as the buck-board stopped, right in the thick of
it, Kerosene Kate come a-tearing along, with the Sage-Brush Hen close
after her, and plumped down on Mike and yelled out: "Oh, my husband!
My poor husband! He is foully slain!"

It was all so natural, Wood said, that seeing it sudden that way give
him a first-class jolt. For a minute, he said, he couldn't help
thinking it was the real thing. As for the little man--and he likely
would have took matters just the same, and no blame to him, if his
feet had been as hard as anybody's--he swallowed the show whole. "Good
Heavens!" says he, getting real palish. "What a dreadful thing this
is!"

Santa let go of Mike's head and got up, brushing his pants off, and
says solemn: "Our poor brother has passed from us. Palomitas has lost
one of its most useful citizens--there was nobody who could mix drinks
as he could--and the world has lost a noble man! Take away his
stricken wife, my dear," he says, speaking to the Sage-Brush Hen.
"Take poor Sister Rebecca home with you to the parsonage--my duties
lie elsewhere at present--and pour out to her from your tender heart
the balm of comfort that you so well know how to give."

Then he come along to the buck-board, and says to the little man: "I
greatly regret that this unfortunate incident should have occurred
while you are with us. From every point of view the event is
lamentable. Brother Green, known familiarly among us because of his
facial peculiarity as Nosey Green--the gentleman piled up over there
on the other side of the road--was as noble-hearted a man as ever
lived; so was Brother Michael, whom you met in all the pride of his
manly strength only this morning at the Forest Queen bar. Both were
corner-stones of our Sunshine Club, and among the most faithful of my
parishioners. In deep despondency we mourn their loss!"

"It is dreadful--dreadful!" says the little man. And then he wanted to
know how the shooting begun.

"The dispute that has come to this doubly fatal ending," says Santa
Fe, shaking his head sorrowful, "related to cock-tails. In what I am
persuaded was a purely jesting spirit, Brother Green cast aspersions
upon Brother Michael's skill as a drink-mixer. The injustice of his
remarks, even in jest, aroused Brother Michael's hot Celtic nature and
led to a retort, harshly personal, that excited Brother Green's
anger--and from words they passed quickly to a settlement of the
matter with their guns. However, as the fight