Cotton Eye had left his bed and his warsack filled with a few clothes and knicknacks. Delving into the sack for a needle and thread one day, a week or so after Cotton Eye’s departure, Buck came upon a large envelope of heavy paper. He emptied its contents of saddle wax and thread and harness needles and awl. He sat there, smiling softly, the worried frown momentarily gone from his forehead. “I’ll do it. I’ll use this envelope to hold the money. Else I’ll be plumb crazy before spring. I’ll send the money to Horace, first man that passes along.” He spent an evening composing a laborious letter to the Circle C wagon boss. That night he slept without tossing and dreaming. And with the first streak of dawn he was out in the shed with pick and shovel, digging in the corner. With hands that shook with eagerness, he undid the slicker. A choking cry broke from his pulsing throat. The money was gone. All of it. The slicker held nothing but some scraps of old newspaper, rudely cut and bundled in imitation of the banknotes. For a long time Buck squatted there on the ground, staring with dazed eyes at the slicker and its mocking contents. A racking, horrible laugh rattled from his dry lips. Then he went on back to the cabin, his brain aching dully with milling thoughts. Cotton Eye had taken the money. Cotton Eye was a thief as well as a crooked card sharp. It was hard to take--after what he’d done fer Cotton Eye. “Well, the damn’ stuff is gone. Gone fer keeps. Too late now to send it back with that confession ... Cotton Eye would be headed south by now ... south ... with five thousand dollars.” Then a slow grin spread across the mouth of Buck Bell. He chuckled, then laughed until the coffee boiled over and on to the stove. “That’s shore one on me. Frettin’ and stewin’ around about that money. Him playin’ possum with that leg. Diggin’ ’er up, when I rode off yesterday. But how’d he know I had it? How’d he know where it was buried? Well, I got all winter to figger ’er out.” * * * * * Days slipped into weeks. Weeks of white isolation. The hay was about gone. No word from the ranch. And that eternal gray sky overhead like a shroud. Came that morning when Buck Bell looked out at the empty hay corral. This was the end of the trail. All about the cabin the gaunt eyed cattle walked aimlessly, bawling. Buck went back into the cabin and began packing. When his grub was sacked and his bed rolled he went out to the barn and hooked the team to his crude snow plow. He tied his saddle horse to the off horse and loaded his bed and grub on the snow plow. Then he scrawled a note and laid it on the rawhide covered table, weighting it with a can of frozen tomatoes. Closing the door of the log cabin, he picked up the lines and seated himself on the snow plow. As the team got under way, he grinned back over his shoulder. “So long, cabin. Here goes nothin’.”