tten. Ain't much to bring 'cept
him, I reckon. We'll take the buckboard, with a tarp' to stow him under.
Up to you to knock together a coffin an' dig a grave under the
cottonwoods an' below the spring. Right where that li'l' knoll makes the
overflow curve 'ud be a good spot. Use up them extry boards we got for
the bunk-house. Git Joe to help you. No sense in lettin' the gel see
you, of course."

"Nice occupation fo' a sunny day," grumbled Mormon, but, as the
buckboard drove off, he was busy planing boards in the blacksmith's
shop, with the door closed against intrusion.

Mid-afternoon found him with the coffin completed. He rounded up the
half-breed to help him dig the grave, first locating Molly in a hammock
he had slung for her in the shade of the trees by the cistern. He had
furnished her with his pet literature, an enormous mail-order catalogue
from a Chicago firm. It was on the ground, the breeze ruffling the
illustrated pages, lifting some stray wisps of hair on the girl's neck
as she lay, fast asleep, relaxed in the wide canvas hammock, her face
checkered by the shifting leaves between her and the sun.

Mormon could move as softly as a cat, for all his bulk. There was turf
about the cistern, he had made no sound arriving, but he tiptoed off,
his kindly mouth rounded into an O of silence, his weather crinkled eyes
half-closed.

"She's jest a baby," he said, half aloud, as he passed beyond the trees
to where Joe waited with pick and spade.

The soil was soft and clear from stone. An hour sufficed to sink a shaft
for Pat Casey's last bed. Mormon carefully adjusted the headboard he had
fashioned from a thick plank, to be carved later when the lettering was
decided upon. This done he buckled on the belt he had discarded, from
which his holster and revolver swung. Sandy carried two guns, his
partners one, habits of earlier, more stirring days, toting them as
inevitably as they wore spurs, though there was little occasion to use
them on the Three Star, save to put a hurt animal out of misery, or kill
a rattlesnake.

Moisture streamed from Mormon's face, patched his clothes as the heat
and his exertions temporarily melted some of his superfluous adiposity.
Joe, his mahogany face stolid as a wooden carving, rolled a cigarette.

"I sure hate to see a nameless grave," said Mormon.

"Si, Senor," Joe's amiability agreed.

"You go git a dipper. I'm drier'n Dry Crick. Fetch it full from the
spring." The half-breed am