John sat down by him, overcome by his first great grief. Death he had seen many times, horrible deaths some of them, but none had come so close as this. Cook, perceiving his plight, brought him a cup of steaming hot coffee, well knowing that it would put heart into him.
"Mr. Baker," said John at length, "he's got to be buried some place where the coyotes can't get at him."
"But it's sixty miles to the ranch," objected the ranchman.
"That's nothing. Let me have a team and a wagon and I'll get him there."
After some demur, which John finally overcame, Mr. Baker allowed him to take a big wagon and a four-horse team.
The body was laid in reverently, the horses harnessed and hitched up. Just as John was about to take up the reins Mr. Baker came forward. "I guess I'll go with you, Worth," he said. "Round-up's most finished and I can do more good at home."
He climbed into the seat of the big covered wagon as he spoke; and after tying Lightning alongside the wheel horse, John took up the lines. The punchers stood round, hats off, their weather-beaten faces grave and full of concern. All of them realized that this might have been their fate. Their rough hearts, accustomed as they were to all the chances of the dangerous life, were full of grief for the loss of their companion, "who was and is not."
"So long!" they said—a farewell to living and dead.
The whip cracked, the leaders jumped, and in a few minutes the white top of the wagon sank out of sight behind a rise. The sixty-mile funeral journey had begun.