him
back to the house."

Two or three ran back to the road for planks from the broken bridge.
When they returned with these a litter was improvised, and throwing
their coats over the body, the party carried it back to the road. The
doctor was summoned and declared the cow-puncher to have been dead over
half an hour.

"What did I tell you?" exclaimed one of the group.

"Well, I never said he wasn't dead," protested the other. "I only said
you couldn't always tell by whether his heart beat or not."

But all at once there was a commotion. The wagon containing Mrs. Hooven,
Minna, and little Hilda drove up.

"Eh, den, my men," cried Mrs. Hooven, wildly interrogating the faces of
the crowd. "Whadt has happun? Sey, den, dose vellers, hev dey hurdt my
men, eh, whadt?"

She sprang from the wagon, followed by Minna with Hilda in her arms. The
crowd bore back as they advanced, staring at them in silence.

"Eh, whadt has happun, whadt has happun?" wailed Mrs. Hooven, as she
hurried on, her two hands out before her, the fingers spread wide. "Eh,
Hooven, eh, my men, are you alle righdt?"

She burst into the house. Hooven's body had been removed to an adjoining
room, the bedroom of the house, and to this room Mrs. Hooven--Minna
still at her heels--proceeded, guided by an instinct born of the
occasion. Those in the outside room, saying no word, made way for them.
They entered, closing the door behind them, and through all the rest
of that terrible day, no sound nor sight of them was had by those who
crowded into and about that house of death. Of all the main actors of
the tragedy of the fight in the ditch, they remained the least noted,
obtruded themselves the least upon the world's observation. They were,
for the moment, forgotten.

But by now Hooven's house was the centre of an enormous crowd. A vast
concourse of people from Bonneville, from Guadalajara, from the ranches,
swelled by the thousands who had that morning participated in the rabbit
drive, surged about the place; men and women, young boys, young girls,
farm hands, villagers, townspeople, ranchers, railroad employees,
Mexicans, Spaniards, Portuguese. Presley, returning from the search for
Delaney's body, had to fight his way to the house again.

And from all this multitude there rose an indefinable murmur. As
yet, there was no menace in it, no anger. It was confusion merely,
bewilderment, the first long-drawn "oh!" that greets the news of some
great tragedy. Th