Chapter IX: His Unlucky Star 245 (4)

The retreat to the rear was in deference to Posey’s scruples. He preferred that the store itself should be kept free from illegitimate traffic.

The odor of substantial sin, and a faint suggestion of a dragon’s breath was in the atmosphere when the crowd returned. Deliverance had come. Aridity was succeeded by bountiful moisture, that like gentle rain, had fallen upon thirsty flowers.

The Colonel seemed in some way to be dissatisfied with his visit to the barn, and was at odds with the owner of the gray overcoat when the expedition returned. He had parted with a silver coin under protest.

“Inate cou’tesy, suh, compelled me to pa’take of you’ah abundance, suh,” he declared. “It was not that I wanted you’ah infe’nal mixcha, you mink eyed old grave robbah,” he declared, as he left with his puppies.

The old bootlegger’s name was Richard Shakes, but the obvious natural perversion to “Dick Snakes” was too tempting to be resisted by the river humorists. He was also frequently alluded to as “Tiger Cat,” a term that seemed much more appropriate to the liquids he dispensed than to him, for, outside of his questionable occupation, the old man was entirely inoffensive and harmless. He was another member of the old time trapping fraternity, and lived alone in a log house on the creek about two miles away.

He had a large collection of Indian relics, that he had spent many years in accumulating, and he took great delight in showing them to anybody who came to see him. The arrow and spear heads were methodically arranged in long rows on thin smooth boards, and held in place by the heads of tacks that overlapped their edges. The boards were nailed to the walls of faced logs all over the interior of the cabin.

Nearly everybody in the surrounding country had contributed to the collection at one time or another, and it was being added to constantly.

There were many fine specimens of tomahawk heads, stone axes, and other implements, that had been fashioned with admirable skill. The old man guarded his hoarded treasures with a miser’s solicitude, for they were the solace of his lonely life. He had refused large offers for the collection as a whole, and never could be induced to part with single specimens, except under pressure of immediate necessity.

There are few mental comforts comparable with those of absorbing hobbies. They temper the raw winds and asperities of existence to a wonderful degree, and offer a welcome balm of heart interest to lives weary of continued conflict for mythical goals. We may smile at them in others, but we realize their deep significance when they are our own.

Poor old Shakes was but another example of one made happy by a harmless fad, the joys of which might well be coveted by those whose millions have brought only fear and sorrow. After it is all over the pursuit of one phantom has been as gratifying as the quest of another, for they both end in darkness.

DICK SHAKES
]

After sitting around for awhile, and listening to the enlivened conversation, and the gossip of the neighborhood, that now circulated freely, the old man bought a package of tobacco in the store, for which he said he had “been stung ten cents,” and left us, with the overcoat, from which the cargo had been discharged, hung lightly over his arm.

The assemblage gradually dispersed. Wirrick, Hyatt, and the jaundiced Viking went down to the river bank and departed in their “push boats.” Doc Dust invited Pop Wilkins to ride with him, and they betook themselves into the shadows. Tipton Posey relighted his pipe and Bill Stiles resumed the story of the horse trade.

VI
MUSKRAT HYATT’S REDEMPTION

Except from a picturesque standpoint, “Rat” Hyatt was not an ornament to the river country. Its meager and widely scattered social life, and its average of morality, were more or less affected by his shortcomings. In many communities he would be considered an undesirable citizen. He was looked upon as a good natured “bad egg,” and as one industrious in the ways of sin by his associates at Tipton Posey’s store, but the habitues of that time honored loafing place always welcomed him, for he possessed a reminiscent talent and a peculiar kind of dry wit and repartee that helped to enliven the sleepy days.

In this world much sin is forgiven an entertaining personality.

There was always a feeling of incompleteness on the store platform when Rat was absent, that nobody ever admitted, but when he arrived and took his accustomed seat on the green wheel barrow, that was part of the merchandise that Posey kept outside in the day time, the depressing vacancy existed no longer.

Bill Stiles’s temperamental discharges of ornate philosophy, and his comments on life’s ironies and human folly, required a target, and this was commonly the role assigned to Rat Hyatt.

