"Don't try. Yes, Hannah and I have been here at Tolchaco a long time. We have had the fun of our lives here. She does about everything in the house from washing the dishes to converting the heathen. She works for nothing and throws in her time."
"And—and Miss Gray?"
"I thought maybe you might enquire about her, after awhile. Well, Miss Gray is one of the salt of the earth. She's a whole salt mine. She's not been here long, but she's got 'em all going,—Indians, cowboys, traders, gamblers, missionaries, teamsters, everybody. Everybody is in love with her. I've asked her to marry me several times, that is, I've only asked her to marry me once, several times, and I get the same answer every time. She's a graduate of Mt. Holyoke and used to be physical director of the girl's school at Peekskill. That's where she learned to swim and rescue people. She knows several languages and can talk Navajo better than Peshlekietsetti. And she is the friend of every Indian, Navajo or Hopi, between Sunshine and Castle Butte. And she is not proud a little bit. And cheerful? Well, she is just as cheerful every time she says no to me as if it was the first time. And she can sing—you've heard her Sunday nights. She can sing a rattlesnake out of its skin. Well, there is a lot more, but I consider that much a pretty good introduction. If I had one like it, I'd feel as if the press notices had the performance distanced a mile."
Bauer stared at Clifford, hardly knowing how to take all he said. The German mind was not acclimated to this special kind of humour. But Clifford was so absolutely frank, and happy, so free from any hint of heartbreak or trouble, that the more Bauer listened to him the more he liked him and the more fascinated he became with his peculiar surroundings. He had never known any real Christian people except the Douglas family, and the spectacle of the genuine self sacrifice, the bearing of daily discomfort and pain and wrong, with such cheerfulness and even hilarity, moved him with a feeling of astonishment.
Clifford's description of Miss Gray filled Bauer with wonder that a young woman of such character and attainments was willing to go to such a place and give her life to the seemingly impossible task of Christianising a lot of dirty, superstitious, lazy Indians. That was his definition of her task and of the people whom she had come to serve. But he had not yet learned even the first short lesson of the attractiveness of the missionary call. And he had not even a glimmer of the great fact that the history of missions in every age reveals the beautiful fact that some of earth's choicest spirits have considered missionary work as the most honourable and honouring work in the world, and that no grace or strength of mind or body is too great to pour it all out unstintedly on just such dirty, unattractive beings as Indians. Bauer was destined to begin by pitying a mistake which such a young woman as Miss Gray was making, and end by envying her the place which she had made for herself in the hearts of these neglected people.
He was silent during a period while Clifford was busy with some part of his harness demanding his attention, then Clifford said, after whistling a bar of "Anywhere with Jesus I can safely go":
"Any more of our folks you want ante mortem epitaphs of?"
"Mr. and Mrs. Masters. Of course I've not seen them. I've heard Mr. and Mrs. Douglas speak of them. It was through Mr. Douglas, you know, that I came out here."
"Yes, the Douglases are good friends of the mission. Mr. Douglas sends us two hundred dollars a year and sometimes as high as four hundred and twenty. Wish he'd come out here and bring his family. Hasn't he got a daughter by the name of Helen?"
"Yes," said Bauer. And try as hard as he would he could not conceal his embarrassment.