And now, having done well most things he was sent to do, his heart was so grateful to his friend that he would conquer his distaste for the pen, and write a long letter without a single word of thanks in it--the thanks would merely be between every line. The truly heavy load of responsibility was still with him, but safe with him; that money would go into the hands of the men at the Flat Iron outfit to-morrow, and surprise them. Had he not been adroit? No one suspected he was the paymaster. Visiting Likely once for his mail and some supplies, he had been obliged to spend the night there. His prudence as to whiskey and general abstemiousness of conduct that night might point, he feared, to the fact that he carried money he was “staying with.” He even felt a certain observation to attend his movements. He therefore began to speak deceitfully to the company he sat among. Had anybody else, he inquired, been through here from Sunk Creek? Nobody else had, it appeared; and Scipio smoked for a while. “Well,” he remarked at length, with a certain gloom, like one who speaks from an offended heart, “a man don’t enjoy bein’ mistrusted. Not if there’s never been nothing to justify it.” He said no more, waiting for some one to draw the desired inference from this utterance. After a matter of some five minutes the inference was appreciated, and he received a counter-offer, so to speak, a trifle too obviously aimed. “Them hands at the Flat Iron,” said the offerer, “has most finished their job, ain’t they?” “I don’t know about them,” said Scipio, keeping in the land of inference. “I’ve finished mine, I know.” Then, after a proper pause and with proper bitterness, he finished: “If folks can’t trust me they can’t hire me.” It was lightly handled, and it did its work in Likely. All Likely gossiped next day about how Judge Henry would not let Scipio handle the Flat Iron money, and how Scipio let his feelings be shown too plain for self-respect--all Likely, save one close observer. The old gentleman with the black coat and the white beard thought that it was odd in Scipio to behave so carefully during his night in town, odd and interesting to drink nothing and go to bed early in the hotel. “That kind don’t,” he said to himself; “not usually when they’re mad at their employer and goin’ to quit their job.” The old gentleman did not gossip, but grew thoughtful. One morning he got on his old pink mare, and took a quiet trail for Spit-Cat. He thought he knew the way, but lost himself, and luckily met a man on the stage road who directed him up the old, established trail. Or rather, it was lucky that he lost himself, else he would have arrived before Scipio had unbuckled his pistol and forgotten everything in the world but this letter he was knee-deep in.