“I’m always the goat,” remarked Rat one hot afternoon, as we sat in the shade of the wooden awning. “W’y don’t you pick on somebody that likes to listen? I’ve been kidded by experts, an’ this long talk o’ your’n seems kind o’ mixed up. The trouble with you an’ a lot o’ the other ol’ mud birds ’round ’ere, is you open yer mouth an’ go ’way an’ leave it, an’ fergit you started it.”

“Now look ’ere, Rat,” replied Bill, “you aint got no call to talk back to me. W’en I’m talkin’ to you, I aint arguin’. I’m tellin’ you how ’tis. I knowed you w’en you wasn’t knee high to a duck, an’ you aint got brains enough to have the headache with.

“That feller that you sold my dog to the last time was ’ere yisterd’y askin’ ’bout you, an’ if Spot ’ad ever come back. He’d been up to your place, an’ its a good thing fer you that you an’ Spot was off some’rs in the woods. He told me what ’e traded you fer the animal, an’ I want you to bring them things to me, fer it was my dog you got ’em with.”

As Spot was asleep under the wheelbarrow, Bill’s equity in the repeating rifle and cartridges, that Hyatt had received in exchange for him, seemed rather hazy. The reason for Spot’s prolonged absence some months before was now apparent to Bill, and, although the intelligent animal had returned home, as expected, after being traded off, the old man’s nurtured wrath was waiting for Rat when he arrived that afternoon. Hyatt seemed in nowise abashed at the revelation of Bill’s knowledge of his shady transaction with the trapper.

“MUSKRAT” HYATT
]

“If I hadn’t a knowed the dog ’ud come home, I wouldn’t a let ’im go. It showed how much I trusted ’im w’en I let ’im go off with a stranger like that. If that feller thought ’e c’d keep a fine dog like that away from them that loved ’im, ’e oughta suffer fer ’is foolishness, an’ leave sump’n in the country to be remembered by. Of course if sump’n ’ad a happened to Spot, an’ ’e hadn’t a come back, I’d a given you the rifle, but I knowed that dog was all right. You c’n have ’im back any time you want ’im, if he’ll stay with you, but you hadn’t oughta jump on me as long as ’e aint lost, an’ ’e’s in first class health.”

“Its the funny ideas that some fellers ’ave about other people’s propity that keeps the state’s prisons filled up,” remarked Bill. “It aint the lyin’ an’ stealin’ that gits ’em thar, its gitt’n caught. If they don’t git caught its jest called business shrewdness. You bilked that feller out o’ that gun an’ you’r deprivin’ me of it w’en you used my dog to git it with. You’r a fine man to trust anythin’ with, you are. If I had any place to keep Spot I wouldn’t let you have ’im a minute. I c’n fill my shanty with stuff by tradin’ ’im off, an’ then wait’n fer ’im to come home, jest as well as you can, an’ it ’ud be all right fer me to do it, but you aint got no such right, ’specially if yer goin’ to swindle people.”

After Bill’s assurance that he had told the deluded trapper nothing of Spot’s return, and that he had gone off up the river, the conversation drifted into channels that were less irritating.

The old man’s mind became calm and he ascended the narrow stairway on the outside of the building, to his room over the store, for a nap.

“That ol’ feller oughta to have a phonygraph with ’is voice in it so he c’d spin it an’ listen to ’imself speil,” remarked Rat after Bill had left. “I used to often watch ’im when ’e was set’n quiet out ’ere by the hour, with that dinkey hat pulled down in front an’ lookin’ wise, an’ wonder what big thoughts was ferment’n up in that old moss covered dome o’ his, but I found out after a while that ’e wasn’t thinkin’ about nuth’n at all.”

Rat wended his way down to the bank under the bridge, where he had left his push boat, followed by the faithful Spot, and poled his way up stream. When he reached the vicinity of the stranded house boat, where he had lived for several years, he reconnoitered it cautiously. No malign presence was detected. He looked over his bee hives that were scattered about among the trees, and provided two or three week’s food supplies for his chickens, and some young coons and weasles, that he was raising for their fur in some wire cages under the house. He then packed a few necessaries into his boat, and secured the door of the house with a padlock.

