“I should run away from Trampas,” said the bishop.
“That ain't quite fair, seh. We all understand you have got to do the things you tell other folks to do. And you do them, seh. You never talk like anything but a man, and you never set yourself above others. You can saddle your own horses. And I saw yu' walk unarmed into that White River excitement when those two other parsons was a-foggin' and a-fannin' for their own safety. Damn scoundrels!”
The bishop instantly rebuked such language about brothers of his cloth, even though he disapproved both of them and their doctrines. “Every one may be an instrument of Providence,” he concluded.
“Well,” said the Virginian, “if that is so, then Providence makes use of instruments I'd not touch with a ten-foot pole. Now if you was me, seh, and not a bishop, would you run away from Trampas?”
“That's not quite fair, either!” exclaimed the bishop, with a smile. “Because you are asking me to take another man's convictions, and yet remain myself.”
“Yes, seh. I am. That's so. That don't get at it. I reckon you and I can't get at it.”
“If the Bible,” said the bishop, “which I believe to be God's word, was anything to you—”
“It is something to me, seh. I have found fine truths in it.”
“'Thou shalt not kill,'” quoted the bishop. “That is plain.”
The Virginian took his turn at smiling. “Mighty plain to me, seh. Make it plain to Trampas, and there'll be no killin'. We can't get at it that way.”