A RANCHMAN'S RECOLLECTIONS 



In addition to my camp duties I occupied the exalted 

 job of justice of the peace. Now a J. P. in those days in 

 Montana was a bigger man than the Chief Justice of the 

 United States today. He had a perpetual variety entertain- 

 ment. He married people, buried the dead, put out fires, 

 took a drink with everybody, refereed dog, rooster and prize 

 fights, and settled family rows. In fact, he did everything 

 but stork work. He was called judge, but if he made a 

 wrong decision his name was Dennis. One cold morning a 

 bunch of gamblers waited on me, and said one of the girls 

 in the red-light district had died in the night. Her's was a 

 pitiful story. She was an educated, refined girl, who had 

 married a scoundrel, who in turn deserted her in a mining 

 camp, and the rest followed, even to the empty morphine 

 bottle clasped in her cold, dead hand. I don't want to 

 uphold the gambler, but you know the west, and that some 

 of the best men in it are or have been straight gamblers. I 

 have never been more touched than by the appeal of these 

 men. One of them said, "Judge, you know it wasn't her 

 fault; she just got her money on a dead card, and a crooked 

 dealer took it down. Help us give her a funeral just like 

 what she'd have at home, and, judge, we want you to say 

 a prayer." 



I shall never forget that gathering. The clean and the 

 unclean, the bad man and the good man all stood together 

 by that little grave in the frozen ground, and seemed to 

 huddle together as by some human impulse, caste forgotten. 

 A single white geranium had been pinned upon her breast 

 by some Christ-loving woman, and it seemed to say to all, 

 "Her sins shall be made white as snow." I choked on the 

 first few words, and then it seemed as though a voice in my 

 heart was speaking, and I heard it say: "Oh, God, here, amid 

 the rocks and the pines, with the awful stillness of the moun- 

 tains until the last day, we are laying away all that is mortal 



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