He was not quite satisfied that the trapper, who was looking for Spot, had left the country, and he did not intend to take any chances. The dog was ordered to lie down in the bow of the canoe, where he was carefully covered. The intelligent animal complied cheerfully with all of the arrangements.

Rat then proceeded down the river for several miles to the big marsh, where he did the most of his trapping during the late fall, winter, and spring.

He had two motives for his trip, besides the idea of avoiding a possible visit of the trapper to the house boat. One was to see if the muskrat population on the marsh had increased properly during the summer, and the other was to visit Malindy Taylor, whom he deeply loved, and by whom he was scorned as a suitor.

Malindy was a peppery widow of about forty, who lived with her aged mother in a small house beyond the marsh. She was the owner of a wild duck farm, and conducted it with such success that Rat looked forward to spending his declining days in peace and comfort if he could persuade Malindy to take him into life partnership.

Many hundreds of mallards and teal nested among the boggy places in the marsh during the summer. The eggs were gathered, put into incubators, and under complaisant hens on the farm. The ducklings were reared in wired enclosures that prevented them from joining their kind in the skies when the fall migrations began. During the game season, when they were properly matured, they were skilfully strangled and shipped away as wild birds at game prices.

Rat had always willingly hunted nests and gathered eggs for his beloved. He did odd jobs about the farm and participated in everything but the harvest. Like Jacob of old, toiling for the hand of Rachael, Rat’s industry, although intermittent, was sustained by alluring hope.

Outside of her earthly possessions, it must be admitted that Malindy had few charms. One of her eyes was slightly on the bias, and at times it had a baleful gleam. Two of her front teeth protruded in a particularly unpleasant way, as though she expected to bite at something alive. She had an angular disposition, and her temper was not conducive to the even flow of life’s little amenities. To use a Scotch expression, she was “unco pernickity.” She was intolerant of human frailty in others, especially of the kinds that entered so largely into Rat Hyatt’s make-up, but divinities sometimes appear in strange forms. To Rat’s love blinded eyes she was the one lone flower that grew in the dreary desert of life’s monotonies.

There is something about everybody that appeals to somebody, and this is why there is nobody who cannot find somebody willing to marry them.

Perhaps the streak of primitive cussedness in Malindy appealed to compatible instincts in Rat’s heart, but be that as it may, he was a faithful and much abused worshiper.

When he reached the farther end of the great marsh, he threaded his way through familiar openings among the tall masses of rushes and wild rice, landed on the soggy shore, and pulled his canoe up among the underbrush. He and Spot then took the winding path that led through the woods to the duck farm, about a quarter of a mile away.

He intended to stay at the farm, in seclusion, for a week or two, do some work that he had long promised, and then put out his traps on the marsh. He kept about a hundred of them in Malindy’s barn, when they were not in use.

About half way down the marsh a long tongue of wooded land extended out into the oozy slough. It was known as “Swallow Tail Point.” This was Tipton Posey’s favorite haunt during the shooting season. Thousands of wild ducks and geese passed over it on their way up or down the river, and in circling about over the marsh, which was a bountiful feeding ground. Bill Wirrick spent much time on the point with Posey. They had a little shack back among the low trees, sheltered so that it could not be seen from the sky, and hidden from the water by the tall brush.

These two worthies had solved at least one of life’s problems in this secluded retreat, for they did not have to adjust themselves to the convenience of anybody else.

In the early morning, just before daylight, when the ducks began to move over the marsh, and in the evening twilight, when the incoming flocks were settling for the night, little puffs of smoke, and faint reports, issued from the end of the point, and dark objects fell out of the sky. They were diligently retrieved by Posey’s brown water spaniel.

Occasionally wild geese would sweep low over the point, scatter and rise excitedly, as the puffs of smoke took toll from the honking ranks.

