His face red and sweaty with excitement, Delkin tilted the keg on its side, picked up a canvas sack as if it were very heavy and put it into Gelle's eager, outstretched hands. He laughed foolishly at the look of astonishment on the long cowpuncher's face and reached for another sack. He was like a boy clawing gifts out of his Christmas stocking and truly believing in Santa Claus. Bud, who had seen how despair could rack him, swallowed a lump that appeared mysteriously in his throat. It was worth a lot, he told himself, to see a man so overwhelmingly elated and happy.
"Brad, here are those bonds of Morgan's—why do thieves take stuff they never can use? Stauffer, here, you take charge of these—notes and mortgages, I guess they are. I wonder if Palmer was foxy enough to take out that note of his that the bank holds! God, if we could get Charlie's life back with the rest, I'd be the happiest man on earth! Well—that's all, I guess. No—but this isn't the bank's. This must belong to Palmer."
"Glom it!" Gelle advised grimly, but Delkin shook his head.
"No—all we want is our own. Well, no use putting back the rubbish, is there? If they come here at all, they're bound to find out the bank's property has disappeared. And if we have any luck at all, they'll never get back here. Jelly, do you want to carry the gold?"
"I should smile!" Gelle grinned widely to prove it as he held open the grain sack. "Any chances the gold might some of it rub off on m' shirt? How much is they, Mr. Delkin?"
"A little over twelve thousand dollars, according to the books. Brad's carrying three times as much; yes, Brad's got forty thousand dollars right there in his hands."
"Yeah?" Gelle cast a mildly disdainful glance at the package of bank notes which Bradley was stowing away in a bag. "Mebbe so, but it shore don't carry the same thrill as what this gold money packs. That why you left all that money in the keg?" He turned, shoulders slightly bent under his load, and stared at the emptied powder kegs, and at the one which was not empty. "It shore is a crime to leave all that good money there," he complained. "Chances are Palmer stole it, anyway. Me, I don't believe the old hellion ever did get an honest dollar in his life. It'd burn his fingers."
"But that doesn't give us any right to it," Delkin told him firmly. "Some one is liable to come on a long lope to see how about it. You fellows go ahead; I'll bring up the rear. And remember, that open stretch down there is in plain sight of the stables, so you'd better take it on the trot."
Gelle did better than that; he sprinted for the bushes ahead of the other three, got hung up in the wire fence because he tried to crawl through without slipping the sack of coin to the ground, and so caught a barb fast in the canvas and had to be helped by Bud, who overtook him while he was still wriggling like an impaled bug.
Delkin, Bradley and Stauffer went on and were jubilating in hushed voices with Kline when the Meadowlark contingent arrived. They stood apart from the old man, who still snored comfortably with his lips puffed out through his thin whiskers. Bud's capture was likely to prove embarrassing.