CHAPTER XVI.A BORDER BURIAL.
The morning dawned upon Yellow Dust Valley with Pistols, and Dave Dunn, and their other ally, Maddox, making tracks out of the valley with an anxiety to place many miles between themselves and the citizens of Pocket City in as short a space of time as was possible.
Crowds are proverbially fickle, and the thought in the minds of the three fugitives was that the mob might decide to change its mind and hang them, when it came to attend the funeral of Shuffles, whom Pistols had so wantonly shot.
While these three were keeping up a quick step for safety, as if by common consent, Pocket City was taking a holiday.
The miners had held open house at Devil’s Den until very late, or, rather, early, for the gray of dawn was visible in the east when the doors of the saloon were at last closed.
Business had been good for the saloon, and bad for many a gambler, and the employees were anxiousto get the accounts straightened out before Bonnie Belle examined the sales, expenses, and profits.
Shuffles had been a universal favorite, for he was always polite, obliging, and generous. He could never refuse a poor devil a drink and would chalk the amount against himself, so that at the end of the month he would only have a small sum coming to him out of his wages.
Bonnie Belle had held the money back until just before her departure for the East, when she had placed him in charge of the saloon, and at the same time said to him:
“Shuffles, you have been here for several years, and Landlord Lazarus gave you the name of being a very honest man. In the past ten months you have charged to yourself nearly two-thirds of your wages for favors shown others who have never paid you.
“I have kept it back, as I knew that it would be loaned away or spent. I now hold for you the sum of what those amounts are, and its total is a trifle over eight hundred dollars. When it reaches a thousand I shall send it to your mother, of whom you have so often spoken to me, to keep for you, and who you say has a mortgage on her little farm which sheand your two younger brothers are working hard to pay off. How much is that mortgage?”
Shuffles could hardly speak, his heart was so full of joy and gratitude. But at last he faltered:
“It is eleven hundred dollars, miss, for I sent mother fifty dollars last week; but, oh! what can I do to thank you for your goodness to me?”
“Act as squarely by me as you have done in the past, and manage the Den for me until further instructions.”
“I will, miss, I will.”
And upon the very night of Bonnie Belle’s return poor Shuffles shuffled off this mortal coil, murdered for doing a kind act in preventing Pistols from getting drunk, unmindful of the terrible fate of a man who waters another man’s whisky.
There was no contract between Bonnie Belle and her dead clerk, but the morning after his death she arose, and her first duty was to write a long letter to his mother, stating that he had been shot by a desperado, whom he had once saved from being killed.
She also stated that he should be buried with proper decency, and that his effects should be sent to her at once, along with twelve hundred dollars salary in her hands, due him, while a purse contributed by the minersshe begged her acceptance of, as it would show in what esteem her dead son was held by those among whom he associated.
There was not a word as to his calling, or a word to cast a shadow upon the mother’s love for her son.
Bonnie Belle had just finished her letter when Surgeon Powell and Buffalo Bill were ushered into her pleasant sitting-room, by Sly Cheek, the Chinaman, who deserved his name most certainly. She welcomed them pleasantly, told them of her letter to Shuffles’ mother, and added:
“Pocket City was up all night, so is resting now, for it is arranged to give poor Shuffles a grand funeral this afternoon. An itinerant organ-grinder was shot here some months ago, and his instrument has been pressed into service as a brass band, while a quartet of really fine voices are rehearsing a hymn which some clever fellow has discovered can be sung to the air of “Tramp, Tramp, the Boys are Marching,” the chorus being an original one written by a poor poet here who gave up the pen for the pick and has made a failure with both. You surely will remain to the funeral, gentlemen, of poor Shuffles, for it would be a mark of respect the miners would never forget you for showing?”
“Outside of that inducement, Bonnie Bell, I would not miss it for the world,” said the Surgeon Scout, with enthusiasm.
“Yes, I know we should enjoy it,” Buffalo Bill added absent-mindedly, his eyes upon a venison steak which Sly Cheek had just helped him to.
“Enjoy it, Buffalo Bill?” said Bonnie Belle reproachfully.
“No, I mean we should be delighted to attend, for if there is anything that will keep me away from church on a Sabbath day it is to attend a first-class border funeral, when the chief mourner is generally the man who turned up the toes of the lamented corpse. We will see Shuffles laid to rest, Bonnie Belle, and, as you spoke of raising a purse for his mother, let me offer you now a hundred dollars.”
“Wait, please, until I call for the subscription, and then I will accept your very generous offer,” was Bonnie Belle’s response.