In addition to a big bunch of wooden decoys that floated in an open space near the edge of the point, the wary birds were lured by mechanical quacks and honks from small patented devices, operated by their concealed enemies.

Notwithstanding their civilized garb, and highly developed weapons, Tip and Bill were barbarians. Their instincts were lower than those of the carnivora of the jungle, for they killed not for food, or even for profit, but for the joy of the killing. They did not bother about the wounded birds that curved away and fluttered into the matted grasses and rushes, to suffer in silence, or be eaten by the big snapping turtles that had no ideas of sport. They exulted over piles of beautiful feathered creatures, motionless and splashed with blood, many of which were afterwards thrown away.

Tip had devoted many of his idle hours to the invention of a new goose call. The range of the ordinary devices seemed to him too restricted. His theory was that if the volume of sound could be increased so as to fill a radius of four or five miles, the distant V shaped flocks could be lured to within gun shot of the point.

After long meditation, and consultation with Bill Wirrick, they began putting the plan into execution.

They procured a pair of blacksmith’s bellows from a distant country town, and some big instruments that had once belonged to the local brass band. These things, in addition to some rubber garden hose, and a lot of other miscellaneous material, were carefully covered in a wagon and secretly conveyed to the point.

Weeks were spent in the construction of the apparatus. The brass instruments were arranged in the interior of a huge megaphone. Rubber balls bobbed about intermittently within the capacious horns when the air was pumped through them. The requisite volume of sound was attained, but somehow the turbulent honks of the wild geese were not satisfactorily imitated, although repeated adjustment and alteration gave much hope of success.

The experiments were conducted cautiously during the summer, when there was nobody on the marsh, and no mention of the contrivance was made around the store, for a cruel gauntlet of jibes and merciless humor awaited the nonsuccess of the enterprise, if the wiseacres of the platform ever learned of it.

Rat Hyatt, although much interested in all that pertained to the marsh, and its surroundings, had never suspected what was going on on the point. He never had occasion to land there, and, by common consent, its possession by Posey and Wirrick for shooting purposes was respected by the few hunters who frequented the vicinity.

Malindy Taylor had sometimes heard some terrible noises from the direction of the point, but she was too far away to be much disturbed. Both Posey and Wirrick had often referred to Malindy as “an old fuss-bug,” although she was much younger than either of them, and they probably would not have cared if they had scared her out of the country, but she had little curiosity about things that did not affect her duck farm.

She and her mother had concluded that the uncanny sounds were produced by donkeys in the woods, and doubtless this was also the opinion of most of those who afterwards learned all of the facts.

When Rat emerged from his retirement at the duck farm, he spent two or three days puttering about through the water openings, setting his traps.

The furred inhabitants of the slough had builded their picturesque little domes of stringy roots, rushes, and dead grass, and plastered them together with lumps of mud in the quiet places, away from the river currents that crept in sinuous and broken channels through the broad wastes of sodden labyrinths.

Hyatt was an intelligent trapper, and was careful not to depopulate his grounds. He frequently moved the traps, so as not to exhaust the animals in a particular locality. The little competition he had on the marsh must have been discouraging to his rivals, for he always had more traps at the end of the season than at its beginning, and the traps set by others never seemed to be very productive, except to Hyatt. By degrees each new comer was eliminated.

Rat had finished a hard day’s work. He sat on some dry grass in the bottom of his canoe, lighted a redolent old pipe, and decided to indulge in a good smoke and a long rest before starting up the river.

Twilight had come. The vast expanse of overgrown water was silent, except for the low lullabies of the marsh birds among the thick grasses and bulrushes. He sat for a long time and watched the smoke curl up into the still air. The moon came over the distant rim of the forest that bordered the great marsh, and one by one, the stars began to tremble in the crystal sky, but it was not with the eye of the poet that Rat regarded these things. The moonlighted river would be easy to navigate on the trip home.

Suddenly a flash of greenish light shot into the heavens in the north west, and in a few minutes the entire horizon in every direction flamed and shimmered with long gleaming streamers of rose and green beams that touched fluttering segments of a corona of orange glow at the zenith.

