Part 25 (1/2)

I'm convinced 'at the Friar's long suit lay in the fact 'at he allus preached at himself. Most preachers have already divided the sheep from the goats; and they allus herd off contented with the sheep on green pastures, and preach down at the goats on the barren rocks; but if the Friar made any division at all, he cla.s.sed himself in with the goats.

You see, in agreein' to help string Olaf should he be convicted, the Friar had bet his soul on the outcome; and this braced him up in that crowd as nothin' else would; for they knew that if he had lost, he'd have pulled harder on the rope 'n any one else.

It's child's play to put out a funeral talk over some old lady who has helped the neighbors for seventy or eighty years; but to preach the need of repentance to the livin', and then to smooth things out for 'em after they've died in their sins, in such a way as it will jolly up the survivors and give 'em nerve to carve cheerful tidings on the tombstone, is enough to make a discriminatin' man sweat his hair out.

The Friar stood with his hands clasped in front of him, and his eyes fixed sort o' dreamy-like on the distance. It was a perfect day, one o' those days 'at can't happen anywhere except in our mountains in the fall o' the year, and my mind drifted off to some lines the Friar was fond of rehearsin', ”Where every prospect pleases, an' only man is vile.” Then I saw a change come to the Friar's face, and he began to chant the one which begins: ”Lord, let me know mine end, and the number of my days.”

He chanted slow, and the words didn't mean much to us; but the solemn voice of him dragged across our hearts like a chain. One line of it has haunted me ever since. It seems to suggest a hundred thoughts which I can't quite lay my hand on, and every time I get sad or discouraged, it begins to boom inside me until I see 'at my lot ain't so much different from the rest; and I buck up and get back in the game again: ”For I am a stranger with Thee and a sojourner as all my fathers were.”

The Friar didn't preach us a long talk, and most of it circled about his favorite text, that a man's real children were those who inherited his character, rather than those who inherited his blood. Once he raised his finger and pointed it at us and sez: ”You were fond o' this boy; but did you love him for his good, or did you love him for your own selfishness? I knew him not save through the dark gla.s.s of reputation; yet after looking into his dead features, to-day, I think I know him well. Death tells, sometimes, what Life has hid away. I did not see in his face the hard, deep lines of stealthy sin; I saw the open face of a child, tired out after a day wasted in thoughtless and impulsive play; but comin' home at nightfall to have his small cares rubbed away by a lovin' hand-and then, to fall asleep.”

O' course, the Friar landed on us good and plenty; but this was the part of his talk which stuck to us after the scoldin' part was all forgotten. When he was through he said a short prayer, and sang in a low tone the one beginnin', ”One sweetly solemn thought.” His eyes were glistenin' through a mist when he finished this, and he climbed down from the ledge, hurried over to his pinto, and rode off without sayin' another word.

We all sat silent for quite a spell, and then Spider and I got up and nodded good day to 'em. The Cross-branders also got up and shook 'emselves, and started down with us-all except Olaf. He sat there on a stone with his fingers run into his hair, and his face hid in his hands. Olaf had had regular religion when he was a child; and it had come back to him up there on the ledge. They say it's worse 'n a relapse o' the typhoid fever when it hits ya that way. I know this much, Olaf was doubled up worse 'n if he'd had the colic; and from that time on, the Ty Jones outfit looked mighty worldly to him.

Even Spider Kelley was savin' of his nonsense until we got in sight of the Diamond Dot again.

CHAPTER TWENTY

QUARRELING FOR PEACE

We had a visitor once, which was a business man. One of his chief diversities was to compare sedentary occupations with what he called the joyous, carefree outdoor life. He said 'at sedentary came from sedan-chair, and meant to sit down at your work. I rode the range next spring until I felt more sedentary 'n an engineer; and sometimes at night it used to strain my intellect to split the difference between myself an' my saddle.

