It is sad to have to admit that only two or three hands were raised.
"Well, I'll be durned," the evangelist continued, "you air tough cases. That's what's the matter with you; you are shy on faith. You fellers has got to be saved, an' to be saved you got to believe, an' believe hard, an' I'm agoin' to make you. Now hear me, an' mind you don' forget it's Clay Allison talkin' to you: I tells you that when that thar fish had done swallerin' Jonah, he swum aroun' fer a hull hour lookin' to see if thar was a show to pick up any o' Jonah's family or friends. Now what I tells you I reckon you're all bound to believe. Every feller that believes that Jonah was jes' only a sort of a snack fer the fish, hold up his right hand; an' if any feller don' believe it, this yere ol' gun o' mine will finish the argiment."
Further exhortation was unnecessary; all hands went up.
And so the sermon ran on for an hour, a crude homily full of rude metaphor, with little of sentiment or pleading, severely didactic, mandatory as if spoken in a dungeon of the Inquisition. When Red Dick passed the hat among the congregation for a subscription to build a church, the contribution was general and generous. Many who early in the meeting were full of rage over the restraint, and vowing to themselves to kill Allison the first good chance they got, finished by thinking he meant all right and had taken about the only practicable means "to git the boys to 'tend meetin'."
In the town of Toyah, twenty miles west of Pecos, a gentleman named Jep Clayton set the local spring styles in six-shooters and bowie knives, and settled the hash of anybody who ventured to question them. A reckless bully, he ruled the town as if he owned it.
One day John McCullough, Allison's brother-in-law and ranch foreman, had business in Toyah. Clayton had heard of Allison but knew little about him. Drunk and quarrelsome, he hunted up McCullough, called him every abusive name he could think of before a crowd, and then suggested that if he did not like it he might send over his brother-in-law Allison, who was said to be a gun fighter. A mild and peaceable man himself, McCullough avoided a difficulty and returned to Pecos.
Two days later a lone horseman rode into Toyah, stopped at Youngbloods' store, tied his horse, and went in. Approaching the group of loafers curled up on boxes at the rear of the store, he inquired:
"Can any of you gentlemen tell me if a gentleman named Clayton, Jep
Clayton, is in town, an' where I can find him?"
They replied that he had been in the store an hour before and was probably near by.
As the lone horseman walked out of the door, one the loungers remarked: