Santa Fé just give a wink across the bar to Blister Mike--who didn't need much winking, being a wide-awake one--and then he went ahead with some more of the same kind. "No doubt, my dear sir, in the older civilization to which you are accustomed my methods would seem irregular--perhaps even reprehensible. In England, very likely, unfavorable comment would be made upon a pastor who cordially drank with members of his flock at public bars; who also--I do not hesitate, you see, to give our little games of chance their harshest name--in a friendly way gambled with them; and I can imagine that the spectacle of a parish priest engaging with his parishioners, up and down the street of a quiet village, in a fight with six-shooters and Winchesters would be very generally disapproved." "It is impossible, quite impossible," says the little man, sort of gaspy, "to imagine such a horrible monstrosity!" "Very likely for you, sir," says Charley, speaking affable, "it is. But you must remember that ours is a young and a vigorous community--too young, too vigorous, to be cramped and trammelled by obsolete conventions and narrow Old-World rules. Life with us, you see, has an uncertain suddenness--owing to our energetic habit of settling our little differences promptly, and in a decisive way. At the last meeting of our Sunshine Club, for instance--as the result of a short but heated argument--Brother Michael, here, felt called upon to shoot a fellow-member. While recognizing that the occurrence was unavoidable, we regretted it keenly--Brother Michael most of all." "Sure I did that," said Blister, playing out quick to the lead Charley give him. "But your Reverence remembers he drew on me first--and if he'd been sober enough to shoot straight it's meself, and not him, would be by now living out in the cemetery on the mesa; and another'd be serving your drinks to you across this bar. I had the rights on my side." "Precisely," says Charley. "You see, sir, it was a perfectly fair fight. Brother Michael and his fellow-member exchanged their shots in an honorable manner--and, while we mourn the sudden decease of our friend lost to us, our friend who survives has suffered no diminution of our affectionate regard. Had the shooting been unfair, then the case would have gone into another category--and our community promptly would have manifested the sturdy sense of justice that is inherent in it by hanging the man by whom the unfair shot had been fired. Believe me, sir"--and Santa Fé stood up straight and stuck his chest out--"Palomitas has its own high standards of morality: and it never fails to maintain those standards in its own stern way!"