“Little lonely dollar, you was to mount up to a million. You haven’t mounted that high yet but if I’d follow through it’s likely you’d attain it. But is that what we’re wanting after all? I’ll put you to the test--fair God or false--and let you decide it for me.” He returned to the bunk house and took out a fifty-dollar stack of chips, tossing one red chip back and replacing it with the silver dollar. Old Joe Hinman regarded the coin that crowned the stack of chips. “Seems like I’ve seen the selfsame coin before,” he commented. “Surely now, you wouldn’t go and risk it. It’s led you quite a piece, that dollar has.” “But maybe not in just the right direction,” Carver said. His thoughts reverted to the day he had acquired it. “What depends upon the outcome?” old Joe inquired. “Which way will you leap?” “Just this one stack,” said Carver. “If I double it I stay. If I lose I go. It means the difference between here and somewhere else; pumpkins or tumbleweeds, cows or crops--for one more year.” An hour later he cashed in a double stack and the cards had decreed that he stay for another year. Bart Lassiter leaned back in his chair and grinned sympathetically. “My year has another six months to run,” he said. “I’ll be free before you regain your liberty. You’ll find me waiting for you somewhere out yonder when your sentence has expired.” XIV Two settlers stood in the saloon in Alvin. The proprietor lowered his voice and leaned across the bar. “Look you, now--there’s going to be a killing,” he predicted. He jerked a thumb toward the rear door. “Right out there is where he left his horse and for two days he set there at that table waiting for Carver to come in.” Jimmy had just recited the incident of the stranger’s attempt to take Carver unawares and was now merely adding a few conclusions of his own to lend an air of spice and mystery to the tale. “He knows too much about folks that are running things in the county seat, Carver does; him and Bart Lassiter,” Jimmy stated. “A bartender hears things. Folks get to talking over their drinks. Most always they do. I’ve heard it said for a positive fact that Bart saw Wellman blow up the bridge out of Oval Springs the night the up-passenger was ditched and two men killed. Wellman was sheriff at the time.” It seemed that the two homesteaders had also been hearing things. “United States mail went up in smoke that night when the mail car burned,” said one. “I’ve heard that Mattison’s still making inquiries about that. He never quits, Mattison don’t.”