The Mayor was sitting at his table receiving train orders, when suddenly a bullet smashed the telegraph key beside his hand and other balls whistled through the room bearing him a message he had no trouble in reading. Rushing out into the darkness, he spent the night in the brush, and toward morning boarded an east-bound freight train. Mayor Ewing had abdicated. The railway company soon obtained another station-agent, but it was some years before the town got another mayor.
On Pecos carnival nights like this, when some of the cowboys were in town, prudent people used to sleep on the floor of Van Slyke's store with bags of grain piled round their blankets two tiers deep, for no Pecos house walls were more than inch boards.
At this early period of its history the few wandering advance agents of the Gospel who occasionally visited Pecos were not well received. They were not abused; they were simply ignored. When not otherwise occupied, the average Pecosite had too much whittling on hand to find time to "'tend meetin'"; of this every pine drygoods box in the town bore mute evidence, its fair sides covered with innumerable rude carvings cut by aimless hands.
This prevailing indifference to religion shocked Mr. Allison. As opportunity offered he tried to remedy it, and as far as his evangelical work went it was successful. One Tuesday morning about ten o'clock he walked into the Lone Wolf Saloon, laid two pistols on the end of the bar next the front door, and remarked to Red Dick, the bartender, that he intended to turn the saloon into a church for a couple of hours and did not want any drinks sold or cards thrown during the services.
Taking his stand just within the doorway, pistol in hand, Mr. Allison began to assemble his congregation. The first comer was Billy Jansen, the leading merchant of the town. As he was passing the door Clay remarked:
"Good-mornin', Mr. Jansen, won't you please step inside? Religious services will be held here shortly an' I reckon you'll be useful in the choir."
The only reply to Billy's protest of urgent business was a gesture that made Billy think going to church would be the greatest pleasure he could have that morning.
Mr. Allison never played favorites at any game, and so all passers were stopped: merchants, railway men, gamblers, thugs, cowboys, freighters—all were stopped and made to enter the saloon. The least furtive movement to draw a gun or to approach the back door received prompt attention from the impromptu evangelist that quickly restored order in the congregation. When fifty or sixty men had been brought into this improvised fold, Mr. Allison closed the door and faced about.
"Fellers," he said, "this meetin' bein' held on the Pecos, I reckon we'll open her by singin' 'Shall We Gather at the River?' Of course we're already gathered, but the song sort o' fits. No gammon now, fellers; everybody sings that knows her."
The result was discouraging. Few in the audience knew any hymn, much less this one. Only three or four managed to hoarsely drawl through two verses.