At one side of the wide, blasted out mouth of the deep crack in the
mountain from which Dick Winters had taken his gold, and level with
the bottom of the crevice, there was a long, oval hollow, half as wide
as a man's body. The solid rock had cracked out of it after some
giant-powder blast. They laid the body of Bill Frank in this shallow
crypt and began to pile rocks around it. Suddenly Tom stopped, looked
at Nick inquiringly, hesitated and cleared his throat.
"Say, Nick," he blurted out, "it ain't a square deal to put a fellow
away like this. Somebody ought to say something over him."
"No, you bet it ain't a square deal," said Nick. "We wouldn't like it
if it was one of us. But what can we do? There ain't no preacher
here."
"I was thinkin', Nick," Tom hesitated and blushed a deep crimson, "I
was sure thinkin' that maybe--well, I thought--that you-all could say
something. You know you always can say something. You-all better say
it, Nick." And without waiting for denial or protest Tom took off his
hat and bent his head. Nick flashed a surprised look at his companion,
waiting in reverent attitude, hesitated an instant, and then doffed
his hat, bent his head and began. And the good Lord who heard his
prayer did not need to ask his pedigree, for the Irish intonation
with which he rolled the words off his tongue in honey-like waves told
his ancestry:
"Good Lord, sure and Ye'll rest this poor man's soul, for he was white
clean through. Sure, and he was no coward, and no scrub, neither. But
the other two--Ye'd better let them fry in their own fat till they're
cracklin's. You bet, that is what they deserve, and we can prove it.
Amen."
They built a close wall of rock around Bill Frank's resting place high
enough to reach the over-hanging rock, and so heavy and secure that no
prowling coyote could reach the body, or even dislodge a single stone.
After it was all finished they decided that there ought to be
something about the grave to show whose bones rested within it. Nick
Ellhorn tore some blank paper from the bottom of a partly filled sheet
which he found in his pocket and wrote the inscription:
"Here lies the body of Bill Frank, who was white clean
through. He was done up by two of the damnedest scrubs that
ever died lying down. He killed them both before Tom Tuttle
and Nick Ellhorn got sight of the color of their hair, which
is the only thing we can't forgive him.
"P. S. and N. B.--This is the lost Dick Winters' mine, and
there is nothing in it, except Bill Frank's body."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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