“Tain’t any such thing!” interrupted Grandma Brown.  “There you go again, after all these years!”

“If you’ve come here to preach old-fashioned fire and brimstone, Fowler,” said Charleton Falkner, “you might as well quit now.  None of us believe a word of it.  We most of us think everything ends when they plant us in the cemetery yonder, that is, if they put on enough rocks so the coyotes get discouraged.”

Douglas shivered.  “I wonder if that’s what I’ll believe when I get to thinking about such things,” he thought.  “Hanged if I’ll think of ’em till I’m old!”

“I’m with you, Charleton!” called Oscar Jefferson, rumpling his silvery hair with his soft white cowman’s hand.

The Reverend Mr. Fowler leaned over the desk.  “Charleton Falkner, aren’t you man enough to admit that you folks here in Lost Chief lead a wicked life?”

“How do you mean, wicked?” demanded Charleton.

“I mean that you steal cattle, that you shoot to kill, that there is indecency among your children, that your young girls go unguarded and that your young men are no better than wild horses.  I mean that your little girls drink whiskey.  And I defy you to show me two mothers in the valley who have taught their children to pray and to walk with God.”

“Aw!” sniffed Oscar Jefferson, “if that’s what you’ve come a hundred miles to tell us, you’d better quit!  That may do for foreigners and city slums, but it won’t go down with the Lost Chief cowman.  We’re Americans, here.”

“Americans!” cried Mr. Fowler.  “How much does that mean?”

Jefferson rose to his full six feet.  “By God, I’ll tell you what it means!  It means our ancestors conquered the Indians, in New England, that we fought the British in the Revolution and the rebels in the Civil War and the hombres in the Spanish-American War.  It means that fifty years ago the father or the grandfather of every man in this room came out here and fought the Indians and the wolves and the Mormons—­”

Charleton Falkner interrupted with his twisted smile that showed even, tobacco stained teeth.  “Jeff, this ain’t the Fourth of July celebration, you know!”

Jefferson somewhat sheepishly subsided to the desk on which he had been sitting.

“That’s exactly why I came back!” cried the preacher.  “I know that you and Lost Chief belong to the heroic early history of America.  This should be a valley of old Puritan ideals.  A church should stand here beside the school.  You never have built a church.  You never have allowed a minister to settle here.  You never—­”

Here Grandma Brown’s brother-in-law, Johnny Brown, spoke.  “I’ve deponed that many a time to this crowd of mavericks!  You’d ought to—­”

“Keep quiet, Johnny!” ordered Grandma.  “Fowler, if you are going to give us a regular Bible sermon, go ahead.  Otherwise, I’m going home.  I can jaw, myself.”

“Also, cuss some, Grandma,” suggested a slow voice.  Grandma did not heed.