The Man Who Hated Himself | Project Gutenberg

Every stockman in the northwest recalls the hard winter of ’86-’87. It broke most of them. One cattleman, spending his winter in the South, wrote back to his ranch to inquire how his stuff was wintering. His line rider took a pencil and drew the picture of a starving cow hung up in the drifts. Under it he wrote:

Waiting for a chinook. The last of the five thousand.

The man who drew that picture was Charlie Russell, the daddy of them all when it came to putting the cow and the horse and the Indian and the cowpuncher on canvas or in clay. But in ’86 Charlie was a cowpuncher.

This is not a story about Charlie Russell. He is mentioned no more in the tale. I speak of him here because when a cowman of Montana recalls the winter of ’86 he invariably mentions that picture of Charlie Russell’s as an illustration for his tale of hardship. It tells better than any words the bitter curse of that hard winter.

The Circle C outfit made their last shipment of steers along about the first of November that fall. It was spitting snow when they finished loading. The cattle train pulled out for Chicago. The boys rode back to where the roundup wagon was camped on Main Alkali. They gulped down hot food and black coffee, caught out their town horses and headed for Malta.

As they jogged along the road with their ears tied up with silk handkerchiefs, heads bent against the raw wind, big Buck Bell rode up alongside the wagon boss.

“Winter’s done come, Horace,” grunted Buck, fashioning a cigaret with numbing fingers.

“Makes a man wonder what’s become of his summer’s wages,” Buck led up to his subject.

Horace nodded a trifle absently. He was wondering how he’d get his mess wagon loaded and started for the ranch before the cook got too drunk to handle his four lines.

“How’s chances fer a winter’s job ridin’ line, Horace?” Buck tried to keep the eager tremor out of his voice.

“We’re full handed fer the winter, Bell. You should ’a’ tackled me a month ago.”

“A month ago,” said Buck Bell with grim humor, “I was fatter’n a bear in berry season. Had a thousand dollars. Had a idee I was a top hand at draw poker; The nighthawk took me fer my roll.”

This story of tough luck was not a new one to the ears of the wagon boss. It is a tale as old as the oldest cow hand. Horace, still thinking of the cook, missed the flicker of disappointment in Buck Bell’s snow bitten eyes. He failed to see the beaten droop of the big boned shoulders inadequately clothed in a soiled flannel shirt and two undershirts. Buck didn’t own an overcoat. His boots were rusty and he kicked his toes against his stirrups as he rode, by way of restoring circulation.

“Looks like when a man begun gittin’ white headed,” said Horace as they dropped down the ridge toward town, “he’d have sense enough to save a winter stake.”

He did not mean to be unkind. There wasn’t a mean drop of blood in the cow boss’s veins. He was sorry for Buck Bell and hid his softer emotions under the words he now mumbled into the upturned collar of a threadbare coat. Truthfully speaking, Horace himself was prodigal as the rest of the cowpuncher clan.

Buck took a last pull at the bit of stub of cigaret and threw it away. Then he chuckled softly. They were riding down the lane that approached town. To the left of them was the Malta graveyard, the wooden slabs whitening with the first snow.

“Just thinkin’ how them boys planted in yonder boothill don’t need worry no more about winter jobs and coonskin coats they ain’t got the coin to buy. I kin name three-four that I bet is plenty warm where they went.”

They rode into town and put their horses in the feed barn. The stalls were filling with Circle C horses. There was an unwritten law of the outfit that a man must stable his horse before he got drunk.

Over at Dick Powell’s place the boys were paid off. Dick, saloon man and sheriff, voiced his friendly warning.

The hard earned money went into swift circulation. The tin horn gamblers opened up their games. Bartenders set up free drinks at proper intervals to the laughing, cussing, free handed men who lined the bar and swapped yarns and thawed out.

They moved along to the next saloon. Crumpled banknotes lay along the bar. The men greeted old friends. Jovial bartenders, most of them old time cowpunchers, wiped right hands on soiled aprons and voiced profane welcome.

Fiddles squeaked above the voices loosened by the whisky. Tin pan pianos banged. Lights defied the coming dusk of early night. There would be no night guard to stand tonight. No long circle to ride in the early dawn. While their money lasted these cowboys owned the town.

