One night the meeting place was deserted. Everybody was at the revival meeting. Taking his pal with him, Hammer went to have some fun. They sat on the back seat and made flippant remarks about the meeting, but confessed to each other that they liked the preacher’s singing. The next night found them on that same back seat. A change came to young Hammer in this meeting and he altered his manner of life. He joined the church and took charge of the Sunday-school. He was later given a preacher’s license. Then he began to want an education that he might work for his Master more acceptably. He attended school and college and went back to the range to ride and to serve as a shepherd of people, instead of as a cowboy. His life exemplifies the ideal missionary to the Indians. In Brother Van’s new district were the famous great falls of the Missouri, which Lewis and Clarke had heard roaring in the distance as they pushed across the plains. Perplexed as to the cause of the strange sound that rolled to them over the lifeless prairies, they traveled seven miles before they reached the spot where the great river takes its tremendous plunge. The magnitude of the falls astonished them beyond measure. The largest falls were given separate names later and became known as Great Falls, Rainbow Falls, and Crooked Falls. It is claimed by local residents that the water in Crooked Falls runs in every direction, even upstream. Great power-plants are built along the river at this point, and they produce power second only to Niagara. When Brother Van reached the settlement of Great Falls on his first visit, it was nothing but a great undeveloped possibility. “Here we must have a church,” said this apostle of first things. An ambitious, far-seeing group of men constituting the Townsite Company was interviewed. They gave several lots to the enthusiastic dreamer of a greater day for Montana. With the assured membership of two devoted souls and the gift of land, a church was started. Is this record of “first things” beginning to make you dizzy? Does the recounting make you weary? But suppose you were the missionary! Through heat and cold, through drought and rain, over green prairie and bleak desert, you would have to travel. You would have met plainsmen and Indians, friends and foes. You would have endured hunger and thirst. You would have rested under the stars on the open prairie and in the rude shelter afforded by the ranchmen’s bunks. You would have been obliged to be the leader in the building of first churches and first parsonages. All this costs energy and vitality, as Brother Van, seemingly tireless though he was, once discovered. Illustration: BROTHER VAN WAS “HAIL FELLOW WELL MET” WITH THE PEOPLE