Most of them were flat broke. Cotton Eye, the bloated financier, had lost his money and hocked his spurs for a bottle to take along. Then he engaged the bartender in conversation while a confederate stole back the spurs. Horace gathered his men one, by one, mounted them, and started them out of town. They bucked their horses down the street, emptying their guns at a leaden sky. Behind them was their night’s pleasure. Ahead lay the dread winter. * * * * * Buck Bell got his private horse from the barn. Because he owned no overcoat, he donned his slicker and wrapped his feet in strips of gunnysack. Alone, his hat pulled down across his eyes, his ungloved hands shoved down against the saddle cantle, he rode out of town. As he neared the stockyards he glanced about. No living thing moved in the snow swept world that met his eye. He swung off his horse and dragged the steel box from under the loading chute. A heavy padlock fastened it. Buck drew his .45 and shot off the lock. His stiff fingers pried up the lid. There lay the banknotes in piles bound with wide rubber bands. He shoved the money into the deep pockets of his angora chaps. Then he buried the empty metal box in the débris under the chute. Five minutes later he rode on again into the storm. He looked old and sadly troubled. The bitter cold was pinching the color from his face. He was a little sick from the liquor that he had drunk. Sick and lonesome. Through the lane and past the graveyard, on to the wind swept benchland, headed south toward the badlands of the Missouri River, almost a hundred miles away. With the wind at his back, Buck Bell drifted. His heart was as heavy as the leaden sky. Ahead of him rolled a giant tumbleweed. On and on, across the bench, grotesque, almost alive, blown along by the north wind. Headed south. In the pockets of his black chaps was stowed more money than he had ever seen or even dreamed of. There was not a chance of the theft being fastened to him. It had been easy, almost too easy to seem true. With five thousand dollars a man could buy a good bunch of cattle down in New Mexico or Arizona. Buck was cowman enough to make a herd pay. It would mean that he no longer need work for wages. For forty a month ... Forty into five thousand. Buck was a good hand at figures. One hundred and twenty-five months. Ten years and more, even if a man didn’t spend a dime for poker or redeye or smokin’--or clothes. Socks and such. He had sold his bed for twenty dollars. That twenty was in his vest pocket now. He had kept it separated from the other money--the money he had stolen. “Sam Bass was born in Indiana; it was his native home....” The song, high pitched, quavering, drifted along the wind from behind Buck, blurred a little in the flurry of hard snow that swirled across the ground like white sand. Buck halted as the singer came up out of the storm. It was Dick Powell, the sheriff.