“To hell with you an’ your fifty, Buck. Pay me half when you die. The rest when you come back. I’m winnin’ off this gamblin’ man.”

“A little red licker, Dick. Give the boys what they want. Wake up that sheepherder in the corner and tell the gentleman that ol’ Buck Bell is in town. I’m a red eyed wolf from Bitter Crick and it’s my night to howl.” Whereupon he howled long and loud with a quivering, high keyed sadness in his voice.

The wind moaned darkly down the lonesome lane between the rows of saloons and stores. He stood with bowed legs spread wide, thumbs hung in his sagging cartridge belt, leaning a little against the storm. His howl was blotted out in a flurry of snow that was ushering in the long winter. Buck felt sad in spite of the dozen drinks under his belt. Sad and lonesome and restless. He belonged down in Texas and he was a long way from home. He had aimed to go back home this winter, wearing store clothes and with coin in his pockets. But Cotton Eye had cleaned him. He crossed over to Long Henry’s and was promptly pulled up to the bar by several celebrants. Buck tossed out a ten dollar bill with the air of a man who scorns money. Somebody was singing “Sam Bass”.

“Sam Bass” is a ballad that extolls the deeds of that notorious Texas outlaw. The old time outlaw has always held a place in the hearts of the cowpunchers. His vices are buried, his virtues, real or imaginary, live on in cowland saga.

“Sam first came to Texas a cowboy for to be—
A kinder hearted feller you seldom ever see!”

Buck Bell twirled his whisky glass between thumb and forefinger. The singer had a good voice and his audience was mellow and prone to the sentiment that has to do with white haired mothers, golden haired sweethearts and generosity of dying outlaws.

“Sam met his fate at Round Rock, July the twenty-first;
They pierced poor Sam with rifle balls and emptied out his purse.

“Jim had borrowed Sam’s good gold and didn’t want to pay,
So the only shot he saw, was to give poor Sam away.
He sold out Sam . . .

He downed his drink at one gulp and reached for the bar bottle as it came down along the line. He became more quiet, more thoughtful, as the night wore on. That haunted restlessness drove him out to the deserted street. He drifted, alone and wrapped in brooding thought, into Cavanaugh’s.

The negro piano player knew the song of Sam Bass. He sang it through three times for Buck. Buck gave him ten dollars. Only ten more remained in his overalls pocket.

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.”

Buck’s mouth opened, then closed without saying a word. He had been on the verge of telling the wagon boss the whole thing. Until now, Buck Bell had accepted the trust of his fellowmen as a matter of course. Now, well, now it was all over. He was beginning to pay already for his crime.

“I’d ruther not, Horace. I’ll make ’er somehow. It’s right white of you and the Old Gent. I won’t fergit it.”

The sheriff came in, an icy gust of wind and snow following him inside the lamplit, smoke hazed saloon.

Dick Powell was a blunt statured man, husky, reddish of hair, with keen gray eyes and a drooping mustache. A good natured sort of fellow who was rated as a crackerjack cow hand. The grin on Dick’s mouth held a grim twist as his eyes swept the crowd with slow deliberation.

Dick Powell did not seem to hear. A hush fell over the gathering. The fiddle in the hands of a Cree breed squeaked thinly and went silent. The bartender, from force of habit, reached for the sawed off shotgun under the bar.

“Boys,” said the blocky sheriff, his voice heavy with sadness, rather than anger, “there’s a damn’ skunk amongst us tonight. When you boys rode in, I give you the run of the town. A man hates to think he has to watch boys that he’s worked with in the wet and cold and hot weather. I never thought a Circle C man would coyote on me.”

“What the hell you drivin’ at, Dick?” asked Horace, his mild eyes glinting a little.

“Some polecat knocked the depot man on the head and got off with five thousand dollars, that’s all.”

“Well,” drawled Cotton Eye, the nighthawk, “I reckon them mine folks will keep on runnin’ things just the same. Have a drink and fergit it.”

“Whoever lifted that roll won’t have to worry none about forkin’ hay and openin’ water holes this winter,” chuckled another cowboy.

“Dad burn the luck,” complained a third, “why didn’t I think about glaumin’ that payroll? Now I gotta break out of a early mornin’ from now till spring, shovelin’ hay into a lot o’ bawlin’ dogies. Some gents gits all the luck.”

