No. 3 squealed to a halt to deposit two sleepy traveling drummers. The door of the express car opened. The armed messenger dropped a heavy iron box on the waiting truck alongside the car. The train dispatcher was now signing for the box. The drummers hurried for the Malta House. “Payroll for the mines,” the express messenger, explained. “Wish I had that much. I’d quit riding these damn’ night runs. Blizzard comin’.” The door of the express car slid shut. A yellow lantern circled in the night. The train pulled out slowly and the dispatcher wheeled away the truck with its steel box. The wheels of the truck creaked its dismal passage. The form of Buck Bell moved in a blackness made more opaque by the departure of the train lights. The man was pushing the truck within arm’s reach of the tall cowboy. Buck lifted his gun from its old scabbard. He balanced its weight in his hand, moved out of his tracks. Swung the long barrel in a swift arc. The man wheeling the truck slumped down gently, an indistinct lump on the deserted platform. Buck Bell moved swiftly now. He picked the steel box up in his arms and ran down the tracks. He did not halt until he reached the stockyards, a mile or more from town. He hid the box under the loading chute, then started back. The walk in the cold air had driven the whisky fog from his brain. Buck was sober now. The sadness, the brooding restlessness, had gone and in its place came swift regrets. He fought down those regrets as best he could. He’d been a fool to do it, but he was into it now. He’d hang and rattle. Play ’er out as the cards fell and ask no man for better than even odds. He wondered how hard he’d hit that depot feller. Can’t let a man lay out in the cold that way. Besides, there was the trains to attend to. But, as he circled the depot, he saw the sheriff and the train dispatcher talking earnestly inside the lighted telegraph and ticket office. Buck moved away, across to Dick Powell’s place. Nobody took notice of his entrance as he slipped in the back door and dropped into a chair by the stove. Then somebody called the house up for a drink and Buck joined the crowd. He had not been missed. “How’s things stackin’ up, Buck?” It was old Horace who voiced the question. “Need a little money? I was talkin’ to the Old Gent and he said to let you have what you need. You kin come back and work it out in the spring. It ain’t every man I’d do that fer. But like I was tellin’ the Old Gent, you’re on the square and kin be depended on.” Buck’s mouth opened, then closed without saying a word. He had been on the verge of telling the wagon boss the whole thing. Until now, Buck Bell had accepted the trust of his fellowmen as a matter of course. Now, well, now it was all over. He was beginning to pay already for his crime. “I’ll just make ’er out fer a hundred dollars, Buck.” Horace was misinterpreting the cowboy’s silence. Buck shook his head.