Rat had often seen the Aurora Borealis; he was familiar with sheet lightning, and the electrical discharges of the thunder storms, but this awful light was something new.

It was a magnetic storm, one of those rare phenomena, that the average person sees but once in a life time, and never forgets, caused by the sudden incandescence of heavily charged solar dust in the earth’s atmosphere.

The play of the fitful quivering gleams through the firmament was a sublime spectacle. The motionless air had the peculiar odor that comes from an excess of ozone.

Rat Hyatt was in the throes of mortal fright. The dog uttered a long howl, and just at that moment—like a yell of demonic mockery out of sulphurous caverns—the unearthly tones of Tipton Posey’s goose call resonated from the woods on Swallow Tail Point, and reverberated beyond the weirdly lighted waters.

One or both of its builders had probably come to test the powers of the unholy device, and were unabashed by the drama that glorified the night skies.

With blind instinct of self preservation, Rat rose to his knees and made a faltering attempt to grasp his paddle, but his hands refused the dictates of his palsied brain. He cowered as one in the presence of the Ultimate.

To him, in this appalling display of supernatural power, and the evident impending end of all things, had come the agony of abject terror and despair, and before it his rude conception of life collapsed.

His past flashed before his distorted vision like a hideous nightmare. His world suddenly lost reality. The human creatures in it changed to throngs of fleeting phantoms, impelled by unseen forces. They glared, grinned and gibbered at each other, as they hurried through the mist, and vanished into the oblivion from which they came.

In the realm of fear there are ghastly solitudes. They pervade dim phosphorescent glows on ocean floors, and they brood in the desolation around the poles. They creep into awe stricken hearts when the filmy strands, that sustain the Ego on its frail human web are broken, and the denuded spirit stands in utter loneliness at the brink of Chaos.

In the course of an hour the wonderful radiance, that had transfigured the heavens, and chilled the marrow bones of Rat Hyatt, ceased as suddenly as it had begun. The frightful unknown sounds from the woods were not repeated.

Rat finally succeeded in getting on his feet. He pushed his canoe out into the channel and started up stream, but it was a changed man who swung the long paddle. His soul had been rarefied in chastening flames. He was as one who had met his Maker face to face, and his only hope now was that his life span might be mercifully extended until he could make amends for the past.

He reached the house boat in the early morning, much exhausted, and threw himself on the rude bed, where his shattered nerves found partial repose.

His sleep was much troubled. He awoke with a sudden start late in the afternoon, and, lashed by an avenging conscience, slid his canoe into the river and hurried up stream to find the Reverend Daniel Butters, a venerable preacher, who lived about six miles away. To him he would carry his heavy laden heart, and in the consolations of religion seek forgiveness and peace.

The Reverend Butters was known far and wide as “Dismal Dan,” and was referred to in Bill Stiles’s chronicles as “the Javelin of the Lord.” He was an eccentric, heavily bewhiskered old character, who believed in the Church Militant, and had exhorted, quoted reproving scripture, and made doleful prophecies in the river country for two normal generations.

In the little weather beaten country church, up the river, his small audiences consisted of aged ladies and pious old settlers, who were already saved, and did not need the rescuing hand. He preached Calvinistic damnation in the belief that fear of hell was a more potent factor in human redemption than hope of reward.

His principal authority on hell was Jonathan Edwards, a fiery divine, who glowed in Massachusetts about two hundred years ago. During his eruptive period, Edwards’s sermons on damnation blistered and enriched the sectarian literature of his time. Dismal Dan frequently resurrected and reheated these old printed sermons, and hurled the sputtering embers at his inoffensive listeners.

He had not made a convert for many years. Of late his powers of spiritual persuasion had languished, and, like his hearers, had become atrophied.

He was a revivalist who did not revive. He needed new and pliant material, and when Muskrat Hyatt had told his errand he was welcomed as one who had fled from among the Pharisees. Out of the wilderness of sin a lowly suppliant had come.