But for all their banter, they felt uneasy. Who among them had stolen that five thousand dollars? Oddly enough, no man blamed the thief. They rather admired his ingenuity. He had made a lucky haul.

“Well, Dick,” said Horace slowly, “whoever done it, must ’a’ been blind drunk. You know every man in the outfit. There ain’t one rotten egg in the bunch. Say, how do you know it wa’n’t some tramp er some stray miner that done it?”

“The depot man heard his spurs jingle, so he says,” growled the sheriff, “just before he got beefed. It was some cow hand. And outside of you boys there ain’t a cowboy in town. He heard them spurs.”

“If I have, I’ll keep it to myself,” came the tart reply. “I look to you boys to lend me a hand and all I git is some horrawin’.”

“No need to git hot about it,” grinned the wagon boss, toying with his drink.

The bartender smoothed his bald head in grave thought. He had taken a goodly amount of drinks since the boys got in. Owl eyed, he tallied the crowd.

“Near as I kin recollect, Dick, not a man o’ them has left since I come back from supper at eleven.”

“Then that alibis this bunch of cow dodgers,” and the sheriff moved on out and down the street.

The robbery gave the cowpunchers a meaty topic for talk—talk and more drinks. They hit upon the idea of following Dick Powell in his sleuthing.

From one saloon to the next they waddled in the wake of the annoyed sheriff. The crowd had taken on numbers until by the time they reached the Bloody Heart the entire outfit was crowded into the saloon.

Various bartenders had furnished iron-clad alibis for every Circle C man. Powell gave up in disgust and slipped away from the throng, which was growing somewhat boisterous. Horace followed the sheriff out the back door. Twenty-five cowpunchers set about to make the most of the momentous occasion.

Months of hard work in the saddle and branding corrals without a holiday, long days from the crack of dawn until dark, with two hours night guard for good measure, had starved them for a little fun.

These men belonged to a breed that has no equal. For forty dollars a month and grub they ride mean horses, face death and hunger and thirst and cold and bitter discomforts. They ask no favors, whine out no complaint, taking the good along with the bad. It is all in a day’s work. Most of them were cowmen at twelve years of age. At sixty there would be much of the boy left in their big hearts. It is not for those who have not known their breed to censure their faults. They lived according to their lights.

John Law and his rules meant little in their lives. They had a way of settling personal affairs, those men who roamed the West in the Eighties when the country needed them.

So they held kangaroo court. The bartender at the Bloody Heart was found guilty and fined several rounds of drinks. Then they moved on to the next saloon and again held court. Another dispenser of redeye was found guilty. Guilty as hell, by ballot. The fine was duly paid in liquid form. And at daybreak they had routed the sheriff from his warm bed, stood him up on the bar, clad in a knee length nightshirt, boots, hat and a cold cigaret. Ballots were passed, signed and dropped in Dick’s hat. He read them, one by one.

It was a large night. Guns popped jubilant greeting to a day that held no hard ride after stray cattle.

Most of them were flat broke. Cotton Eye, the bloated financier, had lost his money and hocked his spurs for a bottle to take along. Then he engaged the bartender in conversation while a confederate stole back the spurs.

Horace gathered his men one, by one, mounted them, and started them out of town. They bucked their horses down the street, emptying their guns at a leaden sky. Behind them was their night’s pleasure. Ahead lay the dread winter.

Buck Bell got his private horse from the barn. Because he owned no overcoat, he donned his slicker and wrapped his feet in strips of gunnysack. Alone, his hat pulled down across his eyes, his ungloved hands shoved down against the saddle cantle, he rode out of town.

As he neared the stockyards he glanced about. No living thing moved in the snow swept world that met his eye. He swung off his horse and dragged the steel box from under the loading chute. A heavy padlock fastened it. Buck drew his .45 and shot off the lock. His stiff fingers pried up the lid. There lay the banknotes in piles bound with wide rubber bands. He shoved the money into the deep pockets of his angora chaps. Then he buried the empty metal box in the débris under the chute.

Five minutes later he rode on again into the storm. He looked old and sadly troubled. The bitter cold was pinching the color from his face. He was a little sick from the liquor that he had drunk. Sick and lonesome.

