Buck built up the fire. His chaps with their precious store of money hung on a wooden peg with his bridle. Now and then he glanced that way, his lips smiling without humor. “You saved my life, Buck. I ain’t fergittin’.” “You better try to sleep, feller,” grunted Buck. Cotton Eye lay there, a little flushed with fever, his eyes brighter than they should have been. “I wonder, Buck, if you’d be doin’ this fer me if you knowed.” “Knowed what, Cotton Eye?” “That money I won off you. That deck was marked.” “Shore thing,” nodded Buck Bell, “I knowed that. But a man’s gotta have some kinda excitement around a cow camp, even if it’s playin’ poker with a marked deck. I was ketchin’ on to the markin’s about the time I went broke.” Cotton Eye was delirious by morning. Buck was forced to tie the man down while he fed and watered the cattle. Because there was only one bed, Buck had made out with the saddle blankets and the sick man’s overcoat. * * * * * During the days that followed Buck Bell did the work of five men. He chopped wood, cooked, and nursed Cotton Eye, whose fever went down slowly. He rode out each day, gathering poor cows that were too weak to rustle. He hooked up the work team and hauled hay, scattering it in a wide circle outside the corral. He opened the water hole twice a day. He puttered about the cabin, fixing it for the long winter, and forced a cheerfulness into the chatter that he flung at Cotton Eye. When he finally crawled into his improvised bed, fully clothed save for hat and boots, he was too weary to mind the cold much. He killed a beef one evening. That night he brought in a square piece of the hide and worked on it with his pocket knife. “Let’s have that good leg o’ your’n, pardner.” Buck wrapped the hide about the leg, nodded, marked it with his knife and took the hide back to his seat by the fire. “Them splints kin come off in a day er so. I’m fixin’ a sorter casin’ to fit around that game laig. This hide’ll be plenty hard and we’ll lace it, savvy? Padded with the felt from a man’s hat, she’ll make a cast that’ll be useful and right ornamental, with the hair on the outside. I’m stretchin’ it around this willer pole to make ’er smooth.” Buck tanned the rest of the hide and made himself moccasins and a coat that was ill fitting but warm enough. He killed a blacktail buck and they feasted on venison. Buck spent his evenings tanning the hide. The rawhide cast, smooth and hard and padded with felt from Buck’s hat, now replaced the willow splints. Buck wore a cap made out of a piece of Hudson’s Bay blanket. He refused the offer of Cotton Eye’s clothes. With December came real winter--the hardest winter the cowmen in Montana have ever known. The hay was giving out. Buck worked on a snowplow. The cattle in the field grew in number each day. Gaunt flanked, hollow eyed, bawling as they trained at a stubborn walk with the storm.