After many more drinks Buck Bell started for a place across the tracks. His last ten was spent. His heart was as empty as his pockets. The mournful shriek of a locomotive made him shiver as he halted in the lee of the station to light a cigaret. The train dispatcher stepped out of the lighted telegraph office, an eyeshade across his forehead, train orders in his hand. He did not see the tall form of Buck Bell leaning a little unsteadily in the darkness just to one side of the locomotive headlight.
No. 3 squealed to a halt to deposit two sleepy traveling drummers. The door of the express car opened. The armed messenger dropped a heavy iron box on the waiting truck alongside the car. The train dispatcher was now signing for the box. The drummers hurried for the Malta House.
“Payroll for the mines,” the express messenger, explained. “Wish I had that much. I’d quit riding these damn’ night runs. Blizzard comin’.”
The door of the express car slid shut. A yellow lantern circled in the night. The train pulled out slowly and the dispatcher wheeled away the truck with its steel box.
The wheels of the truck creaked its dismal passage. The form of Buck Bell moved in a blackness made more opaque by the departure of the train lights. The man was pushing the truck within arm’s reach of the tall cowboy.
Buck lifted his gun from its old scabbard. He balanced its weight in his hand, moved out of his tracks. Swung the long barrel in a swift arc. The man wheeling the truck slumped down gently, an indistinct lump on the deserted platform.
Buck Bell moved swiftly now. He picked the steel box up in his arms and ran down the tracks. He did not halt until he reached the stockyards, a mile or more from town. He hid the box under the loading chute, then started back.
The walk in the cold air had driven the whisky fog from his brain. Buck was sober now. The sadness, the brooding restlessness, had gone and in its place came swift regrets. He fought down those regrets as best he could. He’d been a fool to do it, but he was into it now. He’d hang and rattle. Play ’er out as the cards fell and ask no man for better than even odds. He wondered how hard he’d hit that depot feller. Can’t let a man lay out in the cold that way. Besides, there was the trains to attend to.
But, as he circled the depot, he saw the sheriff and the train dispatcher talking earnestly inside the lighted telegraph and ticket office. Buck moved away, across to Dick Powell’s place. Nobody took notice of his entrance as he slipped in the back door and dropped into a chair by the stove. Then somebody called the house up for a drink and Buck joined the crowd. He had not been missed.
“How’s things stackin’ up, Buck?” It was old Horace who voiced the question. “Need a little money? I was talkin’ to the Old Gent and he said to let you have what you need. You kin come back and work it out in the spring. It ain’t every man I’d do that fer. But like I was tellin’ the Old Gent, you’re on the square and kin be depended on.”