nsciousness to the instinctive physical
struggle of the animal to live, and that was not strong. There came a
moment, the last, between life and death, when Beauty Stanton's soul
lingered on the threshold of its lonely and eternal pilgrimage, and then
drifted across into the gray shadows, into the unknown, out to the great
beyond.

Casey leaned on his spade while he wiped the sweat from his brow and
regarded his ally McDermott. Between them yawned a grave they had been
digging and near at hand lay a long, quiet form wrapped in old canvas.

"Mac, I'll be domned if I loike this job," said Casey, drawing hard at
his black pipe.

"Yez want to be a directhor of the U. P. R., huh?" replied McDermott.

"Shure an' I've did ivery job but run an ingine.... It's imposed on
we are, Mac. Thim troopers niver work. Why couldn't they plant these
stiffs?"

"Casey, I reckon no wan's bossin' us. Benton picked up an' moved
yistiday. An' we'll be goin' soon wid the graveltrain. It's only dacent
of us to bury the remains of Benton. An' shure yez ought to be glad to
see that orful red-head cowboy go under the ground."

"An' fer why?" queried Casey.

"Didn't he throw a gun on yez once an' scare the daylights out of yez?"

"Mac, I wuz as cool as a coocumber. An' as to buryin' Larry King, I'm
proud an' sorry. He wuz Neale's fri'nd."

"My Gawd! but he wor chain lightnin', Casey. They said he shot the woman
Stanton, too."

"Mac, thet wore a dom' lie, I bet," replied Casey. "He shot up Stanton's
hall, an' a bullet from some of thim wot was foightin' him must hev hit
her."

"Mebbe. But it wor bad bizness. That cowboy hit iviry wan of thim
fellars in the same place. Shure, they niver blinked afther."

"An' Mac, the best an' dirtiest job we've had on this," Casey's huge
hand indicated a row of freshly filled graves, "U. P. was the plantin'
of thim fellars," over which the desert sand was seeping. Then dropping
his spade, he bent to the quiet figure.

"Lay hold, Mac," he said.

They lowered the corpse into the hole. Casey stood up, making a sign of
the cross before him.

"He wor a man!"

Then they filled the grave.

"Mac, wouldn't it be dacent to mark where Larry King's buried? A stone
or wooden cross with his name?"

McDermott wrinkled his red brow and scratched his sandy beard. Then he
pointed. "Casey, wot's the use? See, the blowin' sand's kivered all the
graves."

"Mac, yez wor always hell at shirkin' worrk. Come on, now,