Meanwhile, the Virginian rode beside me, so silent in his volcanic wrath that I did not perceive it. The missionary coming on top of Trampas had been more than he could stand. But I did not know, and I spoke with innocent cheeriness.

“Is the parson going to save us?” I asked; and I fairly jumped at his voice: “Don’t talk so much!” he burst out. I had got the whole accumulation!

“Who’s been talking?” I in equal anger screeched back. “I’m not trying to save you. I didn’t take your rope.” And having poured this out, I whipped up my pony.

But he spurred his own alongside of me; and glancing at him, I saw that he was now convulsed with internal mirth. I therefore drew down to a walk, and he straightened into gravity.

“I’m right obliged to yu’,” he laid his hand in its buckskin gauntlet upon my horse’s mane as he spoke, “for bringing me back out o’ my nonsense. I’ll be as serene as a bird now--whatever they do. A man,” he stated reflectively, “any full-sized man, ought to own a big lot of temper. And like all his valuable possessions, he’d ought to keep it and not lose any.” This was his full apology. “As for salvation, I have got this far: somebody,” he swept an arm at the sunset and the mountains, “must have made all that, I know. But I know one more thing I would tell Him to His face: if I can’t do nothing long enough and good enough to earn eternal happiness, I can’t do nothing long enough and bad enough to be damned. I reckon He plays a square game with us if He plays at all, and I ain’t bothering my haid about other worlds.”

As we reached the stables, he had become the serene bird he promised, and was sentimentally continuing:

If words were meant to conceal our thoughts, melody is perhaps a still thicker veil for them. Whatever temper he had lost, he had certainly found again; but this all the more fitted him to deal with Trampas, when the dealing should begin. I had half a mind to speak to the Judge, only it seemed beyond a mere visitor’s business. Our missionary was at this moment himself speaking to Judge Henry at the door of the home ranch.

“I reckon he’s explaining he has been a-waiting.” The Virginian was throwing his saddle off as I loosened the cinches of mine. “And the Judge don’t look like he was hopelessly distressed.” I now surveyed the distant parley, and the Judge, from the wagonful of guests whom he had evidently been driving upon a day’s excursion, waved me a welcome, which I waved back. “He’s got Miss Molly Wood there!” I exclaimed.

“Yes.” The Virginian was brief about this fact. “I’ll look afteh your saddle. You go and get acquainted with the company.” This favor I accepted; it was the means he chose for saying he hoped, after our recent boiling over, that all was now more than right between us. So for the while I left him to his horses, and his corrals, and his Trampas, and his foreman, and his imminent problem.