(An Old Ozark Tale)
Back in the 1920s, there lived an old recluse named Wally in a little log cabin on beautiful Star Mountain in the Missouri Ozarks. The cabin was in an isolated spot, the nearest neighbor being more than a mile away, which is just the way Wally preferred it. He shunned all human contact. But there was something in life that Wally loved; something that so impressed his distant neighbors that they would drive by the old man's place just to get an eyeful of pleasure.
The yard about Wally's' cabin was enclosed with a hand-hewn, split-rail fence; it was in that yard that he tenderly tended his great passion-growing wildflowers.
From spring until late autumn, Wally's yard was a jungle of flowers. Every color of the rainbow bloomed there, and every butterfly and hummingbird within a 25-mile radius flitted above those flowers in drunken delight. It was quite an amazing sight!
Folks in the area often said that all those flowers and plants were the wife and children the old bachelor never had.
"You know, he talks and sings to those flowers as he tends them. That's the reason they're so exceptionally large and beautiful," women would often be heard telling each other, as they sat around the old general store in town. And many a time, strangers overhearing them would ask for directions to the cabin on Star Mountain, so they could see for themselves. Then, driving by, they would gaze at the little old man in overalls and old straw hat, bending over the riots of color, humming a sweet tune to them.
But one midsummer night, tragedy struck at Star Mountain. Neighbors heard the shot but didn't think anything of it at first, figuring it was someone hunting squirrels or something.
However, three days later, as a couple drove by the cabin, the wife spotted a figure on the ground near the small pole barn on the property. So they drove in to have a closer look.
"Poor old man. Someone shot him right through the heart," the man said to his wife. "And look over there, the cabin door is open. The killer must have heard the rumor that Wally had money stashed away in there. We'd better head on home, and call the sheriff."
The wife nodded and wiped a tear from her eyes as she followed her husband.
'We'll call some of the other neighbors too, and arrange for a proper burial. I think he should be buried right here, among his flowers," she added. All the women folk of the area held a tender spot in their hearts for the old, flower-loving recluse.
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