Through the lane and past the graveyard, on to the wind swept benchland, headed south toward the badlands of the Missouri River, almost a hundred miles away. With the wind at his back, Buck Bell drifted. His heart was as heavy as the leaden sky. Ahead of him rolled a giant tumbleweed. On and on, across the bench, grotesque, almost alive, blown along by the north wind. Headed south.

In the pockets of his black chaps was stowed more money than he had ever seen or even dreamed of. There was not a chance of the theft being fastened to him. It had been easy, almost too easy to seem true. With five thousand dollars a man could buy a good bunch of cattle down in New Mexico or Arizona. Buck was cowman enough to make a herd pay. It would mean that he no longer need work for wages. For forty a month ... Forty into five thousand. Buck was a good hand at figures. One hundred and twenty-five months. Ten years and more, even if a man didn’t spend a dime for poker or redeye or smokin’—or clothes. Socks and such. He had sold his bed for twenty dollars. That twenty was in his vest pocket now. He had kept it separated from the other money—the money he had stolen.

“Sam Bass was born in Indiana; it was his native home....”

The song, high pitched, quavering, drifted along the wind from behind Buck, blurred a little in the flurry of hard snow that swirled across the ground like white sand. Buck halted as the singer came up out of the storm. It was Dick Powell, the sheriff.

Something hot scalded Buck Bell’s heart as the rider came alongside. Had the sheriff somehow found him out? Buck almost hoped so. But Powell grinned as easy greeting. He was warmly clad in chaps, overshoes and a buffalo coat. The stock of a carbine jutted from his saddle scabbard.

“You look fer all the world like a bull that’s been whipped outa the herd, Bell. Here, see what this’ll do to you.”

He passed over a quart of whisky. They drank together and rode on with the storm.

“Trailin’ hell! Whoever done it didn’t leave a sign. But mark my words, Bell, he’ll give hisself away.”

Buck Bell slapped his cold hands against the slicker to beat the blood into circulation.

“Here, take these.” The sheriff pulled a pair of yarn mitts from his pocket. “I brung along an extra pair. The missus knit ’em.”

“How?” The sheriff replied to his question. “Well, it’s thisaway, Bell. I know every man that was in town that night. I know where each man will be workin’ this winter. Horace gimme their names and what camps they’d be at. I wired fer the serial number of them stolen banknotes. When that money begins goin’ into circulation, I’ll nab my man. Er if ary man quits this range, I’ll be follerin’ him. I’ll have the other towns posted. He’s corralled.”

“Here’s the list. Stuart and Contway at Big Warm. Howe and Smith at Little Warm. You and Cotton Eye at Rocky Point, down on the Missouri. And so on.”

He shoved the book back into his pocket. Buck’s head was lowered as he fumbled with clumsy hands at a witch’s knot in his horse’s mane. His brain was working swiftly. Why had Horace lied? Why had the wagon boss told the sheriff that he, Buck Bell, was going into a line camp at Rocky Point?

“I wouldn’t be tellin’ this to everybody, understand,” continued the sheriff. “I know I kin trust you, Bell.”

If the sheriff had taken a sharp knife and struck the cowpuncher in the back he could not have hurt Buck Bell more than he did when he spoke those words.

They rode on in silence. Buck was chilled to the bone by the wind; it bit through his inadequate clothing. Dick urged the bottle on him to warm his blood.

“I got some stuff that’ll be driftin’ with the storms this winter, Bell. I spoke to the Old Gent about it. He said it’d be all right if you boys kinda kept an eye on ’em and feed a few if need be.”

Their trails parted a little farther on. The sheriff made Buck take his overshoes and the bottle.

“I’ll be back home in a couple o’ hours. Don’t be a damn’ fool, Bell. So long. Good luck, old-timer. See you next spring when the chinook melts you outa the bad lands.”

When they had parted Buck rode on, the ache in his heart more bitter than before. The words of the sheriff’s song came drifting back out of the storm—the song of Sam Bass.

“. . . Sam he is a corpse and six foot under clay.”

