so was seldom killed very far out of town, and of course
scalping had disappeared. "Sacred to the memory of Four-ace Johnston,
accidently shot, Sep. 4, 1885." Perhaps one is still there unaltered:
"Sacred to the memory of Mrs. Ryan's babe. Aged two months." This unique
corpse had succeeded in dying with its boots off.

But a succession of graves was not always needed to read the changing
tale of the place, and how people died there; one grave would often be
enough. The soldiers, of course, had kept treeless Drybone supplied with
wood. But in these latter days wood was very scarce. None grew nearer
than twenty or thirty miles--none, that is, to make boards of a
sufficient width for epitaphs. And twenty miles was naturally far to go
to hew a board for a man of whom you knew perhaps nothing but what he
said his name was, and to whom you owed nothing, perhaps, but a trifling
poker debt. Hence it came to pass that headboards grew into a sort of
directory. They were light to lift from one place to another. A single
coat of white paint would wipe out the first tenant's name sufficiently
to paint over it the next comer's. By this thrifty habit the original
boards belonging to the soldiers could go round, keeping pace with the
new civilian population; and though at first sight you might be puzzled
by the layers of names still visible beneath the white paint, you could
be sure that the clearest and blackest was the one to which the present
tenant had answered.

So there on the hill lay the graveyard, steadily writing Drybone's
history, and making that history lay the town at the bottom--one thin
line of houses framing three sides of the old parade ground. In these
slowly rotting shells people rioted, believing the golden age was here,
the age when everybody should have money and nobody should be arrested.
For Drybone soil, you see, was still government soil, not yet handed
over to Wyoming; and only government could arrest there, and only for
government crimes. But government had gone, and seldom worried Drybone!
The spot was a postage-stamp of sanctuary pasted in the middle of
Wyoming's big map, a paradise for the Four-ace Johnstons. Only, you must
not steal a horse. That was really wicked, and brought you instantly to
the notice of Drybone's one official--the coroner! For they did keep a
coroner--Judge Slaghammer. He was perfectly illegal, and lived next door
in Albany County. But that county paid fees and mileage to keep tally