hing I ever see. "Now you get out o' here an' ride home," sez I, "an'
I believe if I was you I'd pick myself out a new home--one 'at would
take about six weeks to ride to. You won't be popular around here from
this on."

"Can't I put my clothes on," he sez.

"Not these," sez I. "If you have any more where you've been livin' you
can put them on; but I hope in my heart the sun peels your back before
you arrive, an' I hope when you do arrive the' 'll be enough women
awake to give you a raw-hidin' for bein' indecent. Now git."

He looked into the boys' faces again, but they wasn't friendly--they
wasn't even smilin', an' then he went outside, got his pony, an' rode
away. He rode clear out o' the West I reckon, 'cause while I heard of
the story purty much everywhere I went after that, I ain't never heard
o' the buzzard himself since that day long, long ago.

It was dawn by the time he'd rode out o' sight with his white skin
shinin' on his hunched up form, an' then I went in to set with ol'
Monody a while.

CHAPTER FIVE

JUST MONODY--A MAN

He looked mighty peaceful, did ol' Monody. Curious thing about death,
is the way it seems to beautify a person. In life Monody was the
homeliest human I ever see, an' yet the' was something so kindly, an'
gentle, an'--an' satisfied in his face there under the lamplight, that
I reached out an' patted his hand, almost envious--even though my fool
eyes was a-winkin' mighty fast.

We all of us would give the first ten years of our life to know what
it's like out yonder; when he was here, ol' Monody would 'a' done
anything he could for me,--well, he lay down his life an' I reckon
that's about skinnin' the deck,--but here I was achin' to know how it
was with him, an' there he was with all his guesses answered, an' him
not able to pass back a single tip to me.

It wasn't him that I was lookin' down at, it was just the shell of him,
scarred and battered and bruised, but all his life--or at least most of
it--he had twisted up his face to make it as ugly as possible, so 'at
no one wouldn't take him for a woman. Now it could relax an' give a
sort of a hint as to what it might have been if he'd had a chance to
live. Oh, it's sure a crime the way we torture some o' the white souls
'at drift to this Sorrowful Star, as I once heard a feller call it.

Injun, Nigger, an' Greaser--why, such a combination as that ain't
entitled to trial in a civilized nation--it's guilty on sight. Any one