第70章 DESTINY AT DRYBONE(14)

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 throng cheered the unmoved driver on his coffin,his cigar between his teeth.

"Stay with it,Jim!"they shouted."You're a king!"A steep ditch lay across the flat where he was veering,abrupt and nearly hidden;but his eye caught the danger in time,and swinging from it leftward so that two wheels of the leaning coach were in the air,he faced the open again,safe,as the rescue swooped down upon him.The horsemen came at the ditch,a body of daring,a sultry blast of youth.

Wheeling at the brink,they turned,whirling their long ropes.The skilful nooses flew,and the ponies,caught by the neck and foot,were dragged back to the quadrangle and held in line.So the pageant started the wild ponies quivering but subdued by the tightened ropes,and the coffin steady in the ambulance beneath the driver.The escort,in their fringed leather and broad hats,moved slowly beside and behind it,many of them swaying,their faces full of health,and the sun and the strong drink.The women followed,whispering a little;and behind them the slow dray jolted,with its heaps of men waking from the depths of their whiskey and asking what this was.So they went up the hill.When the riders reached the tilted gate of the graveyard,they sprang off and scattered among the hillocks,stumbling and eager.They nodded to Barker and McLean,quietly waiting there,and began choosing among the open,weather-drifted graves from which the soldiers had been taken.Their figures went up and down the uneven ridges,calling and comparing.

"Here,"said the Doughie,"here's a good hole.""Here's a deep one,"said another.

"We've struck a well here,"said some more."Put her in here."The sand-hills became clamorous with voices until they arrived at a choice,when some one with a spade quickly squared the rain-washed opening.With lariats looping the coffin round,they brought it and were about to lower it,when Chalkeye,too near the edge,fell in,and one end of the box rested upon him.He could not rise by himself,and they pulled the ropes helplessly above.

McLean spoke to Barker."I'd like to stop this,"said he,"but a man might as well--""Might as well stop a cloud-burst,"said Barker.