"Saunders died a few minutes ago.
Pete says you better notify the coroner--and I reckon the sheriff, too.
Pretty tough to be shot down like that in broad daylight." "I think I'd rather be shot in daylight than in the dark," Miss Georgie snapped unreasonably because her nerves were all a-jangle, and sent the messages as requested.
Saunders was neither a popular nor a prominent citizen, and there was none to mourn beside him.

Peter Hamilton, as his employer and a man whose emotions were easily stirred, was shocked a shade lighter as to his complexion and a tone lower as to his voice perhaps, and was heard to remark frequently that it was "a turrible thing," but the chief emotion which the tragedy roused was curiosity, and that fluttering excitement which attends death in any form.
A dozen Indians hung about the store, the squaws peering inquisitively in at the uncurtained window of the lean-to--where the bed held a long immovable burden with a rumpled sheet over it--and the bucks listening stolidly to the futile gossip on the store porch.
Pete Hamilton, anxious that the passing of his unprofitable servant should be marked by decorum if not by grief, mentally classed the event with election day, in that he refused to sell any liquor until the sheriff and coroner arrived.

He also, after his first bewilderment had passed, conceived the idea that Saunders had committed suicide, and explained to everyone who would listen just why he believed it.

Saunders was sickly, for one thing.

For another, Saunders never seemed to get any good out of living.