Read Ebook: The Preacher of Cedar Mountain: A Tale of the Open Country by Seton Ernest Thompson Rowe Clarence H Clarence Herbert Illustrator

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Ebook has 1616 lines and 93486 words, and 33 pages

The evening meal was spread by Mrs. Jebb herself, for their meagre stipend did not admit of a helper; and Jim, with his hearty, rollicking ways, soon won his accustomed place, a high place in their hearts. That night he was invited to stay with them; but it was understood that next day he would find permanent lodgings in the town. Not a complex task, since, to quote Mrs. Jebb, "his hat covered his family, and three hundred a year simplified the number of rooms."

Jim rose at six in the morning, lighted a fire in the kitchen stove--for this is etiquette in the simple regions where servants are not and the guest is as a son--and put on a full kettle of water. This also is etiquette; it assumes that the family will not be up for some time. Had it been near the breakfast hour, but half a kettle would have been correct. Then he left the house, stick in hand, for a long walk. This time he struck out in the direction of the open plains. The flimsy little town was soon behind him, and the winding trail among the sagebrush, went reaching out to the east. The pine woods of his native country were not well stocked with life; the feathered folk were inconspicuous there; but here it seemed that every bush and branch was alive with singing birds. The vesper sparrows ran before his feet, flashed their white tail feathers in a little flight ahead, or from the top of a stone or a buffalo skull they rippled out their story of the spring. The buffalo birds in black and white hung poised in the air to tell their tale, their brown mates in the grass applauding with a rapt attention. The flickers paused in harrying prairie anthills and chuckling fled to the nearest sheltering trees. Prairie dogs barked from their tiny craters; gophers chirruped or turned themselves into peg-like watchtowers to observe the striding stranger.

But over all, the loud sweet prairie lark sang his warbling yodel-song of the sun with a power and melody that no bird anywhere, in any land, can equal. It seemed to Jim the very spirit of these level lands, the embodiment of the awakening plains and wind, the moving voice of all the West. And all about, as though responsive, the flowers of spring came forth: purple avens in straggling patches; golden yellow bloom, with blots and streaks of fluffy white; while here and there, as far as eye could reach, was the blue-white tinge of the crocus flower, the queen of the springtime flowers, the child of the sky and the snow.

At the seven o'clock whistle of a mill he wheeled about toward the town, and saw there, almost overhanging it, the mountain, bright in the morning, streaked with white, lifting a rugged head through the gray-green poncho of its cedar robe, a wondrous pile capped by the one lone tower that watched, forever watched, above the vast expanse of plains.

Jim was nearly back to the town when a horse and rig appeared coming rapidly toward him. He heard a shout and saw a man run from a house to look. The horse was going very fast and shaking his head; something was wrong. As it came toward him he saw that the driver was a young girl. She was holding with all her strength to the reins, but the horse, a tall, rawboned creature, was past control. Horses Jim surely understood. He stepped well aside, then wheeling as the runaway went past, he ran his best. For a little while a swift man can run with a horse, and in that little while Jim was alongside, had seized the back of the seat, and, with a spurt and a mighty leap, had tumbled into the rig beside the driver. Instantly she held the reins toward him and gasped:

"I can't hold him; he's running away." Then, as Jim did not at once seize the reins, she hurriedly said: "Here, take them."

The sense of power in his presence and matter-of-fact tone restored her nerve. She slackened a little on the reins. The horse had believed he was running away; now he began to doubt it. She had been telegraphing terror along the lines, and now she began to telegraph control.

"Speak to him, just as you would if he were all right," said Jim in a low voice.

The girl had been pale and scared-looking, but she responded to the suggestion and talked to the horse.

"Good boy, good boy, Stockings; keep it up," just as though she had been putting him to his utmost.

There was open fareway straight ahead and little to fear so long as the horse kept in the road and met no other rig. In a quarter of a mile he began to slacken his pace.

"Will you take the lines now?" the girl asked shyly.

"No, it isn't necessary, and the horse would feel the change and think he had beaten you."

"My arms are tired out," she said rather querulously.

"Then ease up for a while. Don't pull so hard."

She did so and was surprised that the horse did not speed away. In a quarter of a mile more the victory was won. She gave the usual signal to stop and Stockings came gently to a pause.

"Now," said Jim, "if you like, I'll take the lines. The battle is over. You have won. From now on you will be able to drive that horse; but if I had taken the lines he would have felt the change; he would have felt that he could boss you, and ever after he would have been a dangerous horse for you to drive."

