Nate Younger remarked similarly in Freel’s saloon within earshot of the two Ralstons who were refreshing themselves at the bar. In fact, the two old cowmen mentioned the matter to a number of acquaintances whom they chanced across in a variety of places throughout town and it was within an hour of noon before they took Molly out to the fair. The girl found the fair a mixture of the old way and the new. The exhibits were those of the settlers but the sports and amusements were those of an earlier day, a condition which would prevail for many a year. Every such annual event would witness an increase of agricultural exhibits, fine stock and blooded horses as the country aged; but at fair time, too, the old-time riders of the unowned lands would come into their own again for a single day. Then would bartenders lay aside their white aprons, laborers drop their tools and officers discard their stars, donning instead the regalia of the cowboys. Gaudy shirts and angora chaps would be resurrected from the depths of ancient war bags. Once more they would jangle boots and spurs and twirl old reatas that had seen long service. The spirit of the old days would prevail for a day and a night and fairgoers would quit the exhibits to watch the bronc fighters ride ’em to a standstill, bulldog Texas longhorns and rope, bust and hog-tie rangy steers, to cheer the relay and the wild-horse races and all the rest of it; then a wild night in town, ponies charging up and down the streets to the accompaniment of shrill cowboy yelps and the occasional crash of a gun fired into the air,--then back to the white aprons and the laborer’s tools for another year. The girl and her two old companions spent the day at the fair and in the early evening took a train to Caldwell some two hours before Freel and Wellman rode out of town. The evening’s festivities were in full swing and none observed their departure. Freel was nervous and excited. “We’d better have sent some one else,” he said. Wellman turned on him angrily. “And have the thing bungled again!” he said. “Damn your roundabout planning and never doing anything yourself. If you hadn’t sent that fool over to Alvin without letting me know we’d have had it all over by now. Crowfoot told you we’d have to do it ourselves. So did I. And if you’d only waited we’d have found an opening months back but that Alvin fluke made Carver take cover and he’s never give us a chance at him since. We wouldn’t even know there was one to-night if those two old fossils hadn’t let it out accidental.” “But maybe that talk of theirs was--” Freel began, but his companion interrupted and cut short his complaint. “We’ve give Carver time to do just what we was to head him from doing--getting our names linked with every deal we wanted kept quiet.” “He couldn’t prove a sentence of it in the next fifteen years,” Freel asserted.