ither patches for the broken,
stitches for the cut nor powders for the headaches of debauchery called
for then as now; and all the burying there would be an undertaker might
do under his thumb nail.

They'd go to drugging themselves with boneset tea, and mullein tea, and
bitter-root powders and wahoo bark, said Gray. Likewise, they'd turn to
burying one another, after the ways of pioneers, who were as resourceful
in deaths and funerals as in drugs and fomentations. Pioneers, such as
would be left in that country after Morgan had shut Ascalon up and
driven away those who were dependent on one another for their skinning
and fleecing, filching and plundering, did not lean on any man. Such as
came there to plow up the prairies would be of the same stuff,
rough-barked men and women who called in neither doctor to be born nor
undertaker to be buried.

It was a gloomy outlook, the town closed up and everybody gone, said
Gray. What would a man do with his building, what would a man do with
his stock?

"Maybe Craddock ain't no saint and angel, but he makes business in this
town," said Gray.

"Makes business!" the undertaker echoed, with abstraction and looking
far away as if he already saw the train of oncoming, independent,
self-burying pioneers over against the horizon.

"If this feller's luck don't go ag'in' him, you might as well ship all
your coffins away but one--they'll need one to bury the town in. What do
you think of him ridin' around the depot down there, drawin' a deadline
that no man ain't goin' to be allowed to cross till the one-twenty pulls
out? Kind of high-handed deal, I call it!"

"I've got a case of shrouds comin' in by express on that train, two
cases layin' in my place waitin' on 'em," the undertaker said,
resentfully, waking out of his abstraction and apparent apathy.

"_You_ have!" said Gray, eying him suddenly.

"He stopped me as I was goin' over to wait around till the train come
in, drove me back like I was a cow. He said it didn't make no difference
how much business I had at the depot, it would have to wait till the
train was gone. When a citizen and a taxpayer of this town can't even
cross the road like a shanghai rooster, things is comin' to a hell of a
pass!"

"Well, I ain't got no business at the depot this afternoon, or I bet you
a cracker I'd be over there," Gray boasted. "I think I'll close up a
while and go down to the hotel where I can see better--it's only forty
minutes till she