Page:Owen Wister - The Virginian.djvu/243

Rh "One God and fifteen religions," was his reflection. "That's a right smart of religions for just one God."

This way of reducing it was, if obvious to him, so novel to me that my laugh evidently struck him as a louder and livelier comment than was required. He turned on me as if I had somehow perverted the spirit of his words.

"I ain't religious. I know that. But I ain't unreligious. And I know that too."

"So do I know it, my friend."

"Do you think there ought to be fifteen varieties of good people?" His voice, while it now had an edge that could cut anything it came against, was still not raised. "There ain't fifteen. There ain't two. There's one kind. And when I meet it, I respect it. It is not praying nor preaching that has ever caught me and made me ashamed of myself, but one or two people I have knowed that never said a superior word to me. They thought more o' me than I deserved, and that made me behave better than I naturally wanted to. Made me quit a girl onced in time for her not to lose her good name. And so that's one thing I have never done. And if ever I was to have a son or somebody I set store by, I would wish their lot to be to know one or two good folks mighty well—men or women—women preferred."

He had looked away again to the hills behind Sunk Creek ranch, to which our walking horses had now almost brought us.

"As for parsons—" the gesture of his arm was a disclaiming one—"I reckon some parsons have