know--will
yuh do what I--said? Will yuh bury me--right here--and keep
it--quiet?"

The Happy Family moved uncomfortably. They hated to see him lying
that way, and talking in short, jerky sentences, and looking so
ghastly, and yet so cool--as if dying were quite an everyday affair.

"I don't see why yuh ask us to do it," spoke Cal Emmet bluntly.
"What we want to do is get yuh to help. The chances is you could
be--cured. We--"

"Look here." The fellow raised himself painfully to an elbow, and
fell back again. "I've got folks--and they don't know--about this
scrape. They're square--and stand at the top--And they don't--it
would just about-- For God sake, boys! Can't yuh see--how I feel?
Nobody knows--about this. The sheriff didn't know--they came up on
me in the dusk--and I fought. I wouldn't be taken--And it's my first
bad break--because I got in with a bad--lot. They'll know
something--happened, when they find--my horse. But they'll
think--it's just drowning, if they don't find--me with a bullet or
two-- Can't yuh _see_?"

The Happy Family looked away across the coulee, and there were eyes
that saw little of the yellow sunlight lying soft on the green
hillside beyond. The world was not a good place; it was a grim,
pitiless place, and--a man was dying, at their very feet.

"But what about the rest oh the bunch?" croaked Happy Jack, true to
his misanthropic nature, but exceeding husky as to voice. "They'll
likely tell--"

The dying man shook his head eagerly. "They won't; they're
both--dead. One was killed--last night. The other when we first
tried--to make a getaway. It--it's up to you, boys."

Pink swallowed twice, and knelt beside him; the others remained
standing, grouped like mourners around an open grave.

"Yuh needn't worry about us," Pink said softly, "You can count on us,
old boy. If you're dead sure a doctor--"

"Drop it!" the other broke in harshly. "I don't want to live. And
if I did, I couldn't. I ain't guessing--I know."

They said little, after that. The wounded man seemed apathetically
waiting for the end, and not inclined to further speech. Since they
had tacitly promised to do as he wished, he lay with eyes half
closed, watching idly the clouds drifting across to the skyline,
hardly moving.

The Happy Family sat listlessly around on convenient rocks, and
watched the clouds also, and the yellow patches of foam racing down
the muddy creek. Very quiet they were--s