When the news spread abroad 'at the man who had killed Bill Brophy
without a weapon had cashed in, the neighbors gathered from ninety
miles around, and we sure gave Monody the rip-snortin'est funeral ever
seen in those parts. We didn't say nothin' about him not really bein' a
man, an' though I reckon 'at every feller there knew of it, the' wasn't
a single one of 'em spoke of it--so we didn't have no trouble at all.
He lies on a little knoll about a mile to the north of the ranch house.
Up back of him ol' Mount Savage stands guard an' fights off the
roughest of the storms; while the soft winds from the south steal
gently up a little cut in the rocks an' seem to circle about him,
whisperin' secrets of countries far away. If the' 's a single bird in
Wyoming, you can find it hoppin' about his narrow bed or singin' in the
oak tree 'at stands above him, spreadin' out its branches like a priest
givin' the blessin'. Winter or summer, Monody's grave is the quietest,
peacefullest, purtiest spot 'at lies outdoors, as if the old Earth had
repented of the way it had treated him, and was tryin' to make it up to
him now.
Take it in winter when the' 's a clean sheet o' soft, white snow over
everything, an' I like to go out an' stand on another little knoll
about a half mile this side. The last speck of light in the valley
comes through a narrow cleft an' falls on Monody's grave. As the sun
sinks lower an' lower the crimson glory on the soft fleecy snow seems
to come up out of the grave an' climb the black shadow of the mountain,
like--but pshaw, I reckon it'd be a mighty tame sight to ol' Monody
himself.
I never speak of him, an' I never think of him, as anything but a man.
He lived like a man, God knows he died like a man; and on the little
stone at his head the' ain't nothin' carved except just--Monody, a Man.
CHAPTER SIX
THE RACE
It was mighty pleasant back at the Diamond Dot after things got settled
again. Barbie had become a curious little trick with a way of doin'
strange things in a sober old-fashioned manner like as if she was a
hundred years of age, but was tryin' to hide it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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