bly heard all about that part. It was the day the Through Express
went off the track down there in the cut beyond the Pump pasture.

"We run with the rest of 'em, me keepin' close to Abel, I guess because
he's got a way with him that makes you think he'd know what to do no
matter what. But when he was two-thirds o' the way acrost the pasture,
he stops short an' grabs at my sleeve.

"'Look here,' he says, 'you can't go down there. You mustn't do it. We
donno what'll be. You stay here,' he says; 'you set there under the
cottonwood.'

"You kind o' _haf_ to mind Abel. It's sort o' grained in that man to hev
folks disciple after him. I made him promise he'd motion from the fence
if he see I could help any, an' then I se' down under that big tree down
there. I was tremblin' some, I know. It always seems like wrecks are
somethin' that happen in other states an' in the dark. But when one's on
ground that you know like a book an' was brought up on,--when it's in
the daylight, right by a pasture you've been acrost always an' where
you've walked the ties,--well, I s'pose it's the same feelin' as when a
man you know cuts up a state's prison caper; seem's like he _can't_ of,
because you knew him.

"Half the men o' Friendship run by me, seems though. The whole town'd
been rousted up while we was in the church talkin' heresy. An' up on the
high place on the road there I see Zittelhof's undertaking wagon, with
the sunset showin' on its nickel rails. But not a woman run past me.
Ain't it funny how it's men that go to danger of rail an' fire an'
water--but when it's nothin' but birth an' dyin' natural, then it's for
women to be there.

"When I'd got about ready to fly away, waitin' so, I see Abel at the
fence. An' he didn't motion to me, but he swung over the top an' come
acrost the stubble, an' I see he hed somethin' in his arms. I run to
meet him, an' he run too, crooked, his feet turnin' over with him some
in the hard ground. The sky made his face sort o' bright; an' I see he'd
got a child in his arms.

"He didn't give her to me. He stood her down side o' me--a little thing
of five years old, or six, with thick, straight hair an' big scairt
eyes.

"'Is she hurt, Abel?' I says.

"'No, she ain't hurt none,' he answers me, 'an' they's about seventeen
more of 'em, her age, an' they ain't hurt, either. Their coach was
standin' up on its legs all right. But the man they was with, he's stone
dead. Hit on the head, somehow. An',' Ab