It was when the bugle sounded at noon, calling the miners to dinner at the Frying Pan, the Pocket City really awoke to the situation.
Scott Kindon, the Vigilante captain, set the example of respect by closing his store and hanging in front of it a piece of black calico.
The Devil’s Den had not been opened after its night closing, and the door had been tastefully draped by Bonnie Belle with crape.
The body of Shuffles was laid out upon the piazza of the Frying Pan, in a coffin. A United States flag, brought into requisition on all occasions, was spread over it, and two miners stood guard over the remains, rifles in hand. It is safe to predict that had Pistols put in an appearance then he would have been at once placed in the same position of the lamented Shuffles.
The crowd began to gather from one end of the valley to the other, and miners came up with the hand-organ of the dead grinder in a wheelbarrow. Placing the organ at the foot of the coffin one of the miners began to play, and all during dinner such airs were ground out as:
“Johnny Comes Marching Home,” “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” “A Life On the Ocean Wave,” “John Brown’s Body,” and others more or less suited to the occasion.
There were many extras who took dinner at the Frying Pan that day, so that the Chinese servants were kept busy; but there was enough for all, for Bonnie Belle kept a generously supplied table, and there was never heard the slightest murmur of discontent.
At last Bonnie Belle appeared upon the piazza, and, as the bars had all been closed, she looked upon a sober crowd, though not a few were still unsteady from the effects of drinking the night before.
At her appearance all head-gear was raised. She was dressed in black, slouch-hat, sable plume and all, as a mark of respect, and carried in her hand a small basket.
“Comrades,” she said with one of her sweetest smiles, and placing her hand gently upon the head of the dead man lying in the coffin, “I thank you all for coming here, for we are burying to-day a friend, one whom we can all call by that sacred name, a name so often abused. You knew poor Shuffles as he was yesterday, the day before, and always, true as steel, generous to a fault, and a good man as far as he understood right and wrong.
“You know that he was murdered while he sought to do a kindness. But you do not all know that he has a poor mother in the far-away State of Connecticut living upon a farm which she and her three sons were trying to free from debt. The oldest son lies here, dead, and no help will she ever get from him now.
“So it is that I ask you, in your generosity to contribute as you can and will to the purse I wish to raise and send to her. One of our guests here, Buffalo Bill, was the first to volunteer, and most liberally, and he was followed by his comrade in arms, Surgeon Frank Powell, and now I ask all to come forward and contribute their mite, be it ever so little.”
She turned to Buffalo Bill and he dropped a roll of bills into the basket; Surgeon Powell did the same, and then the employees of the Frying Pan and Devil’s Den followed, after which the miners came forward in a steady stream, while, not to be outdone, the Chinese servants “clubbed in” for the mother of the dead “’Melican man.”
“Surgeon Powell, will you please count this contribution and state to the donors just what it amounts to?” asked Bonnie Belle.
The Surgeon Scout obeyed, and answered:
“Gold-dust valued at five hundred dollars, bills amounting to four hundred and fifty; gold pieces, one hundred and sixty, and silver one hundred and forty, with a score of I. O. U.’s amounting to a hundred dollars.”
“I will cash those I. O. U.’s, and that makes a mostgenerous contribution of thirteen hundred and fifty dollars,” said Bonnie Belle.
This ceremony over with, the pall-bearers were called, the body was taken up, and the cortège started for Sunset Hill, Bonnie Belle escorted by Surgeon Powell and Buffalo Bill, and the miners following in fours, while the organ led the way with “The Campbells are Coming,” and “John Brown’s Body.”
Arriving at the grave the hymn was sung by the quartet, all joining in the original chorus written by the miner-poet, with a will that sent a roar of melody down the valley to rebound from the distant cliffs with many an echo.
Then the body was lowered into the grave, while Surgeon Powell took up a shovel and said in his deep, sympathetic voice:
“We commit this body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
Then as all stood with bowed, uncovered heads, there arose upon the air a voice full of melody and pathos singing:
“Nearer my God to Thee.”
“Nearer my God to Thee.”
“Nearer my God to Thee.”
“Nearer my God to Thee.”
From beginning to end in her superb, rich tones, Bonnie Belle sang the beautiful hymn, and when thelast word was uttered, tears rolled across faces furrowed and brown which had not been thus wet since childhood. Manly hearts heaved convulsively with emotions which overwhelmed them, and many a miner went to his cabin home from Sunset Hill a better man for the burial he had witnessed of poor Shuffles.