ls you 's bound to be right, dead right, so I
think I'll take the sentiment o' this yere round-up on believin'. O'
course, as a square man I'm boun' to admit the Bible tells some pow'ful
queer tales, onlike anythin' we-'uns strikes now days. Take that tale
about a fish swallerin' a feller named Jonah; why, a fish 't could
swaller a man 'od have to be as big in the barrel as the Pecos River is
wide an' have an openin' in his face bigger'n Phantom Lake Cave.
Nobody on the Pecos ever see such a fish. But I wish you fellers to
distinctly understan' it's a _fact_. I believes it. Does you? Every
feller that believes a fish swallered Jonah, hold up his right hand!"

It is sad to have to admit that only two or three hands were raised.

"Well, I'll be durned," the evangelist continued, "you _air_ tough
cases. That's what's the matter with you; you are shy on faith. You
fellers has got to be saved, an' to be saved you got to believe, an'
believe hard, an' I'm agoin' to make you. Now hear _me_, an' mind you
don' forget it's Clay Allison talkin' to you: I tells you that when
that thar fish had done swallerin' Jonah, he swum aroun' fer a hull
hour lookin' to see if thar was a show to pick up any o' Jonah's family
or friends. Now what I tells you I reckon you're all bound to believe.
Every feller that believes that Jonah was jes' only a sort of a snack
fer the fish, hold up his right hand; an' if any feller don' believe
it, this yere ol' gun o' mine will finish the argiment."

Further exhortation was unnecessary; all hands went up.

And so the sermon ran on for an hour, a crude homily full of rude
metaphor, with little of sentiment or pleading, severely didactic,
mandatory as if spoken in a dungeon of the Inquisition. When Red Dick
passed the hat among the congregation for a subscription to build a
church, the contribution was general and generous. Many who early in
the meeting were full of rage over the restraint, and vowing to
themselves to kill Allison the first good chance they got, finished by
thinking he meant all right and had taken about the only practicable
means "to git the boys to 'tend meetin'."

In the town of Toyah, twenty miles west of Pecos, a gentleman named Jep
Clayton set the local spring styles in six-shooters and bowie knives,
and settled the hash of anybody who ventured to question them. A
reckless bully, he ruled the town as if he owned it.

One day John McCullough, Allison's brother-in-law an