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 looked like the biggest thing Ed ever had done, for he was the brains of it; Stott wasn't nothing but the guts.

"Well, sir, they found Ed McCoy dead out there on the prairie one day that fall, shot through the back of the head. Stott was away in Kansas City with a shipment, and it never has been found out who done that low-down job. Anyhow, to cut it off short, when it come to arrangin' and settlin' up what Ed left, by golly it come to pass he didn't leave nothin' but the house here in Cottonwood. No, sir, Henry Stott he brought out a note showin' Ed owed him sixty thousand dollars, borrowed money.

"All signed up by Ed, and all as straight as a die, the lawyers said. But the widder and Sallie they didn't have no track of that money, didn't know anything about the deal. What did Ed do with it if he got it? Gambled it off, some said. Well, I know better; Ed never set foot in a gamblin' house as long as I knew him, and that was back in Mezoury twenty years before I come out here."

"But the money was gone, sir?"

"It was gone if it ever was paid in, son. I tell you, as I've told many a man face to face, and as I've told that hog-eyed Henry Stott face to face, it never was paid. That note was either a forgery, or else it was signed by Ed for something else and