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the others. "Dead!" each one began. "Her, does he say?"

"Why, pshaw!"



"Why, Frenchy said Doc had her cured!"

Jack Saunders claimed she had rode to Box Elder with Lin McLean.



"Dead? Why, pshaw!"

"Seems Doc couldn't swim her out."



"Couldn't swim her out?"

"That's it. Doc couldn't swim her out."



"Well--there's one less of us."

"Sure! She was one of the boys."



"She grub-staked me when I went broke in '84."

"She gave me fifty dollars onced at Lander, to buy a saddle."



"I run agin her when she was a biscuit-shooter."

"Sidney, Nebraska. I run again her there, too."



"I knowed her at Laramie."

"Where's Lin? He knowed her all the way from Bear Creek to Cheyenne."



They laughed loudly at this.

"That's a lonesomecoffin," said the Doughie. "That the best you could



do?"

"You'd say so!" said Toothpick Kid.



"Choices are getting scarce up there," said Chalkeye. "We looked the lot

over."



They were arriving from their search among the old dug-up graves on the

hill. Now they descended from their ponies, with the box roped and



rattling between them. "Where's your hearse, Jerky?" asked Chalkeye.

"Have her round in a minute," said the cowboy, and galloped away with



three or four others

"Turruble lonesomecoffin, all the same," repeated the Doughie. And they



surveyed the box that had once held some soldier.

"She did like fixin's," said Limber Jim.



"Fixin's!" said Toothpick Kid. "That's easy."

While some six of them, with Chalkeye, bore the light, half-rotted coffin



into the room, many followed Toothpick Kid to the post-trader's store.

Breaking in here, they found men sleeping on the counters. These had been



able to find no other beds in Drybone, and lay as they had stretched

themselves on entering. They sprawled in heavy slumber, some with not



even their hats taken off and some with their boots against the rough

hair of the next one. They were quickly pushed together, few waking, and



so there was space for spreading cloth and chintz. Stuffs were unrolled

and flung aside till many folds and colors draped the motionless



sleepers, and at length a choice was made. Unmeasured yards of this drab

chintz were ripped off, money treble its worth was thumped upon the



counter, and they returned, bearing it like a streamer to the coffin.

While the noise of their hammers filled the room, the hearse came



tottering to the door, pulled and pushed by twenty men. It was an

ambulance left behind by the soldiers, and of the old-fashioned shape,



concave in body, its top blown away in winds of long ago; and as they

revolved, its wheels dished in and out like hoops about to fall. While



some made a harness from ropes, and throwing the saddles off two ponies

backed them to the vehicle, the body was put in the coffin, now covered



by the chintz. But the laudanum upon the front of her dress revolted

those who remembered their holidays with her, and turning the woman upon



her face, they looked their last upon her flashing, colored ribbons, and

nailed the lid down. So they carried her out, but the concave body of the



hearse was too short for the coffin; the end reached out, and it might

have fallen. But Limber Jim, taking the reins, sat upon the other end,



waiting and smoking. For all Drybone was making ready to follow in some

way. They had sought the husband, the chief mourner. He, however, still



lay in the grass of the quadrangle, and despising him as she had done,

they left him to wake when he should choose. Those men who could sit in



their saddles rode escort, the old friends nearest, and four held the

heads of the frightened cow-ponies who were to draw the hearse. They had



never known harness before, and they plunged with the men who held them.

Behind the hearse the women followed in a large ranch-wagon, this moment



arrived in town. Two mares drew this, and their foals gambolled around

them. The great flat-topped dray for hauling poles came last, with its



four government mules. The cow-boys had caught sight of it and captured

it. Rushing to the post-trader's, they carried the sleeping men from the



counter and laid them on the dray. Then, searching Drybone outside and in

for any more incapable of following, they brought them, and the dray was



piled.

Limber Jim called for another drink and, with his cigar between his



teeth, cracked his long bull-whacker whip. The ponies, terrified, sprang

away, scattering the men that held them, and the swaying hearse leaped



past the husband, over the stones and the many playing-cards in the

grass. Masterfully steered, it came safe to an open level, while the






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