I Urged Him To
Give Up The Whisky Which At Present Is His Ruin, And His Answer
Had The Ring Of A Sad Truth In It:
"I cannot, it binds me hand
and foot - I cannot give up the only pleasure I have." His ideas
of right are the queerest possible.
He says that he believes in
God, but what he knows or believes of God's law I know not. To
resent insult with your revolver, to revenge yourself on those
who have injured you, to be true to a comrade and share your last
crust with him, to be chivalrous to good women, to be generous
and hospitable, and at the last to die game - these are the
articles of his creed, and I suppose they are received by men of
his stamp. He hates Evans with a bitter hatred, and Evans
returns it, having undergone much provocation from Jim in his
moods of lawlessness and violence, and being not a little envious
of the fascination which his manners and conversation have for
the strangers who come up here.
On returning down the gulch the view was grander than I have ever
seen it, the gulch in dark shadow, the park below lying in
intense sunlight, with all the majestic canyons which sweep down
upon it in depths of infinite blue gloom, and above, the pearly
peaks, dazzling in purity and glorious in form, cleft the
turquoise blue of the sky. How shall I ever leave this "land
which is very far off"? How CAN I ever leave it?
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