It was shortly after ol’ Cast Steel had bought in the D lazy L brand, an’ we was still pickin’ up strays here an’ there. Whenever he bought up a brand he allus put the Diamond Dot on the stuff as soon as he could, his mark commandin’ more respect than some o’ the little fellers’. When I’d get tired o’ loafing about the home place, I’d take one o’ the boys an’ we’d start out to look for stray hosses. Spider Kelley was with me this time, an’ we had meandered here an’ there until we had picked up a big enough string to stand as an excuse for our trip, and were about minded to start back. We had just forded a little crick when we heard a man’s voice singin’ off to the right. The’ was a mess o’ cottonwoods between us, an’ we stopped to listen. Now I had never heard that voice before, an’ I had never seen the man who was running it; but right then I was ready to believe anything he had a mind to tell me. It was a deep, rich voice; but mellow an’ tender, an’ a feller could tell that he was singin’ simply because he couldn’t help it. Spider looked at me with his face shinin’, an’ I could feel a sort o’ pleasant heat in my own face. The’ was a lift an’ a swing, and a sort of rally-around-the-flag to this voice which got right into ya, an’ made you want to do something. “’T is thine to save from perils of perdition The souls for whom the Lord His life laid down; Beware, lest, slothful to fulfill thy mission, Thou lose one jewel that should deck His crown. Publish glad tidings; tidings of peace; Tidings of Jesus, redemption and release.” “That feller can sing some,” sez Spider Kelley; but just then the ponies turned back on us an’ by the time we had started ’em on again, the singer had passed on up the trail, so I didn’t make any reply. I was tryin’ to figure out whether it was the words or the tune or the voice, or what it was that had made my whole body vibrate like a fiddle string. As I said before, I see things in pictures an’ I also remember ’em in pictures: a sound generally calls up a picture to me an’ it ain’t allus a picture anyways connected with the sound itself. This song, for instance, had called to my mind a long procession of marchin’ men with banners wavin’ an’ set faces, shinin’ with a glad sort o’ recklessness. There ain’t no accountin’ for the human mind: I had never seen such a procession in real life, nor even in a picture; but that was what this song out there on the open range suggested to me, an’ I hurried out o’ the cottonwoods eager to measure the singer with my open eyes.