In the struggle, the horse had got one leg over the trace. Jim got out, spoke to the big, strong brute, and did the firm-handed, compelling things that a horseman knows. The tall creature stood a little trembly, but submissive now, as the man unhooked the trace, adjusted all the leathers, and then, with a word or two, adjusted the horse's mood.

"Shall I leave you now?" he asked.

"No," she said, "my arms are aching. I wish you would drive me home."

As he mounted the seat again and headed for the village, Jim had his first chance to look at the girl beside him. If fear had paled her face at all it was wholly overcome, for the richest glow of health was in her cheeks and on her brow. She was beautiful he knew, with her brown hair flying and brilliant colour, but these things did not entirely account for a charm of which he was delightfully conscious. Her hands were a little shaky from the struggle with the horse, but otherwise she was fully recovered and self-possessed and talked in an animated if somewhat nervous way about the adventure. In a land where rasping voices were the rule, it was instantly to be noted that her voice was soft and low.

"Stockings is not a bad horse," she said, "except in one way; the lines get under his tail. That always makes him back up and kick; then he got his leg over the trace, was frightened, and ran away. He's the only one of our horses that we have any trouble with. I was bound I'd drive him, in spite of Pa; but I'm thinking now that Pa was right." Then, abruptly: "I'm Miss Boyd; aren't you the new preacher?"

"Yes."

"I saw you at the station when you came yesterday."

"Sure, I didn't suppose a human being took notice of it," he laughed.

"Here's where I live. Will you come in?"

"No, thank you," he said; "I'm late now for breakfast at Dr. Jebb's." So he tied the horse to the post, helped her from the rig, and with a flourish of his stick and cap left her.

"The Rev. James Hartigan," she mused; "so that is Dr. Jebb's assistant." Then in Stockings's ear: "I think I like him--don't you, old runaway?"

Belle Boyd

Belle had been in the express office signing some receipts for goods consigned to her father when Jim stepped from the train. He appeared framed in the open doorway; six feet four, broad and straight, supple and easy, with the head of a Greek god in a crown of golden curls, and a dash of wild hilarity in his bright blue eyes that suggested a Viking, a royal pirate. He was the handsomest man she had ever seen and when he spoke it was with a slight and winsome Irish brogue that lent new charm to a personality already too dangerously gifted.

It seemed to her that Nature had given him all the gifts there were for man; and he was even better furnished than she perceived, for he had youth, health, happy moods, magnetic power in face and voice, courage, and the gift of speech. And yet, with all these unmeasured blessings was conjoined a bane. To be possessed of the wild, erratic spirit of the roving, singing Celt, to be driven to all ill-judged extremities, to be lashed by passion, anger, and remorse, to be the battle ground of this wild spirit and its strong rival, the calm and steadfast spirit of the North--that was a spiritual destiny not to be discerned in a first meeting; but Belle, keen and understanding, was to discover it very soon.

Belle Boyd was an only child. Her father was a well-to-do trader; he had had just enough schooling to give him a high notion of its value, and he resolved to equip his child with the best there was in reach. This meant an Illinois college. She entered at seventeen. Here many vague aspirations of schoolgirl life took definite shape, and resulted in some radical changes in her course of studies. Her mother had but one thought--to prepare Belle for being a good wife to some one. Her views on many subjects were to be left blank, so that she might at once adopt those of her prospective husband. Her tentacles alone were well considered in the maternal method, so that she could cling ivy-like to her oak, stay up with him or go down with him; but help him to stand up--no, never and not at all!

But Illinois was seething with a different thought in the late '70's. There were women who boldly proclaimed that sex and mind had little bearing on each other; that woman should train herself to be herself, and to stand on her own feet; that when woman had the business training of men, the widow and the unmarried woman--half of all women--would no longer be the easy prey of every kind of sharper. These new teachers were, of course, made social martyrs, but they sowed the seed and the crop was coming on. That every woman should prepare herself to stand alone in the world was the first article in their creed. This crystallized an old and shapeless thought that had often come to Belle, and the pointed application that she made was to focus her college studies on a business training. Bookkeeping, shorthand, and exact methods were selected for specialization; and when at the age of twenty Belle was graduated and went home to Cedar Mountain, she had, in addition to her native common sense, a disciplined attention that made her at once a power in the circle of the church. It was her own idea to take a business position at once. Her mother was absolutely opposed to it. "Why should her child be sent to work? Were they not able to keep her at home? What was the good of parents giving years to toil if not to keep their children at home with them?" Mr. Boyd was more inclined to see things Belle's way, and at length a compromise was reached by which Belle became her father's bookkeeper and secretary, and for a time all went well.

