“What I can’t see is, why he didn’t write,” sez the Friar.
“He couldn’t write,” chirps up two punchers at once, an’ then they took the rope off Olaf’s neck.
They talked it over and decided that the best thing to do was to bury Bud Fisher right there in the cañon. The’ was a little cave on the ledge back o’ where we were standin’ so two o’ the punchers went down where they had him laid out under the slickers, an’ brought him up. We had to hoist him on ropes, an’ the Friar looked a long time into his face.
It was just a lad’s face: not bad nor hardened; just the face of a mischievous boy, weary after a day’s sport. We all took a look, an’ then put him in the little cave an’ heaped clods over him an’ piled stones on until the door was blocked shut again’ varmints.
The Friar sat down on a big rock—he had worked as hard as any of us—and sat thinkin’ with his chin in his hand. The Cross brand fellers muttered among themselves for a moment, an’ then one of ’em took off his hat, an’ sez, “Don’t ya think ya’d ought to speak somethin’ over him, parson?”
“Do you want me to?” asked the Friar. And they all nodded their heads.
So the Friar, he took off his battered hat and stood up before us an’ spoke a sermon, while we took off our hats, an’ sat around on stones to listen.
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 classed 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.