“Thank you, Mr. Tubbs. I will go around and call on her.”
“Well, you can if you like. Miz Tubbs is pretty nigh big enough to be her own boss, and what I say don’t affect her no more than as though I shot my mouth off in the middle of Topaz Desert. That’s a fact. I hear you are a pretty decent feller, as parsons go; but I might as well tell you right now that I ain’t—and don’t ever mean to be—a convert.”
“I shall like you none the less for that, Mr. Tubbs,” said Hunt, smiling and offering his hand. “A man must always decide for himself, you know. I shall be glad to have you come to hear me preach; but you need not believe a word I say unless your own mind tells you I am right.”
“Huh!” grunted Sam, rather staggered. “That sounds fair. Mebbe I will come to hear you—sometime. If you last long enough.”
This opinion—that the parson would not last in his attempt to uplift Canyon Pass—seemed to be the view of the general run of Passonians.
He had a few very enthusiastic coworkers, however. He found one when he went to call upon Mother Tubbs.
“It’s been in my heart for many a long day, Brother Hunt,” the old woman said. “This here holding meetings, and the like. I said a long time back I’d give a pretty if a man of God would come in here and shake this camp like a snowslide in the mountains. We need to get a mighty bump. Youbetcha!
“Now the time’s come, I’m just as excited as a gal going to her first dance. I can’t make Sam enthuse none; and I’m disappointed in Nell, I do say. But I am going to do all I can myself to boost your job for you.”
“Thank you, Sister Tubbs,” said the young parson. “Is Miss Blossom here?”
“She’s upstairs a-dressin’. But I don’t reckon she’ll give you much but the rough side of her tongue. Lately, Nell seems to be bewitched. Think of her ridin’ her pony up and down the street the other day, shootin’ and cavortin’ like a drunken cow-puncher! She puts on these didoes jest for devilment. And she ain’t got a good word for you and your plans, Brother Hunt.”