Some days thereafter Freel rode northward through the leases of the Half Diamond H, crossed the Salt Fork and stayed overnight at the home ranch of that brand. For several days the marshal had been visiting the widely scattered outfits operating in that portion of the Strip and making inquiries as to the whereabouts of certain men on a day of the preceding week. Freel knew the customs of the men with whom he had to deal, being familiar with the evasiveness which was a country-wide characteristic whenever one citizen was questioned concerning the possible operations of another. The marshal’s queries were therefore more or less desultory and wholly unproductive. On the date in question four masked horsemen had surrounded a box car recently planted beside the railroad track in the Cherokee Strip. This car had served as a station and the word “Casa” had been painted in white letters upon either end. The stockmen had stubbornly resisted all attempts to establish stations in the unowned lands, foreseeing in such moves another possible link toward the dreaded settling of the Strip. These wild riders had evicted the two men stationed there and applied the torch to the box car which seemed to presage a future settlement at that point. The embryo city of Casa was no more. Freel was conscious of no particular regret over the fate of this defunct metropolis, but in view of the fact that only Federal officers were vested with authority in the Cherokee lands he felt it expedient to make a few perfunctory inquiries. When he rode away from the Half Diamond H he elected to wend his way up Cabin Creek and so chanced across two thousand head of Joe Hinman’s cows grazing in the quarantine strip. Freel sought out Carver and acquainted him with the details of the Casa raid. “The Lassiters rode out of Caldwell Tuesday night, you recollect,” he said. “They’re a shifty bunch of boys, the Lassiters. But Crowfoot assures me that they turned up at his place on Turkey Creek early Wednesday morning and this Casa raid was Wednesday night. Crowfoot says they’ve been there straight through. That lets the Lassiters out.” Carver recalled the black scrap of cloth he had seen in the dresser drawer in the Lassiter’s room, its eyeholes staring up at him. Crowfoot’s testimony to the marshal did not cause Carver to revise his former estimate of the cowman; rather it served to strengthen his previous opinion as to Crowfoot’s character. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, that lets the Lassiters out.” “But it don’t have any particular bearing on the fact that Hinman’s cows are grazing in the quarantine strip,” the marshal commented. “Joe’s short of range,” Carver returned. This was according to formula. “We’re resting ’em over here for a day before taking ’em on down to the Half Diamond H.”