"That ends it," he said, with a sort of swearing groan in his voice; and then to Tarbell: "You may as well call Kirgan and tell him to order out the wrecking train. Then have Perkins make up a relief train while you're calling the doctors. Van Britt, you go and notify the hospital over your own office wire. Have my private car put into the relief, and see to it that it has all the necessary supplies. And you'd better notify the undertakers, too."
Great Joash! but it was horrible—for us to be hustling around and making arrangements for the funeral while the people who were to be gathered up and buried were still swinging along live and well, half of them in the crookings among the Timber Mountain foot-hills and the other half somewhere in the desert stretches below Sand Creek!
Tarbell had sent Disbrow to the phone to call Kirgan, and Mr. Van Britt was turning away to go to his own office, when the chair in the corner by the car-record table fell over backwards with a crash and Durgin came staggering across the room. He was staring straight ahead of him as if he had gone blind, and the sweat was running down his face to lose itself in the straggling beard.
When he spoke his voice seemed to come from away off somewhere, and he was still staring at the blank wall beyond the counter-railing.
"Did I—did I hear somebody say you're sending for the undertakers?" he choked, with a dry rattle in his throat; and then, without waiting for an answer: "While you're at it, you'd better get one for me ... there's the money to pay him," and he tossed a thick roll of bank bills, wrapped around with a rubber band, over to Tarbell at the train desk.
Naturally, the little grand-stand play with the bank roll made a diversion, and that is why the muffled crash of a pistol shot came with a startling shock to everybody. When we turned to look, the mischief was done. Durgin had crumpled down into a misshapen heap on the floor and the sight we saw was enough to make your blood run cold.
You see, he had put the muzzle of the pistol into his mouth, and—but it's no use: I can't tell about it, and the very thought of that thing that had just a minute before been a man, lying there on the floor makes me see black and want to keel over. What he had said about sending for an extra undertaker was right as right. With the top of his head blown off, the poor devil didn't need anything more in this world except the burying.