Then a new factor entered the case, one for which the reformer has not yet found a good answer. The daily routine of the desk was assumed as a matter of course; and Belle quickly got used to that and found abundant mental diversion in other things and in hours of freedom. But her body had less strength than her mind, and the close confinement of the office began to tell. Her hands got thin, her cheeks lost their colour, her eyes grew brighter. Mrs. Boyd began to worry, and sent secretly to Illinois for bottles of various elixirs of life, guaranteed to put health, strength, youth, and brains into anything. She also made foolish and elaborate efforts to trick the daughter into eating more at meals, or between meals, without avail. At this juncture a very capable person took matters in hand. Dr. Peter Carson, family physician and devoted friend, was consulted; his views were clear and convincing: Belle must give up the office for a year at least; she needed fresh air and sun; the more the better. Every girl in the Black Hills rides as a matter of course, and Belle was at home on a broncho; but now it must be, not an occasional run, but a daily ride in the hills--off for miles, till the vital forces had renewed their strength.

For a month or more Belle rode and browned in the sun. The colour came again to her cheeks, and zest to her life; and there also came a strong desire to be in a business of her own. But it must be something out of doors; it must be something of little capital; and something a woman could do. Belle studied her problem with great care and presently there began to arrive at the post office sundry catalogues of extraordinary hens with unbelievable records as producers of eggs and of rapid-raising broilers. The result was that the acre of ground behind the store was cut up into poultry runs for the various strains of stock that Belle decided on and that spring Belle launched out on her career as a poultry farmer. There were Leghorns and Houdans for eggs, and Brahmas in another yard for mothers. Four things conspired to make her venture a success. She was the only one in Cedar Mountain with thoroughbred poultry, so there was a large demand for high-class eggs for setting. The eggs that for table use brought fifty cents a dozen were worth two dollars and a half a dozen for hatching. Her store training had taught her to watch the market reports in the papers, which arrived twice a week, and her college training taught her to study hen hygiene. Last but not least, she got their food for nothing.

On closing her books that autumn Belle found that on her investment of 0 capital borrowed from her father, she had cleared 0, and had all the capital to render back intact. She realized that while it was possible to make 100 per cent, on small capital, the rate decreased rapidly as the capital increased. She estimated that ten times as much capital would only produce about 25 per cent, because the possibility of personal management of every hen and every detail would grow proportionately smaller, and it was this personal touch which counted. Next, the sovereign advantages of grass range and table scraps must diminish with each additional hen; and if she had paid herself an adequate salary the profit would have been wiped out. Last, and perhaps the most important to her, she was absolutely tied to the farm. She could not be away one week without suffering loss. It was with ill-concealed admiration that her father listened to a summary of these conclusions; later, with the remarkable common sense that characterized most of her ways, Belle seized a chance to sell out and lodge her money in the local bank. But the venture had been a success in two respects. It had helped her to health and it had given her business experience and confidence.

The winter was now on, and Belle's outdoor activities were somewhat circumscribed, for there is a real winter in the Black Hills. But she was in robust health again and she turned her energies more and more to church work. She was depended on to get up the "sociables," to plan the entertainments, to invent new and happy games that would take them as near as they dared go in the direction of dance and stage without actually outraging the old-fashioned Methodist conscience by getting there. It was Belle who entirely refurnished the parsonage in one harmonious style by copying a mission chair and table from a picture, and then inviting each of the boys to make a like piece, and each of the girls to make a "drape" to match it. It was a sort of Noah's Ark trick, this gathering in of things in pairs, but it succeeded originally--the ark was full--and it succeeded now, for the parsonage was full; and it will always succeed, for it is built on the old fundamental pairing instinct.

Belle also imported and put in practical working the idea of a daily school 'bus, which gathered up the twenty-odd children for ten miles along the winter road and brought them on a huge hay rack to the Cedar Mountain School in the morning, and took them back at night to their homes. But in all these multiplied activities there was a secret dissatisfaction. She felt that she was a mere hanger-on of the church, a sort of pet cat to the parson's wife. She was not developing herself independently, and she began secretly to outline a scheme which meant nothing less than leaving home to take some sort of position on the west coast. She had no fear for her success, but she was restrained by two things: the question of health in case she could not find an outdoor enterprise, and the sorrow her parents would feel over her--to their thinking, unnecessary--departure.

For some time both in her school and church work Belle had been much associated with John Lowe, the schoolteacher. He was considered a well-meaning person, a dozen years older than herself, and had certain pleasing qualities, a suave manner--almost too suave--and a readiness of speech. He was fairly well educated, a good worker, a member of the church, and had no obvious bad habits. His history was not known; in fact, no one's history was known in those days of beginnings. Every one had to be taken as he was found and often on his own statement.

