“Not me,” said Peter.  “Why not let the kids go home?”

“Sure,” agreed Frank.  “You’ve done a good night’s work, you two.  Get some sleep now.”

“You’ll find Buster tied to my saddle, Doug,” said John.  “Judith, can Swift still move?”

“You bet she can!” replied Judith.

There was a laugh, and the two young people gladly mounted and trotted into the home trail.

Oscar’s wife had long been dead.  His son was on a cattle-buying trip and could not be reached.  Oscar had been one of the richest men in the very well conditioned valley, so, instead of taking the body up to the lonely ranch house, it was laid out in state in the post-office.

Grandma Brown always officiated at deaths and births in Lost Chief.  After it was found impossible to get in touch with young Jeff and after the sheriff had made a three days’ investigation, she ordered the funeral to take place at once.

“We could pack him down in the ice till a thaw opens up the cemetery a little,” suggested Charleton Falkner.  “You know what a god-awful job it is making a grave in the cemetery in winter, between the frost and the rocks.”

“He’s going to be buried now, while he’s in good trim,” declared Grandma.  “I’m not going to have him ruined, waiting for spring.  You men get to work now, in shifts, like you did for old Ma Day.”

Grandma’s word was law in Lost Chief, and the grave forthwith was prepared.  John Spencer, Peter Knight, and Charleton Falkner were appointed by the old lady to do the work, and Douglas accompanied his father.  Old Johnny Brown appeared while the work was in process.

The cemetery was fenced in, but except for a few simple headstones and monuments, it was unadorned.

“Queer the women folks have never fixed this place up a little,” said Peter Knight, standing waist-deep in the grave, with John.  “Most places I’ve been, women keep the graves like they would a little garden.”

Charleton Falkner, resting on a neighboring headstone, smiled sardonically.  “Lost Chief women have enough to do without dolling up graves.”

Cold sweat stood on Doug’s forehead.  He stared from the gaping grave to the murmuring line of pines that marked the end of the cemetery and the beginning of the Forest Reserve, and shuddered.  He had not been sleeping well since the night of the murder.  Johnny Brown, small and very thin, with a scraggly iron-gray beard hung with little icicles and his blue eyes watering with the cold, moved away from the headstone against which he had been resting after his turn in the grave.

“That boy,” he said, jerking his elbow at Doug, “will be massified for many a year for driving the preacher out of Lost Chief.”

“How do you mean—­massify!” demanded Doug, gruffly.  Johnny might be half-witted, but his remarks were curiously penetrating sometimes.

“I mean massify,” grunted Johnny.

Peter Knight heaved a great frosted boulder out to the ground level.