Buck stayed that night at a line camp, and pushed on the next morning. He kept wondering why Horace had lied. It hung like a sand burr in his thoughts all that day. He stopped late the next afternoon at a horse camp; and because they were short handed, Buck worked there a week. Then he drifted on once more, refusing a cent for his labors. It was the ethics of the grub line that forbade his accepting payment. They had given him and his horse food and shelter. He asked no more, though the work had been hard and he had eaten but two meals each day. Breakfast before they rode away; supper when they came in after dark. He had made the biscuits, helped with the dishes, and split wood, to boot. And he had given them what was left of the whisky.

Because Rocky Point lay along his route to somewhere south, he rode up there one evening at dusk.

A saddled horse was humped in the lee of the shed. Hollow eyed cattle bawled in the corral. No smoke came from the little log cabin. Filled with grave misgivings, Buck Bell stepped into the cabin. The moan of a man in pain came out of its dark interior. He found Cotton Eye lying fully clothed in bed, his leg broken between the ankle and knee. He had been like that since the day before, he told Buck through set teeth.

Buck built the fire and made the crippled man as comfortable as possible. Then he took care of the horses and scattered hay for the gaunt cattle. When he came back to the cabin, he hid his fears under a careless banter.

“I’ll throw some soup into you, Cotton Eye. And coffee. Now roll over on your back and cuss me while I git this boot cut off. I’ll be as gentle as a cow with her first calf, pardner.”

Those men of the frontier were steady of hand and ingenious of brain. Broken bones and gunshot wounds were not uncommon. A man needed to know the rudiments of crude surgery in those days when doctors were few and far between.

There was no sleep for either man that night. Buck fashioned a sling to hold the suffering man while he pulled the fractured bone into place. The erstwhile nighthawk groaned. Buck swore softly as he labored. He splinted the leg with stout willow sticks and strips of tanned rawhide saddle strings. Beads of sweat covered the drawn face of Cotton Eye. He lay back, whimpering a little through clenched teeth, sick and faint, but game enough. Buck held a cup of black coffee to his mouth.

“She’s all over but the knittin’, pard. Here’s a cigaroot. She’ll hurt like hell fer a spell, but it’s a clean break and orter heal fast. I’ll run the show till you git well.”

Buck built up the fire. His chaps with their precious store of money hung on a wooden peg with his bridle. Now and then he glanced that way, his lips smiling without humor.

Cotton Eye lay there, a little flushed with fever, his eyes brighter than they should have been.

“Shore thing,” nodded Buck Bell, “I knowed that. But a man’s gotta have some kinda excitement around a cow camp, even if it’s playin’ poker with a marked deck. I was ketchin’ on to the markin’s about the time I went broke.”

Cotton Eye was delirious by morning. Buck was forced to tie the man down while he fed and watered the cattle. Because there was only one bed, Buck had made out with the saddle blankets and the sick man’s overcoat.

During the days that followed Buck Bell did the work of five men. He chopped wood, cooked, and nursed Cotton Eye, whose fever went down slowly. He rode out each day, gathering poor cows that were too weak to rustle. He hooked up the work team and hauled hay, scattering it in a wide circle outside the corral. He opened the water hole twice a day. He puttered about the cabin, fixing it for the long winter, and forced a cheerfulness into the chatter that he flung at Cotton Eye. When he finally crawled into his improvised bed, fully clothed save for hat and boots, he was too weary to mind the cold much.

He killed a beef one evening. That night he brought in a square piece of the hide and worked on it with his pocket knife.

“Let’s have that good leg o’ your’n, pardner.” Buck wrapped the hide about the leg, nodded, marked it with his knife and took the hide back to his seat by the fire.

“Them splints kin come off in a day er so. I’m fixin’ a sorter casin’ to fit around that game laig. This hide’ll be plenty hard and we’ll lace it, savvy? Padded with the felt from a man’s hat, she’ll make a cast that’ll be useful and right ornamental, with the hair on the outside. I’m stretchin’ it around this willer pole to make ’er smooth.”

Buck tanned the rest of the hide and made himself moccasins and a coat that was ill fitting but warm enough. He killed a blacktail buck and they feasted on venison. Buck spent his evenings tanning the hide. The rawhide cast, smooth and hard and padded with felt from Buck’s hat, now replaced the willow splints. Buck wore a cap made out of a piece of Hudson’s Bay blanket. He refused the offer of Cotton Eye’s clothes.

