The Defiance of Gene Watkins. "Be I religious that a-way?" More to embark him on some current of conversation than from any gnawing eagerness to discover his creed, I had aimed the question at my Old Cattleman. "No," he continued, declining a proffered cigar, "I'll smoke my old pipe to-night. Be I religious? says you. Well, I ain't shorely livin' in what you'd call 'grace,' still I has my beliefs. Back in Tennessee my folks is Methodis', held to sprinklin' an' sech; however, for myse'f, I never banks none on them technicalities. It's deeds that counts with Omnipotence, same as with a vig'lance committee; an', whether a gent is sprinkled or dipped or is as averse to water as Huggins or Old Monte, won't settle whether he wins out a harp or a hot pitchfork in the eternal beyond. "No, I ain't a believer in that enthoosiastic sense that fights its way to the mourner's bench an' manifests itse'f with groans that daunts hoot-owls into silence. Thar don't appear many preachers out West in my day. Now an' then one of these yere divines, who's got strayed or drifted from his proper range, comes buttin' his way into Wolfville an' puts us up a sermon, or a talkee-talkee. In sech events we allers listens respcetful, an' when the contreebution box shows down, we stakes 'em on their windin' way; but it's all as much for the name of the camp as any belief in them ministrations doin' local good. Shore! these yere sky-scouts is all right at that. But Wolfville's a hard, practical outfit, what you might call a heap obdurate, an' it's goin' to take more than them fitful an' o'casional sermons I alloodes to, a hour long an' more'n three months apart on a av'rage, to reach the roots of its soul. When I looks back on Peets an' Enright, an' Boggs an' Tutt, an' Texas Thompson an' Moore, an' Cherokee, to say nothin' of Colonel Sterett, an' recalls their nacheral obstinacy, an' the cheerful conceit wherewith they adheres to their systems of existence, I realizes that them ordinary, every-day pulpit utterances of the sort that saves an' satisfies the East, would have about as much ser'ous effect on them cimmaron pards of mine as throwin' water on a drowned rat. Which they lives irreg'lar, an' they're doo to die irreg'lar, an' if they can't be admitted to the promised land irreg'lar, they're shore destined to pitch camp outside. An' inasmuch as I onderstands them aforetime comrades of mine, an' saveys an' esteems their ways, why, I reckons I'll string my game with theirs a whole lot, an' get in or get barred with Wolfville.