Bounty Trail The $10,000 Debt Tracker

Edward Thorne took a $10,000 loan and left. You have until the end of 1881. Key art says FOUR MONTHS. This tracker is how you look at the office Money line without panic-picking a 3-day DRAW. It is not a spreadsheet file. It is the arithmetic the HUD already implies.

Use money for income types and the tier list for which posters waste a week.

The raw numbers

• Debt: $10,000
• Time: about four months from fall 1881 to year-end
• Linear share: $2,500 per month if nothing goes wrong
• Things that go wrong: failed DRAW, empty Energy, 3-day clocks in unknown fog, loot detours that eat Day X / Y

A confirmed office snapshot on Saturday, October 8, 1881 shows $3,200.00, level 11, 159 XP, 9 hunts, 6 caught, 1 killed. Mid-October at $3,200 is behind a linear $2,500-per-month line if you started in early September, or on pace if you started later in fall. We do not know your start date beyond “fall of 1881.” Use the snapshot as a vibe check: thousands on the board, Caught leading Killed, XP already spent into skills.

Convert posters into months

Baldheaded Doom pays $600 on a 5-day Sandy Plains job. If every hunt paid 600 and you never failed, you would need about 17 successful payouts to hit 10,000 before loot and treasures. You will fail some. You will take smaller papers. You will sometimes DRAW and get nothing.

Plan in bands:

• Month one (demo window): Learn. Prefer S/A-tier clocks from the tier list. Cash is secondary to a working Information habit. See the walkthrough.
• Month two: Mix. One mapping hunt in a new territory, one repeat hunt for clean surrenders, one cash hunt if Money is lagging.
• Month three: Tougher bounties, as Steam promised. If skills are thin, you cannot cash-rush. Go back to skills.
• Month four: Pay. Short clocks are allowed only in territories you could ride in the dark. Treasures are spice, not the meal.

Cash versus XP is a false war

Alive captures pay more XP. XP raises DRAW bonus and (likely) talk safety. Talk safety raises the odds you actually receive the poster purse. Killing for “fast cash” is how month three misses a payout. The ledger’s Caught 6 / Killed 1 split in the store shot is a solvent hunter.

Exceptions: if Money is catastrophic and a small poster is the only thing between you and a wasted week, take the DRAW. Then immediately schedule a talk hunt. The combat page is the exception manual.

Loot and treasures in the tracker

Steam says you can salvage loot and find treasures. Count them as variance, not as $2,500. If a treasure run costs a 5-day bounty you would have finished, you lost money. If it sits on the way to a south-west sighting, you gained money. Inventory is a trail button; use it without becoming a collector. Details in money.

Trail Gold (1,50 style) is not the debt. Office Money is the debt. Log the office number after every return. Ignore the trail gold for this tracker.

A paper log that works

Write four columns after each hunt:

1. Date (the office calendar, like October 8, 1881)
2. Money
3. Caught / Killed
4. Whether the last poster was a talk or a DRAW

If Money climbs while Caught stalls, you are dueling your future. If Caught climbs while Money stalls, take one higher-payout paper of a type the tier list still calls A or S. If both stall, you are dying in fog; reread how to play and stop emptying Energy.

Endings care about this sheet

Multiple endings are a listed feature. We will not invent flags, but a short RPG with a printed loan will read whether you paid it. Keep the tracker even if you think you are “just playing for vibes.” Vibes still end in December.

Sibling tools: system requirements if the game will not open, tools hub for the rest. Official store: links. The loan does not accrue interest on this page because no official rate was published. The interest is tougher bounties.