t the
moment, after the long weeks of disappointment, they needed something
to lift them, even if it was only momentarily. He reached round to his
hip-pocket and pulled out two single-dollar bills and laid them on the
dusty ground in front of him.

"Ante up, boys," he said cheerfully. "Empty your dips. The Kid's
right. An' to-morrow you can sure choose what you're going to do."
Then he turned to the Kid. "My plug Caesar's outside. Guess you best
take him. He'll make the journey in two hours. An' you'll need to
bustle him some, because ther's a kind o' storm gettin' around right
smart. Eh?" He turned and glanced sharply at Beasley. "You got a
dollar?"

"It's fer whisky," leered the ex-Churchman, as he laid the dirty paper
on the top of Buck's.

In two minutes the pooling was completed and the Kid prepared to set
out. Eight dollars was all the meeting could muster--eight dollars
collected in small silver, which represented every cent these men
possessed in the world. Buck knew this. At least he could answer for
everybody except perhaps Beasley Melford. That wily individual he
believed was capable of anything. He was sure that he was capable of
accepting anything from anybody, while yet being in a position to more
than help himself.

Buck went outside to see the Kid off, and some of the men had gathered
in the doorway. They watched the boy swing himself into the saddle,
and the desperate shadows had lightened on their hungry faces. The
buoyancy of their irresponsible natures was reasserting itself. That
bridge, which the Padre's promise had erected between their despair
and the realms of hope, however slight its structure, was sufficient
to lift them once more to the lighter mood so natural to them.

So their tongues were loosened, and they offered their messenger
the jest from which they could seldom long refrain, the coarse,
deep-throated jest which sprang from sheer animal spirits rather than
any subtlety of wit. They forgot for the time that until Buck's coming
they had contemplated the burial of a comrade's only remaining
offspring. They forgot that the grieving father was still within the
hut, his great jaws clenched upon the mouthpiece of his pipe, his
hollow eyes still gazing straight in front of him. That was their way.
There was a slight ray of hope for them, a brief respite. There was
the thought, too, of eight dollars' worth of whisky, a just portion of
which was soon to be in each stomach.

But Buck w