His body was placed in state in the body of the wagon, pillowed with
everything in the line of cloth which the house could furnish. Thus
equipped they went on at a more moderate pace toward Morgantown.
What followed it is useless to repeat here. Tradition rehearsed every
detail of that day's work, and the purpose of this narrative is only
to give the details of some of the events which tradition does not
know, at least in their entirety.
They started at one end of Morgantown's street. Pierre guarded the
wagon in the center of the street and kept the people under cover of
his rifle. The rest of Boone's men cleaned out the houses as they went
and sent the occupants piling out to swell the crowd.
And so they rolled the crowd out of town and to the cemetery, where
"volunteers" dug the grave of Martin Ryder wide and deep, and Pierre
paid for the corner plot three times over in gold.
Then a coffin--improvised hastily for the occasion out of a
packing-box--was lowered reverently, also by "volunteer" mourners, and
before the first sod fell on the dead.
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