Tales from the X-bar Horse Camp: The Blue-Roan "Outlaw" and Other StoriesBarnes, Will C. (Will Croft)
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Tales from the X-bar Horse Camp: The Blue-Roan "Outlaw" and Other Stories
Barnes, Will C. (Will Croft)
Horses -- Fiction; Western stories
"'Course Jim swore we'd all do everything we could, an' Hart rode off
to'ds his ranch without comin' nigh the place where his little family
was a restin' so peaceful an' quiet.
"Say, fellers, that was the pitifullest sight I ever seed, an' I've seed
some sad work in the days when old Geronimo an' his murderin' gang of
government pets used to range all over the country.
"'Twas easy enuff to read the whole thing now. She'd come to the edge of
the mesa an' seen the lights in the station house, for they get up 'bout
four o'clock every mornin' to get breakfast for the section men.
Climbin' down the cliff had used her up, an' knowin' she was so clost to
help, she had set down on a big flat rock at the bottom to rest a minute
before starting to walk the mile from the foot of the mesa to the
station. To set down, as cold and tired as she was, meant sleep, an' to
sleep was shore death that night, an' she went to sleep an' never woke
up no more.
"The little boy was cuddled up ag'in her under her shawl, with the
peacefullest look on his little face you ever see, an' the little girl
was a-leanin' on her lap an' a-lookin' up into her face, with the big
tears frozen on her cheeks, an' so natural that it was hard to believe
she was dead.
"One of the boys went over to the station an' got two wagon sheets and
some blankets, an' when the buckboard came we rolled 'em up as carefully
an' softly as we could. They was so stiff we had to leave the little
feller where he was, but the girl we rolled up separate.
"Now, say, boys, that was a hard thing to do, for a bunch of rough
cow-punchers, if you hear me. Hookey Jim he'd been through a yellow
fever year down in Memphis once, an' he was more used to such things, so
he sort of bossed the job.
"I ain't ashamed to say I bawled like a baby, fellers. Mrs. Hart was
awful good to us boys, even if her husband was a sheep man. No puncher
ever went there without gettin' a good square meal, no matter when it
was; an' when Curly Joe got sick over at the 'Rail N' ranch, she jist
made the boys fetch him over to her place, an' she nussed him like his
own mammy would have done.
"After we got 'em packed on the buckboard, Wilson sent the rest of the
outfit back to camp, an' him an' me rode on into town, leavin' Shorty
French to drive the team in. We met everybody in town out on the road to
hunt for Mrs. Hart, for the word had got round that she had got lost;
an' everyone that could leave had turned out on the search.
"'Twas a sorrowful place that day, an' the next. Everybody in town knew
an' loved the little woman, an' her awful death made it seem more
pitiful an' sad. They made one coffin an' put her an' the two chillun
into it, one on each arm, an' they looked so sweet an' peaceful, like
they was only asleep--an', anyway, that's what he read from the book at
the grave--that they was only asleep.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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