Page:Patches (1928).pdf/212

 We all loved old Bill and want to say jest a few words for him. We are all hoping and praying, Lord that You won't be too hard on Bill for You know that we are all miserable sinners. There ain't no hiding our hearts from. Thee for any time You want, You can jest take off the civer of our lives and peek inside. But Bill was a good sort and we loved him and his heart was as big as a teakettle.

"He might be kind of rough sometimes because he was so big and strong, especially if he thought a fellow was doing him, but with children he was as gentle as a woman and he always reverenced women.

"He was so generous if a fellow was down on his luck he would stick his big hand down in his pocket and give him his last dollar. We all loved him, Lord, and we are hoping and praying that You got some peaceful place for him on the heavenly range where he'll have a good horse to ride and the easy steers to rope."

Then the little cabinet organ struck up the familiar cow-puncher hymn, Rounded Up In Glory, and the Crooked Creek cow-punchers sang it just as Larry had heard them that first night in the ranch house so many months before: