hurry--as he'd be glad at any price to be
shut of a crowd that would play it on anybody that low down!

Cherry stuck it out, though, to have things his way. Palomitas was
going in for purification, Cherry said, and the moral effect of having
Santa Fe along at Bill's funeral was part of the purifying. The very
fact that Santa Fe was kicking so hard against it, he said, showed it
was a good thing. There was sense in that, too; and so the upshot of
it was the boys come round to Cherry's plan. The only serious thing
against it was it meant waiting over another day, till the funeral
outfit got down from Denver--all hands having chipped in to give Hart
a good send-off, and telegraphed his size to a first-class Denver
undertaker, with orders to do him up in style. Making him wait around
so long, sort of idle, was what Santa Fe kicked hardest against at
first. But after his talk with the Hen, as was remembered afterwards,
he didn't do any more kicking; and some of the boys noticed he was a
little nervous, and kept asking, off and on, if they still meant to
run the show that way.

The boys did what they could to make the time go for him--setting
around sociable in the express office telling stories about other
hangings they'd happened to get up against, and trying all they knowed
how to amuse him, and giving him more seegars and drinks than he
really cared to have. But as he was kept hitched to both handles of
the safe right enough, and handcuffed, and as the two members of the
Committee watching him--while they was as pleasant with him as
anybody--never had their hands far off their guns, it's likely there'd
been other times when he'd enjoyed himself more.

* * * * *

Things was spirited at the deepo when the Denver train got in. All
there was of Palomitas was on deck, and Becker'd come over from Santa
Cruz de la Canada, and old man Bouquet from Pojuaque, and Sam and
Marcus Elbogen had driven across on their buck-board from San
Juan--and Mexicans had come in from all around in droves.

The Elbogen brothers had been asked over for the funeral 'special--because
they both had good voices, and the Committee thought like enough, being
Germans, they'd know some hymns. It turned out they didn't--but they
blew off "The Watch on the Rhine" in good shape, when singing time come
out at the cemetery; and as it was a serious-sounding tune it done
just as well. Singing it made trouble, though: