"I'm--dying," the other said, laconically. "So yuh needn't go to any trouble, on my account. From the looks--yuh was headed for some--blowout. Go on, and let me be."

The Happy Family looked at one another incredulously; they were so likely to ride on!

"I guess you don't savvy this bunch, old-timer," said Weary calmly, speaking for the six. "We're going to do what we can. If yuh don't mind telling us where yuh got hurt--"

The lips of the other curled bitterly. "I was shot," he said distinctly, "by the sheriff and his bunch. But I got away. Last night I tried to cross the creek, and my horse went on down. It was storming--fierce. I got out, somehow, and crawled into the weeds.

Laying out in the rain--didn't help me none. It's--all off."

"There ought to be _something_--" began Jack Bates helplessly.

"There is. If yuh'll just put me away--afterwards--and say nothing,--I'll be--mighty grateful." He was looking at them sharply, as if a great deal depended upon their answer.

The Happy Family was dazed. The very suddenness of this unlooked-for glimpse into the somber eyes of Tragedy was unnerving. The world had seemed such a jolly place; ten minutes ago--five minutes, even, their greatest fear had been getting to the picnic too late for dinner.

And here was a man at their feet, calmly telling them that he was about to die, and asking only a hurried burial and a silence after.

Happy Jack swallowed painfully and shifted his feet in the gra.s.s.

"Of course, if yuh'd feel better handing me over--"

"That'll be about enough on that subject," Pink interrupted with decision. "Just because yuh happen to be down and out--for the time being--is no reason why yuh should insult folks. You can take it for granted we'll do what we can for yuh; the question is, _what_? Yuh needn' go talking about cashing in--they's no sense in it. You'll be all right.--"

"Huh. You wait and see." The fellow's mouth set grimly upon another groan. "If you was shot through, and stuck to the saddle--and rode--and then got pummeled--by a creek at flood, and if yuh laid out in the rain--all night-- h.e.l.l, boys! Yuh know I'm about all in.

I'm hard to kill, or I'd have been--dead-- What I want to 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 sc.r.a.pe. They're square--and stand at the top--And they don't--it would just about-- For G.o.d sake, boys! Can't yuh see--how I feel?

n.o.body 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--so quiet that little, brown birds hopped close, and sang from swaying weeds almost within reach of them. The Happy Family listened dully to the songs, and waited.

They did not even think to make a cigarette.

The sun climbed higher and shone hotly down upon them. The dying man blinked at the glare, and Happy Jack took off his hat and tilted it over the face of the other, and asked him if he wouldn't like to be moved into the shade.

"No matter--I'll be in the shade--soon enough," he returned quietly, and something gripped their throats to aching. His voice, they observed, was weaker than it had been.

Weary took a long breath, and moved closer. "I wish you'd let us get help," he said, wistfully. It all seemed so horribly brutal, their sitting around him like that, waiting pa.s.sively for him to die.

"I know--yuh hate it. But it's--all yuh can do. It's all I want."

He took his eyes from the drifting, white clouds, and looked from face to face. "You're the whitest bunch--I'd like to know--who yuh are. Maybe I can put in--a good word for yuh--on the new range--where I'm going. I'd sure like to do--something--"

"Then for the Lord's sake, don't say such things!" cried Pink, shakily. "You'll have us--so d.a.m.n broke up--"

"All right--I won't. So long,--boys. See yuh later--"

"Mamma!" whispered Weary, and got up hastily and walked away. Slim followed him a few paces, then turned resolutely and went back. It seemed cowardly to leave the rest to bear it--and somebody had to.

They were breathing quickly, and they were staring across the coulee with eyes that saw nothing; their lips were shut very tightly together. Weary came back and stood with his back turned. Pink moved a bit, glanced furtively at the long, quiet figure beside him, and dropped his face into his gloved hands.

Glory threw up his head, glanced across the coulee at a band of range horses trooping down a gully to drink at the river, and whinnied shrilly. The Happy Family started and awoke to the stern necessities of life. They stood up, and walked a little way from the spot, avoiding one another's eyes.

"Somebody'll have to go back to camp," said Cal Emmett, in the hushed tone that death ever compels from the living. "We've got to have a spade--"

"It better be the handiest liar, then," Jack Bates put in hastily.

"If that old loose-tongued Patsy ever gets next--"

"Weary better go--and Pink. They're the best liars in the bunch,"

said Cal, trying unsuccessfully to get back his everyday manner.

Pink and Weary went over and took the dragging bridle-reins of their mounts, caught a stirrup and swung up into the saddles silently.

"And say!" Happy Jack called softly, as they were going down the slope. "Yuh better bring--a blanket."

Weary nodded, and they rode away, their horses stepping softly in the thick gra.s.ses. When they were pa.s.sed quite out of the presence of the dead, they spurred their horses into a gallop.

The sun marked mid-afternoon when they returned, and the four who had waited drew long breaths of relief at sight of them.

"We told Patsy we'd run onto a--den--"

"Oh, shut up, can't yuh?" Jack Bates interrupted shortly. "Yuh'll have plenty uh time to tell us afterwards."

"We've got a place picked out," said Cal, and led them a little distance up the slope, to a level spot in the shadow of a huge, gray bowlder. "That's his headstone," he said, soberly. "The poor devil won't be cheated out uh that, if we _can't_ mark it with his name.

It'll last as long as he'll need it."

Only in the West, perhaps, may one find a funeral like that. No minister stood at the head of the grave and read, "Dust to dust" and all the heartbreaking rest of it. There was no singing but from a meadowlark that perched on a nearby rock and rippled his brief song when, with their ropes, they lowered the blanket wrapped form. They stood, with bare heads bowed, while the meadow lark sang. When he had flown, Pink, looking a choir-boy in disguise, repeated softly and incorrectly the Lord's prayer.

The Happy Family did not feel that there was any incongruity in what they did. When Pink, gulping a little over the unfamiliar words, said:

"Thine be power and glory--Amen;" five clear, youthful voices added the Amen quite simply. Then they filled the grave and stood silent a minute before they went down to where their horse stood waiting patiently, with now and then a curious glance up the hill to where their masters grouped.

The Happy Family mounted and without a backward glance rode soberly away; and the trail they took led, not to the picnic, but to camp.