She remembered now that strange, icy gloom and shudder she had always felt in the presence of the cowboy. Within her vitals now was the same cold, deadly, sickening sensation, and it was death. Always she had anticipated it, but vaguely, unrealizingly.
Larry King had lifted the burden of her life. She would have been glad—if only Neale had understood her! That was her last wavering conscious thought.
Now she drifted from human consciousness to the instinctive physical struggle of the animal to live, and that was not strong. There came a moment, the last, between life and death, when Beauty Stanton’s soul lingered on the threshold of its lonely and eternal pilgrimage, and then drifted across into the gray shadows, into the unknown, out to the great beyond.
Casey leaned on his spade while he wiped the sweat from his brow and regarded his ally McDermott. Between them yawned a grave they had been digging and near at hand lay a long, quiet form wrapped in old canvas.
“Mac, I’ll be domned if I loike this job,” said Casey, drawing hard at his black pipe.
“Yez want to be a directhor of the U. P. R., huh?” replied McDermott.
“Shure an’ I’ve did ivery job but run an ingine.... It’s imposed on we are, Mac. Thim troopers niver work. Why couldn’t they plant these stiffs?”
“Casey, I reckon no wan’s bossin’ us. Benton picked up an’ moved yistiday. An’ we’ll be goin’ soon wid the graveltrain. It’s only dacent of us to bury the remains of Benton. An’ shure yez ought to be glad to see that orful red-head cowboy go under the ground.”
“An’ fer why?” queried Casey.
“Didn’t he throw a gun on yez once an’ scare the daylights out of yez?”