George shouted the words to him as if speeding them out to overtake his parting soul, and I like to remember that Laughing Jim’s eyes seemed to twitch and that he went out with a smile on his face.
Side by side we buried them there, close to where the babble of the Yukon might croon to them in the long summers, or display to the cold skies its beaten winter trails, Phil Mahoney, the thief, in his stolen shoes, and Laughing Jim, the strange admixture of evil and nobility. And over each, with equal forgiveness, we put a rude wooden cross, while curious, stolid natives stood quietly by. The sole distinction we made was that the cross above Jim was carefully hewn. But George lingered behind as we made our preparations to camp in the village for the night, and the next morning, still filled with the tragedy, I slipped back up the hillside for a last look at the graves. On that of Laughing Jim, who would laugh no more, lay a handful of dying wild flowers, and I saw scrawled on the cross, in the handwriting of Shakespeare George, these words:
Under here is Laughing Jim. Paid a little favor with his life,
And died with a laugh on his lips! Bad as he was, better’n
Most of us, and provin’ that sometimes even poets is wrong, and
That men don’t forget. Lord help us all to do as well.
And so we left him, and my eyes were fixed, as we rowed back up the river, and the village with its natives was lost to view, on the rough-hewn cross that seemed to blaze with a peculiar glory all its own, a shining standard for one honorably dead on the field of gratitude.
Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the December 1, 1913 issue of The Popular Magazine.