
“Mean to say you didn’t get a piece of your own with all this stretch to choose from?” he demanded.
The man shook his head.
“Have this one,” the Texan invited. “I’ve been wondering what the hell I’d do with it.”
The woman still smiled but a tear squeezed through and trickled down, leaving a trail in the grime of ashes on her face. She leaned over the infant in her arms to hide the evidence of weakness, speaking a word to the child. The Texan shifted uneasily in the saddle and Molly saw him in a new guise; not as a big ruffian but as an overgrown, kindly boy, helpless to extricate himself from this trying situation. A happy thought struck him.
“I’d cry too if I thought I had to live here,” he said. “I’d trade this whole damn country for a square rod in Texas,” and he headed his horse back down the creek.
Hours later Molly Lassiter reclined on Carver’s camp bed which he had spread for her on the floor of the Half Diamond H ranch house.
The Cherokee Run was over. At noon there had been a vast tract of virgin territory, twelve thousand square miles of untenanted lands,—and within four hours of that first bugle call it had been settled, staked to the last square inch. The wildest stampede that the world had ever seen was a matter of history.
A variety of sounds floated through the openwindow. The long, many-roomed bunk house in rear of the frame building was crowded to overflowing. All the cowhands for miles around had followed the old custom of dropping in at the nearest ranch when caught out on the range at night, certain of finding a welcome and a feed. They had feasted unreservedly upon Carver’s food cache which he had planted at the ranch weeks before.
Molly heard two voices raised in the chant of the tumbleweeds as two belated riders approached. Always these men sang when they rode at night, having acquired the habit on many a weary circuit of the herd, singing to quiet their charges on the bed ground.
The big Texan’s voice carried to her from the bunk house.
“Now when I play poker with strangers I first state the rules,” he announced. “The way stud poker is dealt is to hand out the top card first and the next one next, and so on down to the bottom card which comes off last and is not to be removed prior to its turn.”
“It’s nice to have some one who actually knows how the rules run,” another voice answered. “If any little squabble crops up we won’t have to debate the question but just ask you and find out for sure.”
“I’ll settle all arguments,” the Texan volunteered. “You’ll note that I’ve stuck my knife here in the table and I’ll certainly remonstrate with the first party that introduces any irregularities.”
The two newcomers rode into the yard, unsaddled and turned their horses into the corral. One of them answered the questions regarding his claim as he appeared in the door of the bunk house.
“I quit it,” he announced. “A wagon came dragging along an hour ago with a wild woman aboard. Leastways she was talking wild—and frequent. They’d locked hubs and piled up on the start. I presented them my place. I hadn’t no use for it. All my life it’s been all I could do to scratch a living off the face of the whole outdoors, so there wasn’t a chance for me to scrape a income off one little quarter section anyway.”
“I had the piece next to his,” the second cowboy stated. “But the other set of locked hubs came dangling along. The woman ahead would screech back that the tangle was all her fault from keeping too close, and wouldn’t the other party be sure to stake the next piece to theirs so’s they could neighbor back and forth. Just to quiet her down I handed mine to the parties she was so hell-bent to neighbor with. I was afraid she’d have aheadache in the morning if she kept at it; and besides I couldn’t lay out there and listen to that gabble.”
Molly burrowed her face deep in the pillow. During the day she had seen much that was gold beneath that rusty exterior of the tumbleweeds and much that was dross beneath the golden surface of many of the pumpkins. These men who rallied to Carver, drifters all, were a different breed of drifters than those she had met as friends of her two half-brothers. And now the tumbleweeds had been cast out of their domain.
“Hand me them cards,” said the big Texan. “Now we’ll have an honest deal. I’d trust myself further than any other man I ever met.”