When the bull whacker got to the top of the hill, Brother Van asked him what was the idea of giving those cattle such religious names. The man said, “It’s appropriate. For instance, there is old Methodist—when I unyoke him he walks out a little distance and paws on the ground, gets down on his knees and balls and bellers just like a Methodist preacher. Then there is that old steer I call Baptist. If there’s a water hole anywhere, he will find it and get into it and throw water all over himself—and old Bishop there, he leads all the other steers.” He had a religious name appropriate for each steer. Brother Van got a kick out of that. Brother Van was a very devout Methodist and one time he and Charlie were discussing religion, Charlie said he didn’t believe in so many branches of religion and said he thought the people should have a general roundup and make them all one. Brother Van said, “That’s a fine idea, Charlie, and make it Methodist.” One time at Malta, Montana, when we were shipping cattle, a cowboy got killed. He was riding a young horse and the train came by and this horse got scared and run away with this boy. It ran into a wire fence and hit the wires just high enough on his legs to cause him to turn a somersault and land squarely on top of the boy and broke his neck. Brother Van preached a sermon over that boy’s body. When I look back at it now, it seems to me the boy’s body was laid out in an old store and I think there were about twenty cowboys with their chaps and spurs on and the old time cowboy was a rather queer kind of a mixture of human nature. Sometimes he drank whiskey to celebrate and have a good time; other times he drank when he was blue. I guess to try to raise his spirits. Anyway, this morning quite a number of them had taken on quite a load of the old joy juice. When the sermon started, Brother Van preached a very forceful sermon and the tears rolled down his old cheeks like rain drops and in looking around after that sermon was over there were very few dry faces among that tough old bunch of waddies and they were all as sober as if they never had a drink. Speaking of batching, some people of this day may not know what it means. But for us cowboys it meant this: four or five of us would get together in the fall of the year and get a cabin in some little town, buy some groceries and go into winter quarters, and everybody cooked according to his liking and if anybody didn’t like the way one fellow cooked he could cook to suit himself.