Jessamine sat by her brother until he died, twelve hours afterwards, having spoken and known nothing.  The whole weight of the horse had crushed him internally.  He must have become almost instantly unconscious, being held in the saddle by his spurs, which had caught in the hair cinch; it may be that our loud cheer was the last thing of this world that he knew.  The injuries to his body made impossible any taking him home, which his sister at first wished to do.  “Why, I came here to bring him home,” she said, with a smile and tone like cheerfulness in wax.  Her calm, the unearthly ease with which she spoke to any comer (and she was surrounded with rough kindness), embarrassed the listeners; she saw her calamity clear as they did, but was sleep-walking in it.  It was Lin gave her what she needed—­the repose of his strong, silent presence.  He spoke no sympathy and no advice, nor even did he argue with her about the burial; he perceived somehow that she did not really hear what was said to her, and that these first griefless, sensible words came from some mechanism of the nerves; so he kept himself near her, and let her tell her story as she would.  Once I heard him say to her, with the same authority of that first “come away”; “Now you’ve had enough of the talking.  Come for a walk.”  Enough of the talking—­as if it were a treatment!  How did he think of that?  Jessamine, at any rate, again obeyed him, and I saw the two going quietly about in the meadows and along the curving brook; and that night she slept well.  On one only point did the cow-puncher consult me.

“They figured to put Nate on top of that bald mound,” said he.  “But she has talked about the flowers and shade where the old folks lie, and where she wants him to be alongside of them.  I’ve not let her look at him to-day, for—­well, she might get the way he looks now on her memory.  But I’d like to show you my idea before going further.”

Lin had indeed chosen a beautiful place, and so I told him at the first sight of it.

“That’s all I wanted to know,” said he.  “I’ll fix the rest.”

I believe he never once told Jessamine the body could not travel so far as Kentucky.  I think he let her live and talk and grieve from hour to hour, and then led her that afternoon to the nook of sunlight and sheltering trees, and won her consent to it thus; for there was Nate laid, and there she went to sit, alone.  Lin did not go with her on those walks.

But now something new was on the fellow’s mind.  He was plainly occupied with it, whatever else he was doing, and he had some active cattle-work.  On my asking him if Jessamine Buckner had decided when to return east, he inquired of me, angrily, what was there in Kentucky she could not have in Wyoming?  Consequently, though I surmised what he must be debating, I felt myself invited to keep out of his confidence, and I did so.  My advice to him would have been ill received, and—­as was soon to be made plain—­ would have done his delicacy injustice.  Next, one morning he and Billy were gone.  My first thought was that he had rejoined Jessamine at Mrs. Pierce’s, where she was, and left me away over here on Bear Creek, where we had come for part of a week.