The Lady Doc Part 39

"I'm glad to hear that," said Lamb conciliatingly, and added: "Of course you're not counting on that $90?"

"There must be some left."

"Oh, no--nothing. Arm amputations are a $100. We are really out $10--more than that with his board and all, but"--his tone was magnanimity itself--"let it go."

When the Deputy-sheriff went out on the works and raised $125 more among Billy Duncan's friends, he handed it to Lutz, the hospital undertaker, and said--

"The best you can do for the money, Lutz. I've got to go to the County seat on a case and I can't be here myself. Billy was a personal friend of mine, so treat him right."

"Sure; we can turn him out first-cla.s.s for that money; a new suit of clothes and a tony coffin. Any friend of yours I'll handle like he was my own."

There was something slightly jocular in his tone, a flippancy which Dan Treu felt and silently resented. He looked at Lutz in his shiny, black diagonals, undersized, sallow, his meaningless brown eyes as dull as the eyes of a dead fish, and he thought to himself as he walked away--

"That feller's in the right business, and, by gosh, he's thrown in with the right bunch."

The grave-digger's mouth puckered in a whistle when Lutz went to his home to notify him that his services were needed.

"What! Another!"

The undertaker grinned.

"I'm about used up from gittin' robbed of my rest," complained the grave-digger. "This night-work ain't to my taste."

"It's no use kickin'; you know what Lamb says--that these daylight buryin's makes talk amongst the neighbors."

"Should think it would," retorted the grave-digger, "with them typhoids dyin' like flies."

"I thought of a joke, Lem."

"Undertakin' is a comical business; what is it?"

"When an undertaker's sick ought he to go to the doctor what gives him the most work or the least?"

"You got me; I'll think it over and let you know."

In spite of his garrulous complaints the grave-digger was at work in a new grave on the sagebrush flat a mile or more from town when the undertaker and the liveryman drove up at midnight with all that remained of Billy Duncan jolting in the box of a lumber wagon.

The coffin of unplaned lumber was unloaded at the grave and the liveryman hastened away, for he himself had no liking for these nocturnal drives, but neither was he the man to quarrel with his own interests. If the Health Officer and His Honor, the mayor, asked no questions when the hospital deaths went unreported, he felt that these frequent midnight pilgrimages were no concern of his.

The undertaker peered into the shallow grave.

"This hole looks like a chicken had been dustin' itself."

"You'd think it was deep enough if you was diggin' in these rocks and drawin' only $5.00 for it," was the tart reply. "I told you I wouldn't dig but three feet for that money. 'Tain't like diggin' in nice, easy Nebrasky soil. Gimme $10 a grave an' I'll dig 'em regalation depth."

"Quit jawin' and take holt of this here box."

"Is he heavy?"

"Never heard of any of 'em comin' out of there fat. Slide the strap under your end."

"He's heavier than most," grunted the grave-digger. "He couldn't a been in there long."

Lutz laughed.

"They made a quick job of this one. Steady now--let her slide."

The grave-digger was sleepy and cross and careless. The strap slipped through his fingers and the box fell with a heavy thud. It fell upon its side and the lid came off.

"My G.o.d!" The grave-digger was staring into the hole with all his bulging eyes.

"You fool! You clumsy, blunderin' fool!"

The epithet pa.s.sed unheard, for the grave-digger was looking at the stark body rolled in a soiled blanket now lying face downward in the dirt of the grave.

"Jump in there and put him back!" cried Lutz excitedly.

The grave-digger backed off and shook his head emphatically.

"Not _me_!"

"What are you here for--you?"

"Not for jobs like this; this sure don't look right to me."

"What do I care how it looks to you! Get busy and help me roll him back and be quick about it!"

"I ain't paid for no such crooked work as this."

"Crooked?"

"I've heard it straight that every pauper had a suit o' clothes, a coffin, a six-foot grave, and a headboard comin' to him from the County.

That's the law."

"Look here, Lem, use a little sense. Now what's the use spendin' County money on these paupers from G.o.d knows where? That's a good blanket."

"Oh, yes, that's a peach of a blanket. Kind of a shame to waste such a good blanket, ain't it? Why don't you take it off him? He'll never tell.

But say, are you sure the County don't pay for that suit of clothes and coffin and six feet of diggin' he didn't git?"

"Are you goin' to lend a hand here or not?"

"Not." The grave-digger picked up his shovel and started off looking like a gnome in the moonlight under his high-crowned Stetson.

"Come back here! Don't be a fool."

"I'm not the man you're lookin' for," he replied stubbornly.

The undertaker started after him and laid a hand roughly upon his arm.