CHAPTER IV: RANGE FUNERALBad news travels swiftly in the range country and the following morning there was quite a gathering of the clan at the Flying H. People came to extend their sympathy to Peggy Wheeler and to the rest of the Wheeler family. Even the Reverend Henry Lake and his slow-moving old buggy horse showed up at the ranch, the minister dressed in his ancient best.
Aunt Emma Wheeler, Aunt Annie Bellew, Grandma Owens and Mrs. Buck West gathered together and talked in whispers of the white-faced girl upstairs who did not want to talk with anybody, while the men stood around at the rear of the house in the shade of the big cottonwood and drank up the rest of Uncle Hozie’s wedding liquor.
Honey Bee was there, longing for a chance to talk with Laura Hatton. A little later on Len Kel
