Then a slow grin spread across the mouth of Buck Bell. He chuckled, then laughed until the coffee boiled over and on to the stove.
“That’s shore one on me. Frettin’ and stewin’ around about that money. Him playin’ possum with that leg. Diggin’ ’er up, when I rode off yesterday. But how’d he know I had it? How’d he know where it was buried? Well, I got all winter to figger ’er out.”
Days slipped into weeks. Weeks of white isolation. The hay was about gone. No word from the ranch. And that eternal gray sky overhead like a shroud.
Came that morning when Buck Bell looked out at the empty hay corral. This was the end of the trail. All about the cabin the gaunt eyed cattle walked aimlessly, bawling. Buck went back into the cabin and began packing. When his grub was sacked and his bed rolled he went out to the barn and hooked the team to his crude snow plow. He tied his saddle horse to the off horse and loaded his bed and grub on the snow plow. Then he scrawled a note and laid it on the rawhide covered table, weighting it with a can of frozen tomatoes.
Closing the door of the log cabin, he picked up the lines and seated himself on the snow plow. As the team got under way, he grinned back over his shoulder.
“So long, cabin. Here goes nothin’.”
Behind him, bawling hungrily, trailed the cattle. Their dumb faith was pinned to the man and his horses.
South into the breaks across the frozen river. The sun was a dim white ball in a dead sky. The air was still and sharp. The snow plow creaked and groaned.
“Come on, dogies!”