They'd go to drugging themselves with boneset tea, and mullein tea, and bitter-root powders and wahoo bark, said Gray. Likewise, they'd turn to burying one another, after the ways of pioneers, who were as resourceful in deaths and funerals as in drugs and fomentations. Pioneers, such as would be left in that country after Morgan had shut Ascalon up and driven away those who were dependent on one another for their skinning and fleecing, filching and plundering, did not lean on any man. Such as came there to plow up the prairies would be of the same stuff, rough-barked men and women who called in neither doctor to be born nor undertaker to be buried. It was a gloomy outlook, the town closed up and everybody gone, said Gray. What would a man do with his building, what would a man do with his stock? "Maybe Craddock ain't no saint and angel, but he makes business in this town," said Gray. "Makes business!" the undertaker echoed, with abstraction and looking far away as if he already saw the train of oncoming, independent, self-burying pioneers over against the horizon. "If this feller's luck don't go ag'in' him, you might as well ship all your coffins away but one--they'll need one to bury the town in. What do you think of him ridin' around the depot down there, drawin' a deadline that no man ain't goin' to be allowed to cross till the one-twenty pulls out? Kind of high-handed deal, I call it!" "I've got a case of shrouds comin' in by express on that train, two cases layin' in my place waitin' on 'em," the undertaker said, resentfully, waking out of his abstraction and apparent apathy. "_You_ have!" said Gray, eying him suddenly. "He stopped me as I was goin' over to wait around till the train come in, drove me back like I was a cow. He said it didn't make no difference how much business I had at the depot, it would have to wait till the train was gone. When a citizen and a taxpayer of this town can't even cross the road like a shanghai rooster, things is comin' to a hell of a pass!" "Well, I ain't got no business at the depot this afternoon, or I bet you a cracker I'd be over there," Gray boasted. "I think I'll close up a while and go down to the hotel where I can see better--it's only forty minutes till she's due." "Might as well, everybody's down there. You won't sell as much as a pack of gum till the train's gone and this thing's off of people's minds." Gray went in for his hat, to spend a good deal of time at the glass behind his prescription case setting it at the most seductive slant upon his luxuriant brown curls. This was an extremely enticing small hat, just a shade lighter brown than the druggist's wavy hair. It looked like a cork in a bottle placed by a tipsy hand as Druggist Gray passed down the street toward the hotel, to post himself where he might see how well Morgan's luck was going to hold in this encounter with the meat hunter of the Cimarron.