“That’s nice,” said Freel. “But of course it’s my duty as an officer to report their presence to the Federal authorities. Then they can use their own judgment as to quarantine proceedings and maybe even a trespass suit. Tax-dodging, is he?” “I’ll bet fifty even that you go and do that very thing,” Carver stated. “How do you know?” the marshal retorted. “I’ll bet you a hundred I don’t.” “A hundred is way beyond my depth,” said Carver. “Even fifty would strain me most to pieces, but I could manage to pay it the day I land in Caldwell if I lost.” “Fifty’s a bet,” the marshal accepted. “I’ll take you on. And don’t forget to have the money in your clothes next time you show up in Caldwell.” Carver gazed after Freel’s retreating back as the worthy marshal rode northward toward the line. “There goes a part of my profits,” he observed. “This petty larceny milking process enlightens me as to why I never could warm up to Freel. I’d rather he’d held me up, but the man that’ll do one won’t do the other--not ever. It all comes of my being too honest. If I’d neglected to make that losing bet, he’d have made a report that might have caused old Joe some grief. My conscience has let me down for fifty. Honesty is maybe the best policy for the long pull but it’s ruinous in short spurts.” Someway he regretted the loss of that fifty dollars, a sentiment hitherto unknown to him, for he had never valued dollars except as a means to an end and the end was in each case the same,--the swift squandering of the means. But of late, while riding his lonely way in charge of Hinman’s cows, he had pondered the possibilities of various projects in which he might engage, the accumulation of dollars, not their spending, constituting the ultimate objective in each case. When the marshal had disappeared Carver rode a few miles north to the crest of a high ridge, from which point of vantage he could sweep a considerable area. Off across the State line he could make out white points of light at intervals of a mile or more, and he knew them for the covered wagons of squatters who were camped just outside the Strip. He knew too that as one neared Caldwell he would find the intervals between these camps considerably decreased and he made a tentative estimate that there were fifty such outfits camped along the line in the twenty miles between himself and Caldwell. For three months these homeless ones had been rolling up to the edge of the unowned lands and making camp. These were but the vanguard, the first to respond to the persistent rumor recently set afloat to the effect that the Strip would soon be thrown open for entry and free homes be made available for all.