All of the men chuckled except Jack.

"I'm appointed a committees," continued the old rancher, "to sit up with you till the fatal moment."

"I'm game," responded Jack grimly. "I know what's coming, but I won't squeal."

"You'll git all that's a-comin' to you," grinned Allen.

Slim had maneuvered until he reached the door blocking Jack's way. As the bridegroom started to leave the room he took his hand, and with an a.s.sumption of deep dejection and sorrow bade him "Good-bye."

"Oh, dry up!" laughed Jack, pushing the Sheriff aside. Halting, he requested: "One thing I want to understand right now, if you're goin'

to fling any old boots after me remove the spurs."

"This yere's a sure enough event, an' I'm goin' to tap the barrel--an'

throw away the bung. Wow!" shouted Sage-brush.

CHAPTER VIII

The Sky Pilot

With the waves of immigration which have rolled Westward from the more populous East, the minister of the gospel has always been in the van.

Often he combined the functions of the school-teacher with the duties of the medical missionary. Wherever a dozen families had settled within a radius of a hundred miles, the representative of a church was soon to follow. He preached no creed. His doctrines were as wide as the horizon. Living in the open air, preaching to congregations gathered from the ends of the country, dealing with men more unconventional than immoral, his sermons were concerned with the square deal rather than with dogma. His influences were incalculable. He made ready the field for the reapers who gathered the glory with the advance of refinement. On the frontier he married the children, buried the dead, consoled the mourners, and rejoiced with those upon whom fortune smiled. His hardships were many and his rewards nothing. Of all the fields of human endeavor which built up the West, the ministry is the only one in which the material returns have not been commensurate with the labor expended.

The Reverend Samuel Price was the representatives of the Christian army in Pinal County, Arizona, at the time of our story. He was long and lank, narrow in the chest, with sloping shoulders. Even life on the plains could not eradicate the scholarly droop. His trousers were black, and they bagged at the knees. When riding, his trousers would work up about his calves, showing a wide expanse of white socks. For comfort he wore an alpaca coat, which hung loosely about him, and, for the dignity of his profession, the only boiled shirt in the county, with a frayed collar and white string-tie.

The Reverend Mr. Price was liked by the settlers. He never interfered with what they considered their relaxations, and he had the saving grace of humor.

The guests were performing a scalp-dance about the table when he entered the room. For a tom-tom, Parenthesis was beating a bucket with a gourd, and emitting strange cries with each thump. The noise and shouts confused the minister. As he was blundering among the dancers, they fell upon him with war-whoops, slapping him on the back and crushing his straw hat over his ears.

Slim was the first to recognize the minister. He dashed into the group, and, swinging several aside, cried to the others to desist.

"Pardon me, but do I intrude upon a scalp-dance?" smilingly asked the parson.

"You sure have, Mr. Price," laughed Slim. "We hain't got to the scalpin'-part yet, but we're fixin' to dance off Payson's scalp to-night."

Peering at him with near-sighted eyes, Mr. Price extended his hand, saying: "Ah, Mr. Hoover, our sheriff, is it not?"

Slim wrung the parson's hand until the preacher winced. Hiding his discomfort, he slowly straightened out his fingers with a painful grin.

Slim had not noticed that he had hurt the parson by the heartiness of his greeting. With a gesture he lined up the cowboys for introduction.

"Yes, sir, the boys call me Slim because I ain't." Pointing to the first one in the group, he exclaimed: "This is Parenthesis."

Mr. Price looked at the awkwardly bowing cowboy in amazement. The name was a puzzle to him. He could not grasp the application. "The editor of the Kicker," explained Slim, "called him that because of his legs bein' built that way." Mr. Price was forced to smile in spite of his efforts to be polite. The editor had grasped the most striking feature of the puncher's physical characteristics for a label.

Parenthesis beamed on the minister. "I was born on horseback," he replied.

"That fellow there with a front tooth is Show Low," began Slim, speaking like a lecturer in a freak-show. "The one without a front tooth is Fresno, a California product. This yere chap with the water-dob hair is Sage-brush Charley. It makes him sore when you call him plain Charley."

"Charley bein' a c.h.i.n.k name," supplemented its owner.

Silence fell over the group, for they did not know what was the proper thing to do next. A minister was to be respected, and not to be made one of them. He must take the lead in the conversation. Mr. Price was at a loss how to begin. He had not recovered fully from the roughness of his welcome, so Slim took the lead again.

"I heard you preach once up to Florence," he announced, to the profound astonishment of his hearers.

"Indeed," politely responded Mr. Price, feeling the futility of making any further observations. He feared to fall into some trap. The answers made by the boys did not seem to fit particularly well with what he expected and was accustomed to. The parson could not make out whether the boys were joking with him, or whether their replies were unconscious humor on their part.

"Yep, I lost an election bet, and had to go to church," answered Slim, in all seriousness.

The cowboys laughed, and Mr. Price lamely replied: "Oh, yes, I see."

"It was a good show," continued Slim, doing his best to appear at ease.

The frantic corrections of his companions only made him flounder about the more.

"Excuse me," he apologized, "I mean that I enjoyed it."

"Do you recall the subject of my discourse," inquired Mr. Price, coming to his a.s.sistance.

"Your what course?" asked Slim.

"My sermon?" answered the parson.

"Well, I should say yes," replied the Sheriff, greatly relieved to think that he was once more out of deep water. "It was about some shorthorn that jumped the home corral to maverick around loose in the alfalfa with a bunch of wild ones."

The explanation was too much for Mr. Price. Great student of the Bible as he had been, here was one lesson which he had not studied. As told by Slim, he could not recall any text or series of text from which he might have drawn similes fitted for his cowboy congregation, when he had one. "Really, I--" he began.

Slim, however, was not to be interrupted. If he stopped he never could begin again, he felt. Waving to the preacher to be silent, he continued his description: "When his wad was gone the bunch threw him down, and he had to hike for the sage-brush an' feed with the hogs on husks an' sech like winter fodder."

The minister caught the word "husks." Slim was repeating his own version of the parable of the Prodigal Son.

"Husks? Oh, the Prodigal Son," smiled Price.

"That's him," Slim sighed, with relief. "This yere feed not being up to grade, Prod he 'lows he'd pull his freight back home, square himself with the old man and start a new deal--"

Sage-brush was deeply interested in the story. Its charm had attracted him as it had scholars and outcasts alike since first told two thousand years ago on the plains of Old Judea.

"Did he stand for it?" he interrupted.

"He sure did," eloquently replied Slim, who was surprised and delighted with the great impression he was making with his experience at church.

"Oh, he was a game old buck, he was. Why, the minute he sighted that there prodigious son a-limpin' across the mesa, he ran right out an'

fell on his neck--"

"An' broke it," cried Fresno, slapping Sage-brush with his hat in his delight at getting at the climax of the story before Slim reached it.

The narrator cast a glance of supreme disgust at the laughing puncher.

"No, what the h.e.l.l!" he shouted. "He hugged him. Then he called in the neighbors, barbecued a yearlin' calf, an' give a barn-dance, with fireworks in the evenin'."

"That's all right in books," observed Sage-brush, "but if I'd made a break like that when I was a kid my old man would a fell on my neck for fair."