They seemed almost blotted out by the last three that had crowded so close within the year.

The father, who even at his worst had a kind word for her and her mother, had been brought home mortally hurt--an encounter with wild cattle, a fall from his horse in a treacherous place--and had never roused to consciousness again.
At all these funerals there had been a solemn service, conducted by a travelling preacher when one happened to be within reach, and, when there was none, by the trembling, determined, untaught lips of the white-faced mother.

The mother had always insisted upon it, especially upon a prayer.
It had seemed like a charm to help the departed one into some kind of a pitiful heaven.
And when, a few months after the father, the mother had drooped and grown whiter and whiter, till one day she clutched at her heart and lay down gasping, and said: "Good-by, Bess! Mother's good girl! Don't forget!" and was gone from her life of burden and disappointment forever, the girl had prepared the funeral with the assistance of the one brother left.

The girl's voice had uttered the prayer, "Our Father," just as her mother had taught her, because there was no one else to do it; and she was afraid to send the wild young brother off after a preacher, lest he should not return in time.
It was six months now since the sad funeral train had wound its way among sage-brush and greasewood, and the body of the mother had been laid to rest beside her husband.

For six months the girl had kept the cabin in order, and held as far as possible the wayward brother to his work and home.