Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/54

 down to the water in the Cañon del Oro, and in making a cup of coffee, for which there was the water brought along in the kegs in the wagons. Everything and everybody was all right, excepting Kennedy, who was beginning to act and talk strangely; first exhilarated and then excited, petulant and despondent. His sufferings were beginning to tell upon him, and he manifested a strange aversion to being put in the same vehicle with a dead man. We made the best arrangement possible for the comfort of our wounded friend, for whom it seemed that the ambulance would be the proper place. But the jolting and the upright position he was compelled to take proved too much for him, and he begged to be allowed to recline at full length in one of the wagons.

His request was granted at once; only, as it happened, he was lifted into the wagon in which the stiff, stark corpse of Israel was glaring stonily at the sky. A canvas 'paulin was stretched over the corpse, half a dozen blankets spread out to make as soft a couch as could be expected, and then Kennedy was lifted in, and the homeward march resumed with rapid gait. Animals and men were equally anxious to leave far in the rear a scene of such horror, and without whip or spur we rolled rapidly over the gravelly "mesa," until we got to the head of the Santa Catalina Cañon, and even there we progressed satisfactorily, as, notwithstanding the deep sand, it was all down grade into the post.

In crossing the San Pedro, the wagon in which Kennedy was riding gave a lurch, throwing him to one side; to keep himself from being bumped against the side, he grasped the first thing within reach, and this happened to be the cold, clammy ankle of the corpse. One low moan, or, rather, a groan, was all that showed Kennedy's consciousness of the undesirable companionship of his ride. The incident didn't really make very much difference, however, as his last hours were fast drawing near, and Death had already summoned him. He breathed his last in the post hospital before midnight. An autopsy revealed the presence of a piece of headless arrow, four or five inches long, lodged in the left lung.

The funeral ceremonies did not take much time. There was no lumber in that section of country for making coffins. Packing boxes, cracker boxes, anything that could be utilized, were made to serve the purpose, and generally none were used. The