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Page 2
A long procession of funerals seemed to come out of the past and meet her
eye as she looked about upon the signs of the primitive, unhallowed one
which had just gone out from there a little while before.
The girl closed her eyes, and pressed their hot, dry lids hard with her
cold fingers; but the vision was clearer even than with her eyes open.
She could see the tiny baby sister lying there in the middle of the room,
so little and white and pitiful; and her handsome, careless father sitting
at the head of the rude home-made coffin, sober for the moment; and her
tired, disheartened mother, faded before her time, dry-eyed and haggard,
beside him. But that was long ago, almost at the beginning of things for
the girl.
There had been other funerals, the little brother who had been drowned
while playing in a forbidden stream, and the older brother who had gone
off in search of gold or his own way, and had crawled back parched with
fever to die in his mother's arms. But those, too, seemed long ago to the
girl as she stood in the empty cabin and looked fearfully about her. They
seemed almost blotted out by the last three that had crowded so close
within the year. The father, who even at his worst had a kind word for her
and her mother, had been brought home mortally hurt--an encounter with
wild cattle, a fall from his horse in a treacherous place--and had never
roused to consciousness again.
At all these funerals there had been a solemn service, conducted by a
travelling preacher when one happened to be within reach, and, when there
was none, by the trembling, determined, untaught lips of the white-faced
mother. The mother had always insisted upon it, especially upon a prayer.
It had seemed like a charm to help the departed one into some kind of a
pitiful heaven.
And when, a few months after the father, the mother had drooped and grown
whiter and whiter, till one day she clutched at her heart and lay down
gasping, and said: "Good-by, Bess! Mother's good girl! Don't forget!" and
was gone from her life of burden and disappointment forever, the girl had
prepared the funeral with the assistance of the one brother left. The
girl's voice had uttered the prayer, "Our Father," just as her mother had
taught her, because there was no one else to do it; and she was afraid to
send the wild young brother off after a preacher, lest he should not
return in time.
It was six months now since the sad funeral train had wound its way among
sage-brush and greasewood, and the body of the mother had been laid to
rest beside her husband. For six months the girl had kept the cabin in
order, and held as far as possible the wayward brother to his work and
home. But within the last few weeks he had more and more left her alone,
for a day, and sometimes more, and had come home in a sad condition and
with bold, merry companions who made her life a constant terror. And now,
but two short days ago, they had brought home his body lying across his
own faithful horse, with two shots through his heart. It was a drunken
quarrel, they told her; and all were sorry, but no one seemed responsible.
They had been kind in their rough way, those companions of her brother.
They had stayed and done all that was necessary, had dug the grave, and
stood about their comrade in good-natured grimness, marching in order
about him to give the last look; but, when the sister tried to utter the
prayer she knew her mother would have spoken, her throat refused to make a
sound, and her tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth. She had taken
sudden refuge in the little shed that was her own room, and there had
stayed till the rough companions had taken away the still form of the only
one left in the family circle.
In silence the funeral train wound its way to the spot where the others
were buried. They respected her tearless grief, these great, passionate,
uncontrolled young men. They held in the rude jokes with which they would
have taken the awesomeness from the occasion for themselves, and for the
most part kept the way silently and gravely, now and then looking back
with admiration to the slim girl with the stony face and unblinking eyes
who followed them mechanically. They had felt that some one ought to do
something; but no one knew exactly what, and so they walked silently.
Only one, the hardest and boldest, the ringleader of the company, ventured
back to ask whether there was anything he could do for her, anything she
would like to have done; but she answered him coldly with a "No!" that cut
him to the quick. It had been a good deal for him to do, this touch of
gentleness he had forced himself into. He turned from her with a wicked
gleam of intent in his eyes, but she did not see it.
When the rude ceremony was over, the last clod was heaped upon the pitiful
mound, and the relentless words, "dust to dust," had been murmured by one
more daring than the rest, they turned and looked at the girl, who had all
the time stood upon a mound of earth and watched them, as a statue of
Misery might look down upon the world. They could not make her out, this
silent, marble girl. They hoped now she would change. It was over. They
felt an untold relief themselves from the fact that their reckless, gay
comrade was no longer lying cold and still among them. They were done with
him. They had paid their last tribute, and wished to forget. He must
settle his own account with the hereafter now; they had enough in their
own lives without the burden of his.
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