It was Joe Cherry’s notion that Santa Fé should be took along to Hart’s funeral, and not hung till everybody got back to town again. Joe was a serious-minded man, and he said the moral effect of running things that way would pan out a lot richer than if they just had a plain hanging before the funeral got under way.
Santa Fé kicked at that, at first; and a good many of the boys felt he had a right to. Santa Fé said it was all in the game to run him up to the telegraph-pole in front of the deepo, the same as other folks; but no committee had no right, he said, to make a circus of him by packing him all round the place after poor old Bill––who always had been plain in his tastes, and would have been the last man in Palomitas to want that kind of a fuss made over him––and he didn’t mean to take a hand in no such fool carryings-on. He didn’t want anybody to think he was squirming, he said, for he wasn’t. Some men got up against telegraph-poles, and others got up against guns or pneumonia or whatever happened to come along––and it was all 217 in the day’s work. But when they did get up against it––whatever it turned out to be––that was the one time in their lives when it wasn’t fair to worry ’em more’n was needed. Nobody but chumps, he said, would want to hurt his feelings by making him do trick-mule acts at poor old Bill’s funeral––’specially as him and Bill always had been friendly, and nobody was sorrier than he was about the accident that had occurred.
Santa Fé was a first-rate talker, and everybody but Cherry allowed what he was letting out had a good deal of sense in it. He ended up by saying that if they did make any such fool show of him he’d like ’em to put it through quick and get him back to the deepo and telegraph him off to Kingdom Come in a hurry––as he’d be glad at any price to be shut of a crowd that would play it on anybody that low down!
Cherry stuck it out, though, to have things his way. Palomitas was going in for purification, Cherry said, and the moral effect of having Santa Fé along at Bill’s funeral was part of the purifying. The very fact that 218 Santa Fé was kicking so hard against it, he said, showed it was a good thing. There was sense in that, too; and so the upshot of it was the boys come round to Cherry’s plan. The only serious thing against it was it meant waiting over another day, till the funeral outfit got down from Denver––all hands having chipped in to give Hart a good send-off, and telegraphed his size to a first-class Denver undertaker, with orders to do him up in style. Making him wait around so long, sort of idle, was what Santa Fé kicked hardest against at first. But after his talk with the Hen, as was remembered afterwards, he didn’t do any more kicking; and some of the boys noticed he was a little nervous, and kept asking, off and on, if they still meant to run the show that way.
The boys did what they could to make the time go for him––setting around sociable in the express office telling stories about other hangings they’d happened to get up against, and trying all they knowed how to amuse him, and giving him more seegars and drinks than he really cared to have. But as he 219 was kept hitched to both handles of the safe right enough, and handcuffed, and as the two members of the Committee watching him––while they was as pleasant with him as anybody––never had their hands far off their guns, it’s likely there’d been other times when he’d enjoyed himself more.
Things was spirited at the deepo when the Denver train got in. All there was of Palomitas was on deck, and Becker’d come over from Santa Cruz de la Cañada, and old man Bouquet from Pojuaque, and Sam and Marcus Elbogen had driven across on their buck-board from San Juan––and Mexicans had come in from all around in droves.
The Elbogen brothers had been asked over for the funeral ’special––because they both had good voices, and the Committee thought like enough, being Germans, they’d know some hymns. It turned out they didn’t––but they blew off “The Watch on the Rhine” in good shape, when singing time come out at the cemetery; and as it was a serious-sounding tune it done just as well. Singing it made 220 trouble, though: because Hart’s nephew––who knowed German and was a pill––hadn’t no more sense’n to tell old man Bouquet, coming back to town, what the words meant; and that started old man Bouquet off so––the war not being long over, and his side downed––that it took two of us, holding him by his arms and legs, to keep him from trying to fight both the Elbogens at once. Being good-natured young fellows, the Elbogens didn’t take offence, but behaved like perfect gentlemen––telling old man Bouquet they didn’t mean to hurt his feelings, and was sorry if they had––and it ended up well by their having drinks together at the Forest Queen. All that, though, has no real bearing on the story. It happened along later in the day.
Before the train got in, to save time, a rope had been rigged for Santa Fé over the cross-bar of the usual telegraph-pole––and Cherry, who knowed how to manage better’n most, had seen to it the rope was well soaped so as to run smooth. Cherry said he’d knowed things go real annoying, sometimes, when the 221 soap had been forgot. Santa Fé looked well. He’d had a good brush up––and he needed it, after being tied fast to the safe for three days and sleeping in a blanket on the express-office floor––and he’d put on a clean shirt, and blacked his boots, and had a shave. He always was a tidy sort of a man.
When the train pulled in, being on time for a wonder, some fellows from Chamita and the Embudo––come to see the doings––got out from the day-coach and shook hands; and the Denver undertaker got out from the express-car and helped the messenger unload the fixings he’d brought for poor old Bill. Everybody stood around quiet like, and as serious as you please. You might have thought it was a Sunday morning back in the States.