THE REVEREND DANIEL BUTTERS
]

They talked of the mysterious and unknown light that had illumined the heavens the night before, and the terrifying sounds that had come over the waters. Dismal Dan pronounced it all to be a “manifestation.” He had long expected signs and angry portents in the skies as a warning to sinners. Probably his biased mind would eagerly have ascribed divine origin to any natural phenomenon that shooed fish into his ministerial net.

They spent many days and nights in prayer and assiduous scriptural readings. A far away look came into Hyatt’s eyes, and an elevation of brow that did not seem to be of this world. The spiritual calm of the neophite within cloistered walls was his. He had laid a contrite heart upon the altar of his fears, and on it rested celestial rays.

He interrupted the period of his reconstruction with a trip down the river to visit Malindy Taylor. Just what passed at the duck farm was never known, but, after three days, Malindy opened her heart of stone to the penitent. They came up the stream in the canoe, and, as the enraptured township correspondent of the county paper expressed it, “they were united on the front porch in the sacred bonds of holy matrimony, by the Reverend Daniel Butters, on the afternoon of Thursday, the bridegroom being attired in conventional black, and the bride with a bouquet of white flowers.”

Rat betook himself to the duck farm with his bride. He removed all his traps from the marsh, for he now considered the problem of his future earthly existence solved, without the necessity of very much hard work.

He made frequent visits to Dismal Dan, but kept entirely away from the store. That place was a sink of iniquity that he desired to avoid. He and the old man spent many hours together that were sweetened with blissful discourse. Dismal Dan felt that a life time devoted to expounding the gospels had found glorious fruition in the salvation of Muskrat Hyatt, and he was greatly elated by the sustained piety of the proselyte.

He proposed to Brother Hyatt that they go together to the store, and, if possible, “convert the bunch on the platform.” In his opinion a successful attack on that citadel of sin would practically put the devil out of business in the river country.

Brother Hyatt willingly consented. He was without fear of ridicule. He floated in an atmosphere of moral purity that the mockery of sinners could not defile.

They took a Bible, two old hymn books, and some lunch to the canoe, and, accompanied by the trustful and devoted Spot, they proceeded down the river. They stopped at the house boat and secured the gun and cartridges that the trapper had left in exchange for the dog, and went on down to the bridge.

On the river they practiced some of the old hymns, in the rendition of which Brother Hyatt displayed a woeful technique. They finally gave up trying to sing them, and Brother Butters droned out the rhythmic lines in a most doleful way, that Brother Hyatt soon imitated successfully.

Brother Butters then outlined the form of exhortation that he would use at the store, and instructed his assistant how he was to cooperate with deep and loud amens, whenever big climaxes were reached. Minor climaxes were to be left to Brother Hyatt’s judgment. He was to watch Brother Butters, and when the forefinger was raised above the head, an amen of more than usual sonorousness was to be forthcoming.

Brother Hyatt had studied the hymn books industriously, and had selected scattered verses that pleased him and seemed appropriate. They were laboriously copied on loose sheets of paper. It was his intention to introduce these snatches of hymns into Brother Butters’s sermon with the amens, whenever possible, and they both considered that holy power would thereby be added to the exhortation. The order in which the extracts were to be introduced was considered on the way down, but the sheets got somewhat mixed in Brother Hyatt’s pocket before it was time to use them.

The enemies of Satan, with their carefully prepared batteries of pious invective and Calvinistic hymns, landed safely under the bridge, late in the afternoon. The canoe was pulled out. Brother Hyatt peeked over the top of the embankment, and saw that the chairs on the store platform were all filled, and that its edge was festooned with the usual attendants.

Tipton Posey, Pop Wilkins, Bill Stiles, Doc Dust, Bill Wirrick, “the Jaundiced Viking,” “the Serpent’s Hiss,” and the other “regulars,” were all there. The vineyard looked ripe and inviting.

Bill Stiles hailed the proselyters cordially as they approached the stronghold.

“Say, Rat, whar you been buried all this time?”