I got out o' humor an' depressed and downright gloomy. Fact is, I was on the point o' rollin' up my spare socks and givin' Jabez a chance to save my board money, when I heard a sound 'at jerked me up through the sc.u.m and gave me a glimpse o' the sky again. I was ridin' in about dusk, and I had hung back o' the dust the other fellers had kicked up, so I could be alone and enjoy my misery, when I heard this inspirin'

noise.

Ol' Tank Williams once tried to learn to play on a split clarinet a feller had give him, and at first I thought he had found where we had buried it, and had resumed his musical studies; but this outrage came from an instrument a feller has to be mighty cautious about buryin'.

It was a human voice, and these were the words it was screechin':

”Fair Hera caught her wayward spouse With a mortal maid one dawn.

Zeus charmed the maid into a cow, To save himself a jaw'n'.

This seemed to me a liber-tee To take with poor I-oh; But now I find that he was kind,- 'T was I who did not know.

For girls use slang and girls chew gum, And drape their forms in silk; While cows behave with de-co-rum, And furnish us with milk.”

Well, I gave a whoop and threw the spurs into my pony. This was the seventy-ninth verse of Horace's song, and it was his favorite, because it was founded on the Greek religion. I found him perched up behind a rock, and he kept on slammin' chunks of his song up again' the welkin until I shot some dirt loose above his head; and then he climbed down and reunioned with me.

He was lookin' fine, except that some of his waist products had come back, and we talked into each other until the air got too thin to breathe. Then we suppered up and began talkin' again. He had tried all sorts of gymnastical games back East, from playin' golf to ridin'

hossback in a park, but it didn't have the right tang. Folks thought he'd gone insane an' lost his mind, the air didn't taste right, he got particular about how his vittles were cooked; until finally, his endurance melted and began to run down the back of his neck. This decided him 'at he'd had full as much East as was good for him; so he loaded up a box with firearms, tossed some clothin' into a handbag, and he said his grin had been gettin' wider all the way out until it had hooked holes through the window lights on both sides o' the train.

We were all glad to see him, an' he dove into ranch life like a bullfrog into a cream jar; and he got toughened to a hard saddle in a mighty short time for a feller who had got used to upholstery back East. He said 'at the only thing 'at had kept life in him had been to sing his song constant; but he denied 'at this was his main excuse for fleein' from his own range.

He didn't seem to bear a mite o' malice for the joke I had put up on him; but still, I have to own up 'at he half pestered the life out of me with his song. He had what he called a tenor voice; but it was the dolefullest thing I ever heard, and the more he sang, the more his notes stuck to him until I coveted to hear a love-sick hound serenadin' the moon. When he saw it was riskin' his life to drag out any more o' the song, he would pause temptingly, and then begin a lecture on the Greek religion. He got me all mussed up in religion.

Of course, I knew 'at the Injuns had a lot o' sinful religious idees, and I was prepared to give the other heathens plenty o' room to swing in; but not even an Injun would 'a' stood for as immoral a lot as the Greek G.o.ds an' G.o.ddusses-especially the top one, which Horace called Zeus an' Jove an' Jupiter.

This one didn't have as much decency as a male goat, and yet he had unlimited power. He was allus enticin' some weak-minded human woman into a sc.r.a.pe; and when his wife, who was called Hera and Juno, would get onto his tricks, Zeus would snap his fingers, say ”Flip!” and charm the human woman into some sort of an animal. It was a handy scheme for him, true enough; and he didn't care a scene how embarra.s.sin' it was for the human women.

He turned one of 'em into a bear, and, like most other women, she was feared o' bears an' wolves an' snakes, an' the rest o' the company she was forced to a.s.sociate with. She led a perfectly rotten existence until her own son went bear huntin', and was just on the point of jabbin' a spear into her, when even Zeus himself admitted 'at this would be carryin' the joke a leetle too far; so he grabs 'em up and sticks 'em into the sky as a group o' stars.