"'How comes yore father to have so many houses?' I says. 'Does he rent 'em?' "'No, sir,' the kid says, 'he lives in 'em. Don't you know him? He's the bishop!'" A roar of laughter followed this brutal innuendo, but Brigham was not set back. His mind had become accustomed to all such jests. "Aw, you're jealous," he grunted, and let the Gentiles rage until, as the talk ran on, he gradually assumed the lead. "That's one thing you'll never find around a Mormon town," he began, still speaking with philosophical calm; "you'll never find no Texican. Of course, a Mormon has to work, and that bars most of 'em at the start; but, I dunno, seems like the first settlers took a prejudice ag'inst 'em. I remember my old man tellin' how it come that way--course they must be mistaken, but the Mormons think a Texan ain't got no sense. "It seems the Mormons was the first folks to settle along the Heely, and my grandpaw was one of the leaders--he killed a lot of Injuns, believe me! But one day when he was gittin' kinder old and feeble-like, he got a notion in his head that he wanted a squirrel-skin, and so he called in my father and said: "'Son, you take yore rifle and go out and git me a gray squirrel; and be careful not to shoot 'im in the head, because I want the brains to tan the skin with.' "So my father he went up in the pines and hunted around; but the only squirrel he could find was stickin' his head over the limb, and rather than not git nothin' he shot him anyhow. Well, he brought him back to the old man and he said to 'im: "'I'm mighty sorry, Dad; the squirrels was awful scarce, and rather than not git any I had to shoot this one through the head.' "'Oh, that's all right,' the old man says. 'You got a nice skin anyway, and I reckon we can fix it somehow. I tell you what you do. They's a bunch of Texans camped down by the lower water--you go down and kill one of them, and mebbe we can use _his_ brains.'" Brigham paused and looked around with squinched-up, twinkling eyes; and at last Buck Buchanan broke the dramatic silence. "Well," he demanded roughly, "what's the joke?" "Well, sir," ran on Brig, "you wouldn't hardly believe it, but my old man had to kill six of them Texicans to git brains enough to tan that squirrel-skin! That's why they won't take 'em into the church." CHAPTER XVIII THE ROUGH-RIDERS Brigham Clark's squirrel-skin story was not calculated to build up the _entente cordial_ with Texas, but Brigham was no trimmer. The only kind of fighting he knew was to stand up and strike from the shoulder, and a few cracks about Mormon marital customs had not tended to lighten the blow. Numerically he was outnumbered by the Texans, but when it came to a contest of wits he did not need any help. He went off to bed now, laughing, and to all of Bowles' chidings he turned an unheeding ear.