Go upstairs and go to bed.
I'll keep watch, and not a soul'll know you're here."

Hickory Sam's shoulders sank when he heard the money was gone, and a
look of despair came into his half closed eyes. He sat thus for a few
moments unheeding the other's advice, then with an effort shook off his
lethargy.

"No," he said at last, "I won't go to bed. I'd like to enrich you,
Mike, but that would be too easy. Cut me off some slices of this cold
meat and put them between chunks of bread. I want a three days' supply,
and a bottle of whiskey."

Mike did as requested, and at Sam's orders attended to his horse. It
was still dark, but there was a suggestion of the coming day in the
eastern sky. Buller's horse was as jaded and as fagged out as its
rider. As Sam, stooping like an old man, rode away, Mike hurried to his
bedroom, noiselessly opened the window, and pointed at the back of the
dim retreating man a shot-gun, loaded with slugs. He could hardly have
missed killing both horse and man if he had had the courage to fire,
but his hand trembled, and the drops of perspiration stood on his brow.
He knew that if he missed this time, there would be no question in
Sam's mind about who fired the shot. Resting the gun on the ledge and
keeping his eye along the barrel, he had not the nerve to pull the
trigger. At last the retreating figure disappeared, and with it Mike's
chance of a fortune. He drew in the gun, and softly closed the window,
with a long quivering sigh of regret.

Sidney Buller went west from Detroit when he received the telegram that
announced his uncle's death and told him he was heir to the ranch. He
was thirty years younger than his uncle had been at the time of his
tragic death, and he bore a remarkable likeness to the old man; that
is, a likeness more than striking, when it was remembered that one had
lived all his life in a city, while the other had spent most of his
days on the plains. The young man had seen the Sheriff on his arrival,
expecting to find that active steps had been taken towards the arrest
of the murderer. The Sheriff assured him that nothing more effective
could be done than what had been done by the dead man himself in
leaving fifty thousand dollars to the killer of Hickory Sam. The
Sheriff had made no move himself, for he had been confidently expecting
every day to hear that Sam was shot.

Meanwhile, nothing had been heard or seen of the desperado since he
left Salt Lick on the back of the murd