could yell. Knowing what was expected of 'em, the boys quieted
down sudden; and the Hen got a-hold of Kerosene and snuggled her up to
her, and told her to weep on her fond breast--and Kerosene started in
weeping on the Hen's fond breast all right, and left off her howls.
The room was that quiet you could a-heard a cat purr.

"My brethren," says Charley, talking sad-sounding and digging away at
his eyes with his pocket-handkerchief, "Brother Hart has left
us"--Hart being in the kitchen that was dead true--"and for the third
time to-day our Sunshine Club has suffered a fatal loss. Still more
lamentable is the case of our doubly stricken sister Rebecca--only
just recovered, by time's healing touch, from the despair of her
tragic widowhood, and at the threshold of a new glad life of wedded
happiness--who again is desolately bereaved." (Kerosene give a
dreadful groan--seeming to feel something was expected of her--and
then jammed back to the Hen's fond breast again and kept on a-weeping
like a pump.) "Our hearts are with Sister Rebecca in her woe," says
Charley. "She has all our sympathy, and the full help of our
sustaining love."

"If I know anything about the sense of this meeting," Hill chipped in,
"it's going to do a damn sight more'n sling around sympathy." (Hill
had a way of speaking careless, but he didn't mean no harm by it.)
"That shooting wasn't a square one," says Hill; "and it's likely
there'll be another member missing from the Sunshine Club for doing
it. There's telegraph-poles," says Hill, "right across the way!"

"Brother Hill is right," Santa Fe went on, "though I am pained that
his unhappy disposition to profanity remains uncurbed. The shot that
has laid low Brother Hart was a foul one. Justice, my friends,
exemplary justice, must be meted out to the one who laid and lowered
him; and I reckon the quicker we get Brother Smith over to the deepo,
and up on the usual telegraph-pole--as Brother Hill has suggested--the
better it'll be for the moral record of our town. All in favor of such
action will please signify it by saying 'Ay.'" And the whole
crowd--except Shorty, who voted against it--yelled out "Ay" so loud it
shook all the bottles in the bar.

"The ayes have it," says Santa Fe, "and we will proceed. Brother Wood,
as chairman of the Friendly Aid Society, I beg that you will go on
ahead to the deepo and get ready the rope that on these occasions you
so obligingly lend us from the Company's stores. Brot