The pain of the beating was dull and distant, just as the things their eyes saw and their ears heard seemed dull and distant.

They were not half living, or quarter living.

They were simply so many bags of bones in which sparks of life fluttered faintly.

When a halt was made, they dropped down in the traces like dead dogs, and the spark dimmed and paled and seemed to go out.

And when the club or whip fell upon them, the spark fluttered feebly up, and they tottered to their feet and staggered on.
There came a day when Billee, the good-natured, fell and could not rise.
Hal had traded off his revolver, so he took the axe and knocked Billee on the head as he lay in the traces, then cut the carcass out of the harness and dragged it to one side.