g 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. 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, t