Buck wrapped the injured leg in a blanket and Cotton Eye rode away in the gray dawn. Buck grinned a farewell. When Cotton Eye was gone, Buck tried to whistle away the gnawing loneliness. He worked feverishly, not even taking a few minutes off at noon for his usual coffee and beans and meat. Now and then, when his chores took him past the corner of the shed where the stolen money had been buried, he would quicken his pace, as a man afraid of ghosts might pass with haste by a grave.
“Why did Horace lie?” he asked himself a thousand and one times.
“Because Horace knowed who done the robbery!” came the still answer out of each night’s darkness.
Cotton Eye had left his bed and his warsack filled with a few clothes and knicknacks. Delving into the sack for a needle and thread one day, a week or so after Cotton Eye’s departure, Buck came upon a large envelope of heavy paper. He emptied its contents of saddle wax and thread and harness needles and awl. He sat there, smiling softly, the worried frown momentarily gone from his forehead.
“I’ll do it. I’ll use this envelope to hold the money. Else I’ll be plumb crazy before spring. I’ll send the money to Horace, first man that passes along.”
He spent an evening composing a laborious letter to the Circle C wagon boss. That night he slept without tossing and dreaming. And with the first streak of dawn he was out in the shed with pick and shovel, digging in the corner. With hands that shook with eagerness, he undid the slicker. A choking cry broke from his pulsing throat. The money was gone. All of it. The slicker held nothing but some scraps of old newspaper, rudely cut and bundled in imitation of the banknotes.
For a long time Buck squatted there on the ground, staring with dazed eyes at the slicker and its mocking contents. A racking, horrible laugh rattled from his dry lips. Then he went on back to the cabin, his brain aching dully with milling thoughts.
Cotton Eye had taken the money. Cotton Eye was a thief as well as a crooked card sharp. It was hard to take—after what he’d done fer Cotton Eye.
“Well, the damn’ stuff is gone. Gone fer keeps. Too late now to send it back with that confession ... Cotton Eye would be headed south by now ... south ... with five thousand dollars.”