"Nev--never mind, Mrs Denver!" he blurted out, with a note
as of indignation and defiance--just for all the world as if Jack
Denver had done a wrong thing and the district was down on
him--"he'll have the longest funeral ever seen in these parts! Leave
that to me." Then some of the women took her out to her daughter's.
Big Ben Duggan gave terse instructions to some of the young riders
about, and then, taking the best and freshest horse, the cross-country
scrub swallowed him--west. The young men jumped on their horses and
rode, fan-like, east.
They took Jack Denver home. They always took their dead home first,
whenever possible, and no matter the distance, before taking them to
their last long home; and they do it yet, I suppose. They are not
always so particular about it in cities, from what I've seen.
But this was a strange funeral. They had arranged mattress and sheet
in the bottom of a four-wheeler, and covered him with sheet, blanket,
and quilt, though the weather was warm; and over the body, from side
to side of the trap, they had stretched the big dark-green table-cloth
from Anderson's dining-room. The long, ghostly, white, cleared
government road between the dark walls of timber in the moonlight.
The buggies and carts behind, and the dead-white faces and glistening
or despairingly staring eyes of the women--wife, daughters, and
nieces, and those who had come to help and comfort. The men--sons and
brothers, and few mates and chums and sweethearts--riding to right and
left like a bodyguard, to comfort and be comforted who needed comfort.
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