“As a man—a reg’lar he-man—I’m for him, too,” agreed another. “But I’m thinkin’ we can get along yere at Canyon Pass without much psalm-singing and preaching.”
“Yeppy. You’re right,” declared a third of Judson’s hearers.
“Let alone that you’re all wrong,” put in Judson again with energy, “let’s look at the thing in a practical way, as the feller said. If a man come in yere and opened a shoe shop or a candy pop or wanted to sell shoestrings, we’d give him the glad hand, wouldn’t we? ‘Live and let live,’ has always been the motto of Canyon Pass, ain’t it?”
“What’s that got to do with it, Bill?”
“Why, you big gump! Ain’t this parson got something to peddle? His stock in trade is religion, and he’s got just as much right to show goods and try to drum up trade as the next one, ain’t he? He’s entitled to a fair deal. And Boss Tolley, Tom Hicks, and them other highbinders can sulk in their dens and suck their paws. I ain’t never gone ironed since I opened this shack, nigh thirty years ago. But I’ll sling a gun on my hip and act as bodyguard if it’s necessary for any feller that ain’t getting a fair deal in this town. That’s gospel!”
“I never knowed ye was so all-fired religious, Bill,” complained one of his surprised hearers.
“Religious!” retorted the storekeeper. “It ain’t that I’m religious—not so’s you’d notice it. But I got a sense of fair play,—dad burn it! Here comes the parson now, boys.”
Hunt and Joe Hurley came out of the Wild Rose Hotel. The minister had not donned his clerical garments. He was dressed as he had been the day before when he arrived on the stagecoach, except for the hat he wore. That flopping-brimmed headgear which he had taken from Tom Hicks crowned the parson’s brush of crisp, dark hair.
“Boys,” said Hurley, when they came near, “meet Willie Hunt. He’s one of the best old scouts I met when I was East, that time I stood that college on its head, like I told you. I reckon you know Willie is a real man, if he is a parson. Mr. Hunt, meet Jib Collins, Cale Mack, Jim Tierney, and—last but not least—Bill Judson, who is the honored mentor of this camp.”
“Whatever that is,” and the storekeeper grinned, shaking hands in turn with Hunt. “This yere Joe Hurley slings language at times that sartainly stops traffic. He can’t seem to get over it. It was wished on him when he lived East that time he is always telling us about.”