lieutenant, was dead and in hell; Dan Vinson, sneaking cut-throat—and he was a literal cut-throat, the sheriff declared—was dead and in hell. Hell was pretty well full of horsethieves that day.
There was an end of it, the way it looked to Sheriff Treadwell, and Tom Simpson said he hoped so, and that he could have peace now to go on hauling bones. They jogged on until evening, and made camp, feeling secure and fairly happy, although Tom was troubled by the thought of old Noah Hays lying down there in the grass unburied. He asked the sheriff if he had sent anybody back to attend to Hays and Vinson, at which inquiry the sheriff appeared to be a little indignant.
"No, that's out of my jurisdiction," he said. "The county wouldn't pay for it, and who in the hell would? Oh well,—" a shade more humanely—"don't worry over them fellers, somebody'll find 'em. I don't care about anybody's carcase but old Wade Harrison's. If we could find that feller's carcase you'd have twenty-five hundred to three thousand dollars reward money comin' to you, Tom. But you never could collect it without the corpus delecti, and them fellers they've made sure nobody'll ever be able to prove that. Without the corpus delecti you couldn't do a thing, Tom—not a damn thing."
