The line between the law and the lawless was but vaguely defined. Instances of the apprehension of any wrong-doer were decidedly infrequent. Petty graft and crooked gambling flourished. As a carcass attracts scavenger birds so conditions in the Strip drew the vicious of the whole Southwest. Express messengers conveyed word of valuable consignments to friends who would make sure that the shipments failed to reach their destination. There were bankers who handled securities at stiff discounts without inquiry as to their source, jewelers who were equally incurious about the previous ownership of gems or gold, judges and county attorneys who were open to reason and sheriffs who followed false trails. But all this was merely a passing phase coincident to the transition period of a new and untried territory during its transformation into an old and proven one. The background was one of enduring solidity. More than thirty thousand families had found homes in a single day and these toiled steadily on, unmindful of the wave of deviltry and corruption that swept the Strip, such circumstances having no particular bearing on their daily lives. Later, when they had more time to devote to affairs outside of the immediate problem of shaping their homesteads up into producing farms, they would rise up and cast out the parasites without apparent effort, for after all the solid citizens were many and the parasites comparatively few. Freel rode out of Oval Springs and he traveled past occasional fields that were green with waving wheat. Spring had brought fresh evidence that the Strip, now a part of Oklahoma, would eventually prove to be the most productive portion of the State. Spring crops of all sorts were coming up in riotous profusion. Young orchards had been planted round many a homestead cabin; rows of slender saplings marked the site of future stately groves. The scattering fields that had been seeded to winter wheat gave promise of a tremendous yield and an average of more than twenty bushels to the acre was confidently predicted. Orderly garden plots were in evidence on every homestead. Since his occupancy of the Sheriff’s office Freel had several times stopped at the Lassiters’ cabin. He had haunted Molly Lassiter’s footsteps for a year prior to that day when Carver’s inopportune arrival had put a stop to his advances. In his new guise as a moneyed, influential citizen he saw one more chance of gaining the girl’s favor. His manner was affable and without hint of previous unpleasant relations. Rather his attitude was one of friendly interest which any prosperous person might take in the affairs of a less fortunate acquaintance. Molly, believing that the past had best be left undisturbed, received him as she would any other casual acquaintance. On the occasion of this last visit Freel found Bart at home.