“I guess you dug it up before you went away, didn’t you?” said the cowboy, who was overjoyed to hear that his money was safe. “I can rest easy now. That’s what comes of having a friend.”
That night, after supper, the money which Bob had taken the precaution to carry with him, when running from the Indians, was again paid out to the men with the exception of the thousand dollars due Sam Noble. This was paid to Mr. Chisholm in the hope that some of his heirs might claim it, when it was to be given to them. Then our errand was broached—that we were going to the States—and it threw a damper on all of them, all except Mr. Chisholm. He had been thinking about it ever since the attack was made upon the paymaster, and to our surprise and delight he said:
“Boys, it is the best thing you can do, and the sooner you get about it the better you will suit me. If you were my own boys who were going off I couldn’t feel worse about it. But you don’t say anything about Elam.”
“He doesn’t want to go,” said Bob. “But we are coming back here again, or at least to Denver, and if he will buy some cattle and get back there by next summer, we will see him.”
“I can’t go,” said Elam. “I don’t belong in that country anyway.”
The next thing was to arrange it so that Elam could work for some of the cowboys during the winter, and so be on hand to buy the cattle when spring opened up. Finding the two wounded cowboys there with Mr. Chisholm slightly interfered with our plans, for now we were compelled to divide the stock into four instead of two equal parts; but the cowboys were all in favor of it, and each one agreed to take Elam as long as he was willing to stay with them. But Elam was already satisfied with the arrangements he had made with Lem and Frank, and concluded he would stay with them. When he made this decision he got up and went out of doors. I could see that Bob didn’t like it a bit. He wished he could prevail upon Elam to go North with him.
“It isn’t any use,” said Mr. Chisholm. “He belongs down here, and here he is going to stay. Now let’s go to bed, all of us. In the morning I will have you up at the first peep of day.”
The next morning we ate breakfast by the aid of the light thrown out by the camp fire on the hearth, and before we were fairly done we received the order “catch up.” I tell you it was hard work to part from those wounded cowboys, for we had known them longer than we had anybody else. The one who had the arrow through his arm insisted that he would go to Austin with us, but Mr. Chisholm, like Uncle Ezra in a similar case, “put his foot down,” and said he should stay right there on the ranch and never go out of it until he came back. We waved our hats to them as long as we remained in sight, and when the neighboring swells hid them from view, we felt that we had parted from some of our best friends. In due time we reached Austin and put up at the same hotel we stopped at before, only Lem and Frank didn’t receive orders to sit on the porch and look out for Henderson. We all put away our horses and bent our steps toward the bank. The cashier was there, and he said Mr. Wallace was in his private office. He was busy with his papers,—in fact he always seemed to be busy,—but he laid them down when we came in.
“Hello, Chisholm,” said he. “What’s up?”
“These boys here have made up their minds to go to the States, and I want to sign Bob’s papers,” said he. “Get ’em all out so’t I can have them off’n my mind.”