Adventure, July 1, 1928 — page 132: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

126 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.” 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 J had it? How’d he know where it was buried? Well, I got all win- ter to figger ’er out.” AYS slipped into weeks. Weeks of white isolation. The hay was about gone. No word from the ranch. And that eternal gray sky over- head 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 aim- lessly, 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 raw- hide 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!” A gaunt scarecrow of a man, riding his crazy plow. A beard covered his face up to the frost blackened cheekbones, His clothes were a patchwork of blanket, WALT COBURN cowhide, and buckskin with the hair on. His hair came to his shoulders. Under the deerhide covering, his hands and feet were swollen and stiff from frostbite. “Sam Bass was born in Indiana; it was his na- tive home, And at the age of seventeen, young Sam begun to roam.” The song blended crazily with the bawl of starving cattle, the creak of his covered plow runners and the click of hoofs. South into the sheltering badlands where the snow was deep but soft. The plow cut through, clearing a ten foot path through the drifts. The cattle packed the trail, crowding and riding one another to get to the precious feed. “Grass belly deep!’ cried Buck, look- ing back. “Come on, you hungry dogies! Git the wrinkles outa your paunches. Mebbe so it’s come Christ- mas fer you.” He unhooked the team at last and watered them at a hole cut in the ice. He camped at the edge of the cleared bottom- land and his pitch fire sent its crimson shaft into the night. He had found feed for his cattle. There was more to be had for the plowing. He slept that night with a smile of tired happiness on his bearded, frost cracked lips. In those days to come, Buck Bell found a measure of happiness and peace. He labored untiringly, a man of rawhide. A bearded, frost blackened scarecrow. And the haunting ache of that stolen money slipped into a forgetfulness, buried by the work he was doing. _He cleared huge patches of grass. He rode back across the river and trailed in more starving cattle to share his grass. Sometimes he came within a mile of the cabin at Rocky Point but always he was too busy to stop. Those short days were too brief to waste even a few minutes in idle pastime. The snow was too deep to | tire his horse in breaking useless trail to — the cabin to see whether any one had been there. .So he did not know that Horace had come and found that note on the table. comnlicloooks.com