Territory has a right. But I'll tell yu' this: a middlin'
doctor is a pore thing, and a middlin' lawyer is a pore thing; but keep
me from a middlin' man of God."

Once again he had reduced it, but I did not laugh this time. I thought
there should in truth be heavy damages for malpractice on human souls.
But the hot glow of his words, and the vision of his deepest inner man
it revealed, faded away abruptly.

"What do yu' make of the proposition yondeh?" As he pointed to the cause
of this question he had become again his daily, engaging, saturnine
self.

Then I saw over in a fenced meadow, to which we were now close, what he
was pleased to call "the proposition." Proposition in the West does, in
fact, mean whatever you at the moment please,--an offer to sell you a
mine, a cloud-burst, a glass of whiskey, a steamboat. This time it meant
a stranger clad in black, and of a clerical deportment which would in
that atmosphere and to a watchful eye be visible for a mile or two.

"I reckoned yu' hadn't noticed him," was the Virginian's reply to my
ejaculation. "Yes. He set me goin' on the subject a while back. I expect
he is another missionary to us pore cow-boys."

I seemed from a hundred yards to feel the stranger's forceful
personality. It was in his walk--I should better say stalk--as he
promenaded along the creek. His hands were behind his back, and there
was an air of waiting, of displeased waiting, in his movement.

"Yes, he'll be a missionary," said the Virginian, conclusively; and he
took to singing, or rather to whining, with his head tilted at an absurd
angle upward at the sky:

"'Dar is a big Car'lina nigger,
About de size of dis chile or p'raps a little bigger,
By de name of Jim Crow.
Dat what de white folks call him.
If ever I sees him I 'tends for to maul him,
Just to let de white folks see
Such an animos as he
Can't walk around the streets and scandalize me.'"

The lane which was conducting us to the group of ranch buildings now
turned a corner of the meadow, and the Virginian went on with his second
verse:

"'Great big fool, he hasn't any knowledge.
Gosh! how could he, when he's never been to scollege?
Neither has I.
But I'se come mighty nigh;
I peaked through de door as I went by.'"

He was beginning a third stanza, but stopped short; a horse had neighed
close behind us.

"Trampas," said he, without turning his head, "we are hom