Presley on tiptoes joined the group, looking on attentively. One of the surgeons who had been called from Bonneville stood close by, watching Harran’s face, his arms folded.
“How is he?” Presley whispered.
“He won’t live,” the other responded.
By degrees the choke and gurgle of the breathing became more irregular and the lids closed over the twitching eyes. All at once the breath ceased. Magnus shot an inquiring glance at the surgeon.
“He is dead, Mr. Derrick,” the surgeon replied.
Annie Derrick, with a cry that rang through all the house, stretched herself over the body of her son, her head upon his breast, and the Governor’s great shoulders bowed never to rise again.
“God help me and forgive me,” he groaned.
Presley rushed from the house, beside himself with grief, with horror, with pity, and with mad, insensate rage. On the porch outside Caraher met him.
“Is he—is he—” began the saloonkeeper.
“Yes, he’s dead,” cried Presley. “They’re all dead, murdered, shot down, dead, dead, all of them. Whose turn is next?”
“That’s the way they killed my wife, Presley.”
“Caraher,” cried Presley, “give me your hand. I’ve been wrong all the time. The League is wrong. All the world is wrong. You are the only one of us all who is right. I’m with you from now on. By God, I too, I’m a Red!”
In course of time, a farm wagon from Bonneville arrived at Hooven’s. The bodies of Annixter and Harran were placed in it, and it drove down the Lower Road towards the Los Muertos ranch houses.
The bodies of Delaney and Christian had already been carried to Guadalajara and thence taken by train to Bonneville.
Hilma followed the farm wagon in the Derricks’ carryall, with Magnus and his wife. During all that ride none of them spoke a word. It had been arranged that, since Quien Sabe was in the hands of the Railroad, Hilma should come to Los Muertos. To that place also Annixter’s body was carried.
Later on in the day, when it was almost evening, the undertaker’s black wagon passed the Derricks’ Home ranch on its way from Hooven’s and turned into the county road towards Bonneville. The initial excitement of the affair of the irrigating ditch had died down; the crowd long since had dispersed. By the time the wagon passed Caraher’s saloon, the sun had set. Night was coming on.
And the black wagon went on through the darkness, unattended, ignored, solitary, carrying the dead body of Dabney, the silent old man of whom nothing was known but his name, who made no friends, whom nobody knew or spoke to, who had come from no one knew whence and who went no one knew whither.
Towards midnight of that same day, Mrs. Dyke was awakened by the sounds of groaning in the room next to hers. Magnus Derrick was not so occupied by Harran’s death that he could not think of others who were in distress, and when he had heard that Mrs. Dyke and Sidney, like Hilma, had been turned out of Quien Sabe, he had thrown open Los Muertos to them.
“Though,” he warned them, “it is precarious hospitality at the best.”
Until late, Mrs. Dyke had sat up with Hilma, comforting her as best she could, rocking her to and fro in her arms, crying with her, trying to quiet her, for once having given way to her grief, Hilma wept with a terrible anguish and a violence that racked her from head to foot, and at last, worn out, a little child again, had sobbed herself to sleep in the older woman’s arms, and as a little child, Mrs. Dyke had put her to bed and had retired herself.
Aroused a few hours later by the sounds of a distress that was physical, as well as mental, Mrs. Dyke hurried into Hilma’s room, carrying the lamp with her.
Mrs. Dyke needed no enlightenment. She woke Presley and besought him to telephone to Bonneville at once, summoning a doctor. That night Hilma in great pain suffered a miscarriage.
Presley did not close his eyes once during the night; he did not even remove his clothes. Long after the doctor had departed and that house of tragedy had quieted down, he still remained in his place by the open window of his little room, looking off across the leagues of growing wheat, watching the slow kindling of the dawn. Horror weighed intolerably upon him. Monstrous things, huge, terrible, whose names he knew only too well, whirled at a gallop through his imagination, or rose spectral and grisly before the eyes of his mind. Harran dead, Annixter dead, Broderson dead, Osterman, perhaps, even at that moment dying. Why, these men had made up his world. Annixter had been his best friend, Harran, his almost daily companion; Broderson and Osterman were familiar to him as brothers. They were all his associates, his good friends, the group was his environment, belonging to his daily life. And he, standing there in the dust of the road by the irrigating ditch, had seen them shot. He found himself suddenly at his table, the candle burning at his elbow, his journal before him, writing swiftly, the desire for expression, the craving for outlet to
