All the morning old Maude had been groaning and swearing in the office, where she lay unattended.  Bud was telling his friends how he had knocked her down twice in the cave, after she had shot six times and slashed at him with her dagger, when a sudden cessation of groans from the interior attracted the attention of all.  “Doc” Smith arrived at that juncture and found the boys listening intently for a resumption of the picturesque profanity.  It was some time before the crowd became large enough to inspire a visit to the interior of the calaboose.  As became his dignity, Bud led the way.

The old woman, unable to endure the pain any longer, and knowing full well that her days were bound to end in prison, had managed, in some way, to hang herself from a window bar beside her bed, using a twisted bed sheet.  She was quite dead when “Doc” made the examination.  A committee of the whole started at once to notify Anderson Crow.  For a minute it looked as though the jail would be left entirely unguarded, but Bud loyally returned to his post, reinforced by Roscoe and the doctor.

Upon Mr. Crow’s arrival at the jail, affairs assumed some aspect of order.  He first locked the grate doors, thereby keeping the fiery David from coming out to see his mother before they cut her down.  A messenger was sent for the coroner at Boggs City, and then the big body was released from its last hanging place.

“Doggone, but this is a busy day fer me!” said Anderson.  “I won’t have time to pump them fellers till this evenin’.  But I guess they’ll keep.  ’What’s that, Blootch?”

“I was just goin’ to ask Bud if they’re still in there,” said Blootch.

“Are they, Bud?” asked Anderson in quick alarm.

“Sure,” replied Bud with a mighty swelling of the chest.  Even Blootch envied him.

“She’s been dead jest an hour an’ seven minutes,” observed Anderson, gingerly touching the dead woman’s wrist.  “Doggone, I’m glad o’ one thing!”

“What’s that, Anderson?”

“We won’t have to set her hip.  Saved expense.”

“But we’ll have to bury her, like as not,” said Isaac Porter.

“Yes,” said Anderson reflectively.  “She’ll have to be buried.  But—­but—­” and here his face lightened up in relief—­“not fer a day er two; so what’s the use worryin’.”

When the coroner arrived, soon after six o’clock, a jury was empanelled and witnesses sworn.  In ten minutes a verdict of suicide was returned and the coroner was on his way back to Boggs City.  He did not even know that a hip had been dislocated.  Anderson insisted upon a post-mortem examination, but was laughed out of countenance by the officious M.D.

“I voted fer that fool last November,” said Anderson wrathfully, as the coroner drove off, “but you c’n kick the daylights out of me if I ever do it ag’in.  Look out there, Bud!  What in thunder are you doin’ with them pistols?  Doggone, ain’t you got no sense?  Pointin’ ’em around that way.  Why, you’re liable to shoot somebody—­”