<TITLE>21. Par 69-71</TITLE>L-69 So he picked up his thirty-thirty and threw a shell up. If anybody knows what that means out in the desert. When they throw that thirty-thirty Winchester up, that means something is going to happen.
So, he pulled up the thirty-thirty like that, and he said, "Now look, Jack." Said, "Now, you--if you... If our venison is good enough for you to eat, then our whiskey is good enough for you to drink with us. If you're so goody-goody and don't want to drink our whiskey, well then," said, "you can pay. Let your bones bleach on this desert."
He said, "Wait just a minute, boys, before you do it." Said, "I appreciate your venison. I'll pay you."
"We don't want you to pay. We want you to have a drink and be sociable." You know how drunks are like that.
He said, "Boys, just a minute." Said, "I ain't going to drink, but before you pull that gun up" (when he was leveling it up) said, "I want to ask you something."
He said, "Here, you take this jug, and you take this drink, or I'll pull the trigger on this rifle."
He said, "Just a minute, before you pull the trigger, let me give you my testimony." He said, "I hailed from the old bluegrass country of Kentucky." He said, "Years ago," he said, "I stood in the corner one morning of a little old trundle bed. My daddy was gone. My mother was laying there and," said, "the morning light was stealing across the little old bare floor.

L-70 Same kind of place I was raised in myself. No--no boards on the floor, just the dirt. Our--our kitchen table was a stump with legs in it. And so then... Sawed off a block of wood and just stick up like that. That's what it--was our kitchen table. Some of us eat setting on the bed. The others eat setting in an old chair, built out of a board off the barn. And then there's...
He said, "There was a light stole across there." Said, "God was taking home the sweetest person in the world, my mother." And said, "Me a little bare-footed boy, running along there not knowing where I'd go." Said, "I started out the door, and she said, 'Jack, honey? Come here.'"
And said, "I run to see what she wanted." Said, "She put her arms around me." Said, "Her gray hair was streaking down her face." Said, "'Jack, you know your father died over here in a barroom with his boots on. He was--died a drunkard. And Jack, mother's a going.'"
And said, "'Here is the Bible laying here,'" said, "'promise me, Jack, that you'll never take a drink.'"
And said, "I kissed my dying mother on the brow." And said, "Her arms gripped me, and she held me until the breath left her body, when I had to pull my hands away from her side to walk back and fold them across her breast like this, as a dying mother."

L-71 Said, "And there, I have never drank my first drink from that time to this. Now, if you want to shoot, shoot." And said about that time a--a gun fired, and the jug bursted in the man's hand. And stepped out of the canyon, was a little bitty cowboy, tears rolling down his cheeks, his two big guns in his hands, said, "Hold still. Just a minute." Said, "You won't do any shooting?" Said, "No, sir."
He said, "I too, Jack, hailed from the old country over yonder, back there in the beautiful bluegrass country." Said, "My mother was a Christian woman with that old time religion." And said, "I promised her on her death bed that I wouldn't drink. But" said, "I'm sorry that I've broke that many times. But" said, "the big canyons of heaven heard my gun when it fired awhile ago. I sealed a pledge with God, I'll never drink another drop from this time to that. That reminds me of the old time religion that my mother had." Said, "I'll never drink it."
And there them men together converted that whole bunch of drunks to the Lord Jesus Christ.


<A HREF="P22">Next Page</A>