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 anxious to 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 she and 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 miners she 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 most generous
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.”
From beginning to end in her superb, rich tones, Bonnie Belle sang
the beautiful hymn, and when the last 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.