The singers who recorded this downstream from Woody Guthrie, such as Charlie Sawtelle, always seemed to me to stop the song before the lady's death. After 50 years i was finally curious enough to look it up, and it seems my dramatic instincts were correct -- her death is the point of the song, which, like Stewball / Skewball is a noble ballad in form.
I like what Guthrie did with it -- replacing the "Indians" with "rustlers" and leaving the lady alive -- but then, without her death, we miss the important information that she had become his wife.