"And yet you stayed on, Bill?" when Royce's voice stopped.
"I'd promised your dad I'd be here—with the coin—when you come back. He knew an' I knew you might blow in an' blow out an' never get word unless I was right here all the time. An' ol' man Packard, after I was blind I went to him an' he promised I could stick as long as I just obeyed orders. Which, I've done, no matter what they was.
"But the end's come now; ain't it, Steve, ol' pardner? But to get this tale tol' an' the money in your hands: I didn't know who'd tried to do for me, but I guessed it must have been some one who'd found out somehow about the ten thousan' an' thought I had it on me. When I come to at the cabin an' firs' thing tried to get a chaw of tobacco I foun' my pockets all turned wrong side out. It might have been Johnny Mills himself; he didn't know about the gun bein' fooled with; it might have been Blenham; it might have been Guy Little; it might have been somebody else. But I've thought all along an' I pray God I was right an' that some day I'll know, that it was Blenham."
He rose suddenly.
"Come ahead, Steve," he said, his voice matter of fact as of old. "It's up to you to ride herd on your own simoleons now."
"You've left it in the same place? In the rock foundation-wall?"
"Yes. I couldn't find a safer place."
"And you haven't been back to it all these months?"
"Not until las' Saturday night. It was jus' six months then. I figgered it out I'd make sure once every six months. I went in the middle of the night an' made sure nobody followed me, Steve. Come ahead."
Packard slipped his arm through Royce's and they went side by side. The night was filled with stars; there was no moon. The wall, as they came around the corner of the house, shone palely here and there where a white surface glinted vaguely through the shadows.