Lowe soon became a devoted admirer of Belle; and Mrs. Boyd, seeing a chance to beguile her daughter into settling down, did all she could to bring them together, never losing a chance of praising Jack. He was just what Belle needed as an executive help to realize much that she had planned. As a public reciter he had some little prominence; as a schoolteacher he was just a step nearer the world of brains than were the other possible men in town, and by that much more acceptable; and the inevitable result of propinquity was reached. The engagement of Belle Boyd and Jack Lowe was announced.

There was no ardent love-making on either side, and sometimes Belle, when left alone, would wonder why she was not more elated each time she heard him coming; rather, she seemed to feel weighted by the attachment. She reproached herself for this and as she strove to reach a more satisfactory state of mind she found herself thinking with a sigh of that free career she had planned in the business world. Mrs. Boyd's maternal hopes were too nearly realized to leave her with any discernment and Belle's father was too much wrapped up in business and small politics, to see even the mountains that were beyond his back yard; but another frequent visitor at the house was gifted with better eyes and more knowledge of the world.

Dr. Carson had never felt attracted toward Lowe. Instinctively he disliked him. He knew at the beginning that the teacher was much older than he admitted. The facts that the Boyds were well-to-do and that Belle was their only child offered, in his frame of mind, a suggestive sidelight. There were two other things that to Carson seemed important: one, that Lowe had rather obviously avoided any reference to his previous place of residence; the other that at one of the sociables he had amused them all by some exceedingly clever sleight-of-hand tricks with cards--not playing-cards, of course--they were unmentionable--but with a few business cards marked in a special way. Carson was sure he knew in what school such manual dexterity had been acquired.

The doubts in Belle's mind had not yet taken definite form when a new and unpleasant circumstance obtruded. More than once lately Lowe had come to the house carrying the unmistakable odour of drink about him. It was smothered with cloves and peppermint, but still discoverable. Belle's ideas were not narrow, but this thing shocked and disgusted her, chiefly because Lowe had repeatedly and voluntarily avowed himself as flatly opposed to it. She was thus drifting along in perplexity, taking the trail that her instincts said was not her trail, ever prompted to cut across to the other fork which meant developing herself, and always restrained by the fear of breaking with her people, when in the spring of that year the local press announced the coming to Cedar Mountain of the Rev. James Hartigan. And on the day after her meeting with him and their unexpected adventure with the runaway, the parson's wife gave a tea to introduce the young man to the congregation.

Jim's eyes met hers the moment she entered Jebb's parlour. His greeting was a joyous one and Belle felt the colour mount in her cheeks as Hartigan drew her aside to talk. There was something very stimulating about him, she found--a thrill in his voice, his eyes, and his presence that she had never experienced with Lowe.

A little later, Lowe himself arrived. Belle, as she turned to greet him, got an unpleasant shock to note the contrast between the frank, boyish face of the curly-haired giant and the thin features and restless eyes of the man she had promised to marry. Her conscience smote her for disloyalty; but in her heart she was not satisfied. Vague, unspoken, half-realized criticisms of past months rose to fill her with disquiet. A cumulative unhappiness in her association with Lowe took possession of her. And, as she watched with a little thrill the meeting between Jack and the Preacher, she read plainly on the face of her fianc? the disapproval that even his practised art could not conceal. For her, the meeting was portentous; it marked a turning-point; and as she thought of it later she took a slightly guilty pleasure in the fact that without a clash of words there was at once a clash of personalities, and that the Preacher had dominated the scene.

Preacher Jim's First Sermon

The Sunday on which Jim first appeared in the pulpit will long be remembered in Cedar Mountain. The "grapevine telegraph" had been working hard so that all the world of that region had heard of the new preacher, and curiosity to see him was responsible, more than anything else, for a church filled with critical folk.

The sight of all the riot and wickedness about the Black Hills, the mad striving after sudden gold, and the total lack of real joy in its use after getting it, suggested to Jim a sermon founded on the proverb: "Better is a dinner of herbs and contentment therewith, etc...." But, for once in his life, Hartigan was a little abashed by the situation and, reciting the verses from memory, he managed to get them mixed and rendered them thus: "Better is a stalled ox and contentment therewith than a dinner of herbs with a brawling woman." It made an unexpected hit. Realizing his blunder, he smiled broadly and added:

"Well, if you have any doubts about Solomon's statement, you can have none whatever about mine."

"And how did ye like my sermon?" was the hearty greeting Hartigan gave Belle Boyd next day, as they met on the boardwalk of Main Street. She glanced up with a faint flush, looked down, then meeting his eyes squarely she said:

"Some parts I liked, but much of it I did not."

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