“It was only that once,” Bart defended. “I did dispose of several cases at a right handsome profit and you’ve no notion how much they enjoyed theirselves the next night. It would have done your heart good to have heard it. All Caldwell turned out to listen to the expansive sounds emanating from the Cherokee camp south of town.” Carver had placed that first illusive impression that Molly Lassiter was in grave need of something without which her life was not quite complete. It was no material requirement but a need that was deeper than that. She despised the ways of the two older half-brothers, who had been practically strangers to her during her own early life, showing up at her father’s home but infrequently. Later, after her own mother’s death, they had returned and made it their home. There had never been any bond between them and herself, and she had feared the effect their ways might exercise upon Bart. Freel had spoken the truth when he asserted that she knew what it was to have the law always barking at her door. Carver knew now that what she most needed was peace,--assurance that the same old conditions would not pertain to her life and Bart’s. “Why do you put Molly up against that sort of thing?” he demanded. “She didn’t know,” Bart returned. “But she’d know if they happened to clamp down on you for it,” Carver insisted. “And that’s what she’s guarding against. She’s always had that sort of thing to fight off.” “She has for a fact,” Bart admitted. “The old man was a hard citizen himself, way back in his youth. He’d quieted down for a good many years but after the two boys came back he sort of leaned their way again. There’s been times when Molly and me was kids, and left all alone in the house or wherever we happened to be at the time, that folks would come round inquiring about his whereabouts, and the old man hiding out in the hills about them. She thought a lot of him, Molly did, and hated Milt and Noll for leading him off.” “Then why don’t you shake them?” Carver demanded. “There’s no common bond between you and them, and Molly would be way better off.” “I’ve made the break now and again,” Bart explained. “But they always turn up. Our family line-up is fashioned after that fabled joint snake. You can disrupt the critter but the pieces crawl back together again and all stand united.” “If there’s any more midnight visits made at my cabin,” said Carver; “there’ll be one middle joint absent from the next family reunion.” “I take it you’re referring to Noll,” said Bart. “If you’ll only accept my earnest advice you’ll decoy Noll off to some quiet spot and snap a cap at him. I promise it won’t upset me a bit.” On the third day out from the ranch Carver rode with Nate Younger along a low ridge studded with a straggling stand of black-jack timber. The old man’s face was stern and set as he viewed the procession filing for two miles along the open bottoms below them.