“Well, you can't tell by the heart.”
“What's the good of talking so blame much. Dead or not, let's carry him back to the house.”
Two or three ran back to the road for planks from the broken bridge. When they returned with these a litter was improvised, and throwing their coats over the body, the party carried it back to the road. The doctor was summoned and declared the cow-puncher to have been dead over half an hour.
“What did I tell you?” exclaimed one of the group.
“Well, I never said he wasn't dead,” protested the other. “I only said you couldn't always tell by whether his heart beat or not.”
But all at once there was a commotion. The wagon containing Mrs. Hooven, Minna, and little Hilda drove up.
“Eh, den, my men,” cried Mrs. Hooven, wildly interrogating the faces of the crowd. “Whadt has happun? Sey, den, dose vellers, hev dey hurdt my men, eh, whadt?”
She sprang from the wagon, followed by Minna with Hilda in her arms. The crowd bore back as they advanced, staring at them in silence.
“Eh, whadt has happun, whadt has happun?” wailed Mrs. Hooven, as she hurried on, her two hands out before her, the fingers spread wide. “Eh, Hooven, eh, my men, are you alle righdt?”
She burst into the house. Hooven's body had been removed to an adjoining room, the bedroom of the house, and to this room Mrs. Hooven—Minna still at her heels—proceeded, guided by an instinct born of the occasion. Those in the outside room, saying no word, made way for them. They entered, closing the door behind them, and through all the rest of that terrible day, no sound nor sight of them was had by those who crowded into and about that house of death. Of all the main actors of the tragedy of the fight in the ditch, they remained the least noted, obtruded themselves the least upon the world's observation. They were, for the moment, forgotten.