“Bill, they’s sump’n wonderful happened to me. I’ve got religion. A great light ’as come to me, an’ I’ve repented of all my sins. I’ve brought that gun an’ them catritches that I traded yer dog fer, an’ I want you to find that feller an’ give ’em back to ’im. I done wrong, an’ I want to square things up. Three or four times I sold Spot, knowin’ he’d come home, but I’ve spent the money. I’m goin’ to git some of my friends to pay back ev’ry cent, if I c’n find the fellers that bought ’im.”

“That’ll make yer friends awful happy, Rat. Say, you cert’nly are a pippin! What done all this?”

“Never mind, Bill, you’ll see the light some day. No man knows w’en the spirit cometh. Brother Butters an’ I are goin’ to hold some services out in front o’ the store this afternoon. We want all the chairs fixed nice an’ even. Brother Butters will preach, an’ I’m goin’ to line out hymn passages ’long with the sermon. We aint got no music, but me linin’ ’em out’ll be jest the same as if they was played in tunes, fer it’ll show what they are. I hope that some o’ you fellers’ll bite at what’s offered.”

Rat was regarded with much concealed levity and mock respect, as he arranged the chairs in a curved row, and further developments were awaited with suppressed interest.

Bill Stiles joyfully accepted the center of the row. Tipton Posey and the Serpent’s Hiss were at the ends. After the chairs were filled the rest of the audience sat along the edge of the platform and dangled its feet.

Brother Butters and Brother Hyatt brought out a box, which they placed on the ground about twenty feet from the audience. Brother Butters thought that a little distance would add dignity and solemnity.

During the preparations the similarity of the chair arrangement on the platform to that in the minstrel show at the county seat, which nearly everybody present had attended during the preceding winter, occurred to Tipton Posey.

“Mr. Brown!” he called to Bill Stiles in the center.

“Yes, Mr. Bones!” responded Bill, instantly catching the spirit of the occasion.

“Mr. Brown, why is this congregation like a ten penny nail?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Bones, why this congregation is like a ten penny nail. Why _is_ this congregation like a ten penny nail?”

“Because, Mr. Brown, it’s goin’ to be driven in,” sagely replied Mr. Bones, with a significant glance at the gathering rain clouds overhead.

“Gentlemen, please shed yer hats!” said Brother Hyatt, as he pounded for order on the box with a carrot that he had taken from a basket in the store. “Brother Butters will now lead in prayer.”

During the invocation, which was brief but heartfelt, Spot walked out and stretched himself on the ground in front of the box. Brother Butters and Brother Hyatt both ended the prayer with loud amens.

“Here are the lines o’ the first hymn,” announced Brother Hyatt.

“Blow ye the trumpet! blow
The gladly solemn sound—
Let all the nations know,
To earth’s remotest bound,
The day of Jubilee is come,
Return, ye ransomed sinners, home!

And now the living waters flow,
To cheer the humble soul;
From sea to sea the rivers go,
And spread from pole to pole.”

Brother Butters then began his discourse, most of which consisted of written extracts from old Calvinistic exhortations.

“Our sermon this afternoon is on the subject of the eternity of hell torments, and the text is from Matthew 25–46: “These shall go away into everlasting punishment.””

Brother Hyatt:—“A-A-MEN!—Now feel ye the sting of the lash of the prophet!”

“Lo, on a narrow neck of land,
Twixt two unbounded seas I stand,
Yet how insensible!
A point of time, a moment’s space,
Removes me to yon heav’nly place,
Or shuts me up in hell!”

Brother Butters:—“You have a glorious opportunity today that may never come again. The door of mercy is opened wide, but the path that leads to it is long and narrow. A slight swerve leads to the fiery pit. Many come from the east, the west, the north, the south, and many fall. We may conceive of the fierceness of that awful fire of wrath if we think of a spider, or other noisome insect, thrown into the midst of glowing coals. How immediately it yields, and curls, and withers in the frightful heat! What pleasure we take in its agonizing destruction! Here is a little image of what ye may expect if ye persist in sin, and a picture of the place where pestilential sinners wail.”

Brother Hyatt:—“A-A-MEN!—Oh, hear ye the happy message!”

