It has made successful politicians of

It was a potent drug, I said, for millions to be swallowing every day. "Yes," said he, wiping the damp from his Winchester rifle. Our American climate, I said, had worked remarkable changes, at least. "Yes," he said; and did not ask what they were. So I had to tell him. "It has made successful politicians of the Irish. That's one. And it has given our whole race the habit of poker." Bang went his Winchester. The bullet struck close to my left. I sat up angrily. "That's the first foolish thing I ever saw you do!" I said. "Yes," he drawled slowly, "I'd ought to have done it sooner. He was pretty near lively again." And then he picked up a rattlesnake six feet behind me. It had been numbed by the hail, part revived by the sun, and he had shot its head off. Chapter 18 ＂Would You Be A Parson?＂ After this I gave up my experiments in conversation. So that by the final afternoon of our journey, with Sunk Creek actually in sight, and the great grasshoppers slatting their dry song over the sage-brush, and the time at hand when the Virginian and Trampas would be "man to man," my thoughts rose to a considerable pitch of speculation. And now that talking part of the Virginian, which had been nine days asleep, gave its first yawn and stretch of waking. Without preface, he suddenly asked me, "Would you be a parson?" I was mentally so far away that I couldn't get back in time to comprehend or answer before he had repeated: "What would yu' take to be a parson?" He drawled it out in his gentle way, precisely as if no nine days stood between it and our last real intercourse. "Take?" I was still vaguely moving in my distance. "How?" His next question brought me home.