第69章 DESTINY AT DRYBONE(13)

For a short while the cow-puncher stood looking down upon the woman.She lay lumped inher gaudiness,the ribbons darkly stained by the laudanum;but into the stolid,bold features death had called up the faint-colored ghost of youth,and McLean remembered all his Bear Creek days."Hind sight is a turruble clear way o'seein'things,"said he."I think I'll take a walk.""Go,"said Barker."The jury only need me,and I'll join you."But the jury needed no witness.Their long waiting and the advance pay had been too much for these responsible men.Like brothers they had shared each others'vouchers until responsibility had melted from their brains and the whiskey was finished.Then,no longer entertained and growing weary of Drybone,they had remembered nothing but their distant beds.Each had mounted his pony,holding trustingly to the saddle,and thus,unguided,the experienced ponies had taken them right.Across the wide sagebrush and up and down the river they were now asleep or riding,dispersed irrevocably.But the coroner was here.He duly received Barker's testimony,brought his verdict in,and signed it,and even while he was issuing to himself his own proper voucher for ten dollars came Chalkeye and Toothpick Kid on their ponies,galloping,eager in their hopes and good wishes for Mrs.Lusk.Life ran strong in them both.The night had gone well with them.Here was the new day going to be fine.It must be well with everybody.

"You don't say!"they exclaimed,taken aback."Too bad."They sat still in their saddles,and upon their reckless,kindly faces thought paused for a moment."Her gone!"they murmured."Hard to get used to the idea.What's anybody doing about the coffin?""Mr.Lusk,"answered Slaghammer,"doubtless--""Lusk!He'll not know anything this forenoon.He's out there in the grass.She didn't think nothing of him.Tell Bill--not Dollar Bill,Jerky Bill,yu'know;he's over the bridge--to fix up a hearse,and we'll be back."The two drove their spurs in with vigorous heels,and instantly were gone rushing up the road to the graveyard.

The fiddle had lately ceased,and no dancers stayed any longer in the hall.Eastward the rose and gold began to flow down upon the plain over the tops of the distant hills.Of the revellers,many had never gone to bed,and many now were already risen from their excesses to revive in the cool glory of the morning.Some were drinking to stay their hunger until breakfast;some splashed and sported in the river,calling and joking;and across the river some were holding horse-races upon the level beyond the hog-ranch.Drybone air rang with them.Their lusty,wandering shouts broke out in gusts of hilarity.Their pistols,aimed at cans or prairie dogs or anything,cracked as they galloped at large.Their speeding,clear-cut forms would shine upon the bluffs,and,descending,merge in the dust their horses had raised.Yet all this was nothing in the vastness of the growing day.

Beyond their voices the rim of the sun moved above the violet hills,and Drybone,amid the quiet,long,new fields of radiance,stood august and strange.

Down along the tall,bare slant from the graveyard the two horsemen were riding back.They could be seen across the river,and the horse-racers grew curious.As more and more watched,the crowd began to speak.It was a calf the two were bringing.It was too small for a calf.It was dead.

It was a coyote they had roped.See it swing!See it fall on the road!

"It's a coffin,boys!"said one,shrewd at guessing.

At that the event of last night drifted across their memories,and they wheeled and spurred their ponies.Their crowding hoofs on the bridge brought the swimmers from the waters below and,dressing,they climbed quickly to the plain and followed the gathering.By the door already were Jerky Bill and Limber Jim and the Doughie and always more,dashing up with their ponies;halting with a sharp scatter of gravel to hear and comment.Barker was gone,but the important coroner told his news.And it amazed each comer,and set him speaking and remembering past things with 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 lonesome coffin,"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 lonesome coffin,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.