style="font-size:15px;"> She might have been reflecting upon a quite casual supposition for all her tone and manner betrayed. Just how wise Mother Tubbs was – just how far-seeing – no human soul could know. The old woman had seen much and learned much during her long journey through a very rough and wicked world.
“I tell you, Nell,” Mother Tubbs observed, “it’s all according to what’s in our hearts, I reckon. If what we done caused a party to die, and we had death in our heart when we done the thing that killed him, I reckon it would be a sin. No getting around that. For we can’t take God’s duties into our hands and punish even the wickedest man with death – like we’d crunch a black beetle under our bootsole. ‘Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.’” She repeated the phrase with reverence. “No, sin is sin. And because a party deserves to be killed, in our opinion, don’t excuse our killing him.”
Nell was quite still for a minute. Then she shrugged her shoulders.
“Humph!” she said briskly. “I don’t think much of your religion, Mother Tubbs. No, I don’t.”
Mother Tubbs began to croon:
It’s the old-style religion,
The old-style religion,
The old-style religion,
That gets you on your way.
’Twas good enough for Moses,
Good enough for Moses —
The old-style religion,
That gets you on your way.
“It ain’t no new-fangled religion, Nell. But it’s comforting – ”
“It wouldn’t comfort me none,” answered the girl. “I reckon it ain’t religion – and a sky pilot – that Canyon Pass needs after all. If we’d just run about fifty of these tramps out of town – and Boss Tolley and his gang – we could get along without psalm-singing and such flubdubbery.”
“You ain’t talking like you used to, Nell,” said the old woman, observing her curiously.
“I hadn’t thought so much about it. Religion is too soft. These roughnecks would ride right over a parson and – and that kind. Now, wouldn’t they?”
“Not altogether. I expect they’d try – at first. But if a man had enough grace in him, he’d stand up against ’em.”
“He’d better have backbone.”
“Same thing,” chuckled Mother Tubbs. “Same thing. It takes the grace of God to stiffen a man’s backbone – I tell you true. I hope this parson Mr. Joe Hurley talks about has got plenty of grace.”
“Who – what?” gasped the girl. “What parson?”
“Well, now! That is a gob o’ news. But I thought you must o’ heard it – over to Colorado Brown’s, or somewhere – the way you was talkin’. This parson is a friend of Mr. Joe Hurley, and he wants to get him out yere.”
“From the East?”
“Yeppy. Mr. Joe says he went to school with him. And he’s some preacher.”
“What do you think o’ that!” ejaculated Nell. “Mr. Hurley didn’t say anything to me about it the day we rode into the Pass together.”
“I reckon not. This has all been hatched up since then.”
“But, Mother Tubbs!” cried the girl. “You don’t expect any tenderfoot parson can come in here and make over Canyon Pass?”
“I reckon not. We folks have got to make ourselves over. But we need a leader – we need a Shower of the Way. We’ve lost our eyesight – the best of us – when it comes to seeing God’s ways. My soul! I couldn’t even raise a prayer in conference meeting no more. But I used to go reg’lar when I was a gal – played the melodeon – led the singin’ – and often got down on my knees in public and raised a prayer.”
“Humph!” scoffed the girl. “If God answered prayer, I bet you prayed over Sam enough to have cured him of getting drunk forty times over!”
“I don’t know – I don’t know,” returned Mother Tubbs thoughtfully. “I been thinking lately that, mebbe when I was praying to God to save Sam from his sins, I was cursing Sam for his meanness! I ain’t got as sweet a disposition as I might have, Nell.”
“Oh, yes you have, Mother Tubbs!” exclaimed Nell, and suddenly jumped up to kiss the old woman warmly. “You’re a dear, sweet old thing!”
“Well, now,” rejoined Mother Tubbs complacently, “I ought to purr like any old tabby-cat for that.”
CHAPTER V – HOW THE PASSONIANS TOOK IT
“Well,” observed Bill Judson oracularly, “it’s about time for something new to break in Canyon Pass. About once in so often even a dead-an’-alive camp like this yere has got to feel the bump of progress from the train behind. Otherwise we’d stay stalled till Gabriel’s trump.”
He spoke to Smithy, his single clerk at the Three Star Grocery. He had to speak to Smithy, or to the circumambient air, for nobody but the gangling clerk was within hearing. They lounged on the store porch in the middle of the afternoon, and the only other thing alive on the main street of Canyon Pass was a wandering burro browsing on the tufts of grass edging the shallow gutters.
“I don’t see as Canyon Pass has got to be bumped by a gospel sharp to wake it up,” complained Smithy, stretching his arms as though they were elastic. “Yahhoo! Well, he’ll have a sweet time here, Mr. Judson.”
“I dunno,” said the storekeeper reflectively. “For my part I feel like I favored it.”
“’Cause it’s something new?”
“’Cause it’s something needed. I ain’t one of those fellers that run after every new thing just because it is new. But I’m for progress. I want to see the Pass get ahead. Crescent City and Lamberton have both got churches and parsons.”
“And they’ve got railroads,” put in Smithy, making a good point. “Canyon Pass needs the railroad more’n it does a parson.”
“Son,” proclaimed Judson, “before Canyon Pass can get a railroad connection, mountains have got to be moved and the meanest stretch of desert that ever spawned lizards, sidewinders and cacti, and produce in their places about five hundred square mile of irrigated farmland to pay for spiking the rails to the sleepers. See?”
“Well, the farms might come,” declared Smithy defensively.
“Sure. So might Christmas come at Fourth o’ July. But we ain’t never celebrated the two holidays together yet. No, sir. To irrigate the edge of that desert even, a dam would have to be built across the southern outlet of the canyon, and that would back the water up yere in freshet season till the roof of my shack would be so deep under the surface that about all I could properly keep in stock would be perch and rainbow trout.
“They ain’t building branch railroads no more to mining camps like Canyon Pass. That’s why we all chipped in for the stamp mill and the cyanide plant. Nope. We’ll freight in our supplies with mules and communicate with the more effete centers of civilization by stagecoach for some time to come I reckon.
“That
