In a few minutes the One Way Thru Saloon was crowded to overflowing, every one waiting expectantly. Cock Eye Baer did not return in ten minutes, nor in half an hour. In an hour or two men went scouting cautiously around in the alleys. But it was dawn before any one learned anything of importance. Then on the shortcut path down to the strollers’ camp ground City Marshal Pete Culder found Cock Eye lying dead with a bullet buried in his thick chest, driven in the direction of his heart. In Cock Eye’s hand, held in _rigor mortis_ was his heavy revolver, with one bullet gone from its cylinder. “Doggone! I knowed that Hesbern’s bad!” Culder gasped. “I’ll go down to find ’im, ’f I can!” He hurried to the strollers’ campground, where the strangers usually stopped. He saw Hesbern’s wagon and his two heavy draft horses staked in the grass on the creek bottom; but Hesbern’s saddlehorse, a beauty, was nowhere in sight. The city marshal went over to the outfit where the strangers had been delayed by a baby and by the sickness of a man. “Where’s Hesbern?” the city marshal demanded of the weak but convalescent man. “Why, Marshal--” the man shook his head--“I don’t know. Las’ night my wife’s mother broke a bottle we had to put on the baby’s stomach to keep it warm, an’ Mr. Hesbern went uptown to git another. My wife figured a two quart’n ’d be better, and so he brought one back, a big ’n. He seemed kinda excited, nervous, swearin’ to himself. Same time he didn’t say anythin’, exceptin’ he kissed the baby. My lan’! He sure favored we’ns! I don’t know what we’d done, me sickly, my wife took bad an’ that new baby, ’thout him. Him never married, too--an’ he saddled his horse to ride away down the branch. He ast if we’d get along right, ’fore he went. Course, I c’n git around, now. He left this order to look after his outfit, account of him gettin’ important news.” City Marshal Culder returned to Boxelder Court House Square. He told the sheriff, coroner and prosecutor what he knew. They had a jury sit over Cock Eye Baer’s remains, and they rather side-stepped the question of who, why and whence the killing. That night in the One Way Thru Saloon the boys gathered sorrowfully along the bar, staring at Cock Eye’s apron, spotted, large and limp, hanging right where Cock Eye himself had hung it, just the other night. “Poor Cock Eye!” City Marshal Culder shook his head. “We’re goin’ to miss that boy, yes, indeedy!” “That’s so-- Don’t seem possible, does it!” Another shook his head. “My lan’, he was funny, too, the way he talked!” another sighed. “I tell you, he was awfully bright, that old boy!” “Yeh! ’Member that one he got off the night Frank Hesbern come in? Hesbern, he wanted an empty bottle, an’ Cock Eye he said afterwards what Hesbern needed was a nipple on to it; yes, sir, that’s what he said! My golly, but the way he said it was comical. No sir! Long’s I live I’ll never forget it!”