With December came real winter—the hardest winter the cowmen in Montana have ever known. The hay was giving out. Buck worked on a snowplow. The cattle in the field grew in number each day. Gaunt flanked, hollow eyed, bawling as they trained at a stubborn walk with the storm.

Gray days. White days. Bitter days. The cattle drifting down into the badlands. Even the big native steers were finding it hard to paw to feed under the crusted snow.

Buck’s black chaps no longer banked his stolen money. He had buried the stuff in a corner of the cow shed, wrapped carefully in his slicker. His daylight labors brought peace of mind. But sometimes he lay awake, far into the night, haunted by thoughts of the buried wealth. The dream of a cow outfit of his own was replaced by the black nightmare of his theft. He was tempted a hundred times to share the burden of his guilt with Cotton Eye who was now hobbling about on crutches made of forked sticks wrapped and padded with deerskin.

“Wish I could git word out to the ranch,” said Buck, “This hay ain’t gonna last. The only shot, if this keeps up, is to drift south o’ the river where the shelter is better. Mebbe train out from there. They could buy hay at Lewistown and Gilt Edge. I had to kill three more calves today. Cows didn’t have milk to feed the li’l beggars. Hear the cows a-bawlin’? Hell, ain’t it?”

The haystacks were becoming fewer. Buck and his crippled partner found it hard to fill the long silences that fell over them. Cotton Eye hobbled about now, getting the meals and washing dishes. He scraped the thick frost from the window and would sit there, smoking and watching Buck Bell pitch hay sparingly to the starving cattle. When Buck saddled his horse and rode back into the breaks to bring in more stumbling, gaunt steers and cows, Cotton Eye would curse with futile fury at his aching leg.

“Brung in three more o’ Dick Powell’s steers today. Weak as hell. Three-four Circle Diamond cows, another Square steer, one er two Bear Paw Pool strays, and the Widder Brown’s Jersey milk cow. The widder sets a heap o’ store by that cow. It must be shore a-stormin’ up on the ridges, to drift that stuff into the breaks. If this keeps up, there won’t be a cow left in the country.”

“You was sayin’ something about gettin’ word to the ranch, Buck. I kin make out to ride now. I’d like to tackle it. Ain’t doin’ no good here.”

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.

“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.”

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.

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.

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, 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 native 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, looking back. “Come on, you hungry dogies! Git the wrinkles outa your paunches. Mebbe so it’s come Christmas 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 bottomland 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.

A frozen, wolf gnawed steer carcass lay near the cabin. Its ripped paunch held no grass. Only willow sticks, some of them almost the thickness of a man’s wrist.

This was the winter of ’86-’87, when the drift fences and cut coulees held the hide and bones of a hundred thousand steers. When the mercury hung below forty-five, and more than a few cowboys died for their outfits. When cowmen stared out across the blizzard swept hills, dry eyed, with aching lumps in their throats. Grim, silent, defeated.

The sun was a white ball inside its circle of gray, cold as the eye of a corpse. Sun dogs followed its passing, across a sky that knew no warmth. At night the patches of stars seemed frozen in a black agate sky.

And when the last of the hay was gone, the men sat about the bunkhouse stove. And the strings of staggering, bawling cattle drifted on down the wind to death.

At night the wolves and coyotes flung the death song toward the glittering stars.

That was the winter of ’86-’87. The winter that broke the back of the cow country.

South of the river, Buck Bell watched the last of the feed go. He had lost track of the days. He did not know what month it was. But he knew that the grass had played out and that the end of the trail lay just ahead. His grub was gone and he was living on meat and beans. Each day he felt of his teeth to test the coming symptoms of scurvy. His clothes were a mass of patches. His eyes were swollen almost shut, the lids scaled from frost, the eyeballs discolored by snow blindness. Only half a dozen matches remained in his pocket. He could not remember the taste of tobacco and coffee.

Half frozen, he lay in a knot under tarp and blankets, that night in early spring when a wind roared down out of the canons with a droning, rushing sound.

The scrub pines whispered; cattle got to their feet. Buck stirred a little under the tarp, hardly awake. Then the wind cut down the river and swept his forlorn camp. No man who has ever heard the voice of the chinook wind can ever forget its whimper. Buck threw back the tarp and the warm blast rushed down upon him.

