From his fence the divine now spoke, in approbation, but with another strong, cheerless smile. “You pick up that rope as if you were well trained to it.” “It’s part of our business, seh, and we try to mind it like the rest.” But this, stated in a gentle drawl, did not pierce the missionary’s armor; his superiority was very thick. We now rode on, and I was impressed by the reverend gentleman’s robust, dictatorial back as he proceeded by a short cut through the meadow to the ranch. You could take him for nothing but a vigorous, sincere, dominating man, full of the highest purpose. But whatever his creed, I already doubted if he were the right one to sow it and make it grow in these new, wild fields. He seemed more the sort of gardener to keep old walks and vines pruned in their antique rigidity. I admired him for coming all this way with his clean, short, gray whiskers and his black, well-brushed suit. And he made me think of a powerful locomotive stuck puffing on a grade. Meanwhile, the Virginian rode beside me, so silent in his volcanic wrath that I did not perceive it. The missionary coming on top of Trampas had been more than he could stand. But I did not know, and I spoke with innocent cheeriness. “Is the parson going to save us?” I asked; and I fairly jumped at his voice: “Don’t talk so much!” he burst out. I had got the whole accumulation! “Who’s been talking?” I in equal anger screeched back. “I’m not trying to save you. I didn’t take your rope.” And having poured this out, I whipped up my pony. But he spurred his own alongside of me; and glancing at him, I saw that he was now convulsed with internal mirth. I therefore drew down to a walk, and he straightened into gravity. “I’m right obliged to yu’,” he laid his hand in its buckskin gauntlet upon my horse’s mane as he spoke, “for bringing me back out o’ my nonsense. I’ll be as serene as a bird now--whatever they do. A man,” he stated reflectively, “any full-sized man, ought to own a big lot of temper. And like all his valuable possessions, he’d ought to keep it and not lose any.” This was his full apology. “As for salvation, I have got this far: somebody,” he swept an arm at the sunset and the mountains, “must have made all that, I know. But I know one more thing I would tell Him to His face: if I can’t do nothing long enough and good enough to earn eternal happiness, I can’t do nothing long enough and bad enough to be damned. I reckon He plays a square game with us if He plays at all, and I ain’t bothering my haid about other worlds.” As we reached the stables, he had become the serene bird he promised, and was sentimentally continuing: “‘De sun is made of mud from de bottom of de river; De moon is made o’ fox-fire, as you might disciver; De stars like de ladies’ eyes, All round de world dey flies, To give a little light when de moon don’t rise.’”