One great charm of the country, which Bruce, himself the son of an Edinburgh minister, and now Secretary of the Noble Seven, described as "letting a fellow do as he blanked pleased," would be gone.

None resented more bitterly than he the missionary's intrusion, which he declared to be an attempt "to reimpose upon their freedom the trammels of an antiquated and bigoted conventionality." But the rest of the Company, while not taking so decided a stand, were agreed that the establishment of a church institution was an objectionable and impertinent as well as unnecessary proceeding.
Of course, Hi Kendal and his friend Bronco Bill had no opinion one way or the other.

The Church could hardly affect them even remotely.

A dozen years' stay in Montana had proved with sufficient clearness to them that a church was a luxury of civilization the West might well do without.
Outside the Company of the Noble Seven there was only one whose opinion had value in Swan Creek, and that was the Old Timer.

The Company had sought to bring him in by making him an honorary member, but he refused to be drawn from his home far up among the hills, where he lived with his little girl Gwen and her old half-breed nurse, Ponka.