hey left him to wake when he should choose. Those men who could
sit in their saddles rode escort, the old friends nearest, and four held
the heads of the frightened cow-ponies who were to draw the hearse. They
had never known harness before, and they plunged with the men who held
them. Behind the hearse the women followed in a large ranch-wagon, this
moment arrived in town. Two mares drew this, and their foals gambolled
around them. The great flat-topped dray for hauling poles came last,
with its four government mules. The cow-boys had caught sight of it and
captured it. Rushing to the post-trader's, they carried the sleeping
men from the counter and laid them on the dray. Then, searching Drybone
outside and in for any more incapable of following, they brought them,
and the dray was piled.

Limber Jim called for another drink and, with his cigar between his
teeth, cracked his long bull-whacker whip. The ponies, terrified, sprang
away, scattering the men that held them, and the swaying hearse leaped
past the husband, over the stones and the many playing-cards in the
grass. Masterfully steered, it came safe to an open level, while the
throng cheered the unmoved driver on his coffin, his cigar between his
teeth.

"Stay with it, Jim!" they shouted. "You're a king!"

A steep ditch lay across the flat where he was veering, abrupt and
nearly hidden; but his eye caught the danger in time, and swinging from
it leftward so that two wheels of the leaning coach were in the air,
he faced the open again, safe, as the rescue swooped down upon him. The
horsemen came at the ditch, a body of daring, a sultry blast of youth.
Wheeling at the brink, they turned, whirling their long ropes. The
skilful nooses flew, and the ponies, caught by the neck and foot, were
dragged back to the quadrangle and held in line. So the pageant started
the wild ponies quivering but subdued by the tightened ropes, and the
coffin steady in the ambulance beneath the driver. The escort, in their
fringed leather and broad hats, moved slowly beside and behind it, many
of them swaying, their faces full of health, and the sun and the strong
drink. The women followed, whispering a little; and behind them the
slow dray jolted, with its heaps of men waking from the depths of their
whiskey and asking what this was. So they went up the hill. When the
riders reached the tilted gate of the graveyard, they sprang off and
scattered among the hillocks, stumbling and eager. Th