Blend the living with the dead,
Soon shall you and I be lying
Each within his narrow bed.”
A picture of Mackenzie lying alone in the room, cold, motionless, swathed in dripping cerements; a picture of him as he went forth that morning, cheerful, confident, strong, with never a thought of death in his mind, rose before Susan’s mental vision.
She broke down and cried.
Jones wiped his eyes repeatedly.
Others were crying quietly. For the first time that night they felt themselves to be strangers in a strange land, men and women who had come to seek a livelihood in a foreign country from which, for all they knew, they might never return.
When Susan lifted her head a little while after, her eyes caught those of Jones. Each knew what the other was thinking of. In the forenoon of that same day they had wronged Mackenzie in thought, almost in act, and he had died without knowing it. But did he not know? Did he not know now? Neither one could boast of being free from superstition: what if Mackenzie’s spirit were near, reading all that was passing in their minds and hearts? Susan shuddered. Samuel’s heart failed him in spite of his desperate inward struggle with his fears. They lowered their eyes again.
Twelve o’clock came, and most of the people rose to leave. Only a few would remain until the morning. Some, however, would return in time for the funeral. They all endeavoured to persuade Susan to go and lie down, and try to sleep, but she was afraid. She might dream. In her sleep Mackenzie’s spirit might accuse her!
So all night she and Samuel sat in the same room, wakeful, alert, thinking over and over again of what had taken place between them a few hours before, and of the tragedy in Culebra Cut.