A harsh, choking cry broke from his throat as he sat up in bed. His arms, ragged, aching, frost seared, flung out in a wide gesture. His face, bearded and scarred black, lifted. His eyes found the stars that seemed close overhead in a warm sky. Terrible sobs shook him. Tears streamed down from his aching eyes.

He could find no other word to fit into the prayer that sobbed and rattled and laughed in his throat.

The weary horses felt the blessing of that chinook wind. The cattle milled and bawled a restless chant. The melting snow in the tree branches dripped with increasing cadence. A golden moon rode across the sky toward the jagged skyline. The hard winter was over. The chinook had come. Its passage through the pines sang the requiem of cattle and horses and men that slept beneath the crusted drifts.

And when the coulees became rivers and the ridges lay bare, Buck Bell trailed his straggling herd up the ridge and on to the open prairie.

“Git along, little dogies, git along!”

And so they found him that day in the Spring of ’87. Horace and the little man with the white beard and puckered, sky blue eyes who owned the Circle C. Horace and the Old Gent.

They did not know him. Their eyes were dim with the miracle that lay before them. Cattle. Hundreds of cattle, grazing hungrily. And behind them a snow blind man who was all hair and rags, who sang in a crazy voice, the words of “Sam Bass.”

A phantom herd followed by a ghost. It was impossible to believe that so many cattle could have lived, while so many thousands of others had died. Buck’s herd filled the coulees and covered the ridges. The chain harness rattled on the work team that was hooked to a bull hide which held Buck’s bed and two young calves hog tied.

A dozen brands were represented in that gaunt herd. One of those calves belonged to the Widow Brown’s Jersey milk cow. Its father was the prize Circle Diamond bull that had strayed down from its Canadian range. Half of Dick Powell’s herd was there.

“Sam Bass was born in Indiana...”

Between them, the Old Gent and Horace got Buck Bell to the ranch. Somebody went for Doc Steele, fifty miles away. For Buck was blind and one foot so badly frozen that three toes had to come off.

“He’ll see again in ten days,” said the doctor. “Let him sleep. Give him warm food. Go slow on the whisky. He has a barb wire constitution and a rawhide carcass.” He was a little puzzled at Buck’s delirious babbling.

Horace and the Old Gent exchanged glances. The owner of the Circle C thoughtfully stroked his whiskers and smiled down at the sleeping Buck Bell. Then he handed the doctor the note that Horace had found on the table at the deserted line camp at Rocky Point. Doc Steele knew cowboys. He understood. He handed back the note and blew his nose like a trumpet. The Old Gent fetched glasses and the bottle.

“Cotton Eye got here about New Year’s, Doc. He had five thousand dollars and said he’d stole it. Wanted to plead guilty and take his medicine. His story didn’t hold water. He’d been sitting in a poker game when the money was stolen at the depot. Horace knew Buck was the thief because the melting snow on Buck’s hat and clothes showed he’d been out in the storm about the time that depot man was robbed. Cotton Eye finally admitted he’d stolen the money from Buck. Buck had kept him awake nights, talking about the robbery in his sleep like a man gone loco. Buck saved Cotton Eye’s life and he wanted to return the favor.”

“Couple of sentimental old sage hens. It’s a damn’ shame, sir, that we haven’t more of such outlaws in this world.”

When they had set down their glasses, Doc Steele looked quizzically at the cowman.

The sky blue eyes of the old cattleman twinkled. Doc Steele was somehow reminded of the sun shining through summer rain.

“I bought the damn’ mine, Doc. Last fall. I don’t think that anything more need be said about that fool holdup. Buck Bell saved what cattle I have left. God and Buck Bell alone know how he managed. You should have seen what I saw. The whole range spotted with dead critters. Like a boneyard a hundred miles square. We’d rode all day across a cow country graveyard. When I heard cattle bawling, I thought I was dreaming. That herd trailing up out of the breaks. A man too weak to walk, riding behind ’em, singing— It was something, Doc, that a man won’t ever forget.”

They filled their glasses and drank in silence. Then they tiptoed out and Buck Bell slept on, a smile of peace on his frost cracked lips.

Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the July 1, 1928 issue of Adventure magazine.