Schubert, who made coffins according to specifications as occasion called. Marshal Kellogg sauntered off to summon Schubert to this little job, and the main portion of the crowd dispersed to the business or pleasure of the night, a few of the unlucky cowboy's companions remaining, a silent and melancholy guard.
These men appeared stunned by the unexpected turn of their rough-handed pleasantry. It was against all range precedent for a joke, no matter how cruel or humiliating to the victim, to end that way. They looked at Dunham with accusing reproach, unable to understand why he couldn't have stood like a good little granger and let them take his gun. But they respected him as a mystery beyond them.
Dunham stood near the mayor, into whose protection he had unconsciously edged, his faculties clouded by a numb oppression. He was in that foolish state that a man sometimes experiences when in strange surroundings, a participant in something so foreign to his inclination that he cannot believe it true. He feels that it is a dream, or a waking fancy, that reason will soon dispel. Dunham could not believe anything like the reality had happened: that a man lay dead at the edge of the footworn plank sidewalk, killed by a bullet from the friendly pistol that was as companionable to him as a dog.
The mayor jerked his head to signal him inside, and Dunham moved his feet to comply, expecting every moment to walk over the edge and wake out of it with a comfortable sigh. The girl had returned to the store ahead of them; she was busy with some small pur-
