“And right after that he started connecting you and me up with it,” Carver said. “He’s been exerting himself to inquire among folks about your horse being found up near where you departed with that old crow-bait you was on when I met you; about that Kansas outfit jumping a wounded outlaw and picking me up instead, and how you turned up on my horse, you being shot in the shoulder.” “Sho!” Bart deprecated. “He couldn’t make that stick. You don’t imagine, now do you, that Freel’s fool enough to have us jailed? Not when I could spill what I know. He wouldn’t even consider it.” “That’s what he wouldn’t!” Carver agreed. “He’s just creating a background. We’re not slated to languish in jail, you and me. We’re marked out for the slaughter.” Bart brightened. “No!” he exclaimed. “Surely you can’t mean that something is going to happen. It will provide me with a fresh interest in life if there’s a prospect that I might possibly lose it. And how will all this come to pass?” “Killed while resisting arrest,” Carver stated. “Sounds reasonable,” Bart admitted. “I’ll positively guarantee to resist.” “Before you’re ever arrested you’ll be much too dead to make any protest,” Carver predicted. “Freel has planted the idea in folks’ minds that before long he’ll have to book you and me for that deal. It’s been whispered about and they’re sort of expecting it. Then some day he’ll drag in our corpses and announce that we’d been shot while resisting his efforts to take us.” “Interesting but only part way convincing,” said Bart. “You’ve neglected to explain how he’s to gain possession of our corpses so he can start dragging ’em in. I’ll remonstrate with him considerable before I’ll let him have mine.” “He won’t collect it in person,” Carver said. “Maybe I’m supposed to send it to him,” Bart suggested. “But he don’t deserve any such favors from me. I consider his scheme a flat failure, myself.” “That county-seat aggregation is a hard bunch to go up against, the way they’re sitting right now,” Carver said. “They’ve got influence and power behind ’em. This way of eliminating a troublesome party is time-tried and tested. It’s found favor with many a sheriff and chief of police before now and it’s an old favorite with Freel.” “Then it appears that the clever thing to do is for us to organize too,” Bart volunteered. “You can act as the chief and send me out to get Freel. I’ll dry-gulch him so far from nowhere that even the coyotes won’t find him.”