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Nearly three per cent, of the cattle belonging to the Double Arrow yearly found death on this tableland, and the herds of that ranch numbered many thousand heads. It was this which made the Double Arrow the poorest of the ranches, and it was this which allowed insufficient sentries in its line-houses. The skeletons were not all of cattle, for at rare intervals lay the sand-worn frames of men.
At first Rand eavesdropped shamelessly, but there was nothing of more than comic interest; it was just a routine parade and guard-mount of the older and more dependable family skeletons, with special emphasis on Humphrey Goode's business and professional ethics. When he was satisfied that he would hear nothing having any bearing on the death of Lane Fleming, Rand went back to his work.
Their webs, darkened with dust and ornamented with the wings and legs and skeletons of many an unfortunate traveller, clung thick to angle and window-sill, festooned the rickety table on which the young man leaned his elbow, and described geometrical circles and rhomboids between the gaping rails that formed the backs of venerable chairs.
"Father!" she cried, leaping into his arms, as he came into the room, large enough to hold six-men standing upright; but a hideous den in which to perish alone in the dark. "Oh, father! I thought no one would ever find us. I was afraid we should have died like the Italian lady and people would have found our skeletons and wondered about us. I never was afraid before.
I will not sit here quietly and listen to you tell such dreadful stories. You know very well that you are too delicate to live in Chicago where the climate does not agree with you," Barbara cried. "Tut, tut! We are all old friends here, Bob, and no one will squeal on you about family skeletons.
They were galloping skeletons draped in mangy hide, and they out-distanced the boys who herded them. But this was only for a time. Then they fell back to a walk, a quick, eager, shambling, sore-footed walk; and they no longer were lured aside by the dry bunch-grass. "What is it?" my mother asked from within the wagon. "Water," was my father's reply. "It must be Nephi." And my mother: "Thank God!
This custom was continued, some years ago, in the cemeteries of Naples, and especially in the daily burial of the poor. Therefore, the skeletons found in the Inquisition of Rome could not belong to persons who had died a natural death in a hospital; nor could any one, under such a supposition, explain the mystery of all the bodies being buried in lime except the head.
These men whom he had known in the greatness of their strength at Aldershot were little more than skeletons, hardly able to show their appreciation of his splendid efforts, so weak were they. 'You should have seen the general cry, said a group of men from Ladysmith at the Cambridge Hospital the other day. It was their way of putting the case.
"Ah, that's more than any one of us can say; but I have seen their remains turned to stone, laid bare in a stone quarry that is to say, their skeletons, which show pretty well what must have been their shape; and if they existed once there is no reason why some of their descendants, though very rarely seen, may not still survive, though I am half afraid that my nephew here must have some half-forgotten lingering memories of one of these creatures that he has seen in some geological work, and upon seeing that fish or reptile let his imagination run riot and finished it off by memory."
The fields lay waste and untilled; the cattle, few in number, were mere bundles of skin and bone; the villages were half-emptied of their inhabitants, while those who remained resembled skeletons rather than human beings. "And all this," exclaimed my companion bitterly, "is the work of the Italian woman and her friends.
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