"Oh, I reckon ye could," said Parker easily; "ye got the whole place pretty reasonable."
The little man's bearded mouth twitched. When he spoke, his voice was high and strained.
"I'd jest as soon keep a saloon; I'd jest as soon sell wine to a man after it's made as before it's made." He wiped the moist inner band of his hat, and then dropped his handkerchief into it, and put it on his head. Parker could see his grimy hand tremble. "I didn't know what I was buyin'," he went on, picking up his axe, "but I'd know what I was sellin'."
Parker glanced at him as he fell to work. He was a crooked little man, and one shoulder was higher than the other; there was nothing aggressive in his manner. He had turned away as if he did not care to argue, did not care even for a response. Perhaps no man on earth had less ability to comprehend a timid soul lashed by conscience than Parker Lowe. "The hell!" he ejaculated under his breath. Then he sat still a moment, and drew a map of his claim, and the adjoining subdivision, on the ground between his feet. The affectionate way in which the Starkweather ranch line joined his own seemed suggestive.
"It 'pears to me," he broke out judicially, "that ye could argue this thing out better 'n ye do. Now, if I was in your place, 'pears to me I'd look at it this a-way. There's a heap o' churches in Ameriky, an', if I remember right, they mostly use wine for communion. I hain't purtook for some time myself, but I guess I've got it right. Now all the wine that could be made out o' them grapes o' yourn wouldn't s'ply half the churches in this country, not to mention Europe an' Asie, an' Afriky; an' as long as that's the case, I don't see as you're called on to know that your wine's used fer anything but religious purposes. Of course you can conjure up all sorts o' turrible things about gettin' drunk an' cavin' round, but that's what I call lettin' yer 'magination run away with ye."
"Your 'magination don't have to run a great ways to see men gettin' drunk," said Eben, with some relaxation of voice and manner. The absence of conviction which Parker's logic displayed seemed a relief to him. His fanaticism was personal, not polemical.
"What'd ye raise back in Ioway?" asked Parker, with seeming irrelevance.
"Corn."
"How'd ye reconcile that?"
"I didn't reconcile it; I couldn't. I sold out, an' come away."