“Since man by sin has lost his God,
He seeks creation through,
And vainly hopes for solid bliss,
In trying something new.”

Brother Butters:—“The thought comes to me that the row of sinners in yonder chairs typifies sin in its vilest form—that of a snake. Tip at one end suggests the tail, and Dick Shakes, whom ye call ‘the Serpent’s Hiss,’ at the other, represents the loathsome head. It was a snake that carried sin into the Garden of Eden. It is a snake that confronts the Lord’s servants at this meeting, and, in my mind’s eye, I see that writhing serpent, breeze-shaken and hair-hung, over the yawning abyss of hell!”

Brother Hyatt:—“_Can you beat that?_”

“Oh, blissful thought!
There seems a voice in ev’ry gale,
A tongue in ev’ry op’ning flower!”

Bill Stiles:—“This is hot stuff!”

Brother Butters:—“How will the duration of torment without end cause the heart to melt like wax! Even those proud, sturdy, and hell-hardened spirits, the devils, tremble at the thoughts of that greater torture, which they are to suffer on the day of judgment. The poor damned souls of men will have their misery vastly augmented.”

Brother Hyatt:—“A-A-AMEN!—They will get the limit!”

“Oh, Lord, behold me,
And see how vile I am!”

Brother Butters:—“The fierceness of a great fire, as when a house is all in flames, gives one an idea of its rage, and we see that the greater the fire is, the fiercer is its heat in every part, and the reason is, because one part heats another part.”

Bill Stiles:—“If that rain don’t come pretty soon you fellers’ talk’ll set fire to that box!”

Brother Hyatt:—“The mockery of sinners availeth not! Now listen to another verse!”

“I love to tell the story,
’Tis pleasant to repeat
What seems each time I tell it,
More wonderfully sweet.”

Brother Butters:—“We have seen that the misery of the departed soul of a sinner, besides what it now feels, consists in amazing fears of what is yet to come. When the union of the soul and the body is actually broken, and the body has fetched its last gasp, the soul forsakes the old habitation, and then falls into the hands of devils, who fly upon it, and seize it more violently than ever hungry lions flew upon their prey.”

Brother Hyatt:—“A-A-MEN!!!—Oh, what a finish! They are no ice hunks there!”

“Fresh as the grass our bodies stand,
And flourish bright as day—
A blasting wind sweeps o’er the land,
And fades the grass away!”

Brother Butters:—“We now come to the joy of the saints in heaven who behold the sufferings of sinners and unbaptized infants in hell. They shall see their doleful state, and it will heighten their sense of blessedness. When they shall see the smoke of their torment, and the raging of the flames, and hear their dolorous shrieks and cries, and consider that they in the meantime are in the most blissful state for all eternity, how they will rejoice!”

Brother Hyatt:—“Oh, listen ye to the comforts of the church! Oh, speed that happy day!”

“Hark! Hark! The notes of joy
Roll o’er the heav’nly plains,
And all the seraphs find employ
For their sublimest strains!”

Brother Butters:—“The scriptures plainly teach that the saints in glory shall see the doleful state of the damned, and witness the execution of Almighty wrath.”

Brother Hyatt:—“A-A-MEN!”

“Oh, the transporting rapturous scene,
That rises to my sight!”

Brother Butters:—“The sight of hell torments will exalt the happiness of the saints forever, and give them a more lively relish of the joys of their heavenly home. The righteous and the wicked in the other world will see each other’s state. Thus the rich man in hell, and Lazarus and Abraham in heaven, are represented as seeing each other in the 16th chapter of Luke. The wicked in their misery will see the saints in the kingdom of heaven.—Luke 13–28–29. ‘There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out.’”

Brother Hyatt:—

“The seraphs bright are hov’ring
Around the throne above—
Their harps are ever tuning
To thrilling strains of love!
They’ll tell the sweet old story
I always loved so well!
Oh, let me float in glory
And hear sinners wail in hell!”

Brother Butters:—“Now come we to the procrastination practiced by the average sinner, and in Proverbs 27–1 we find the words, ‘Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.’”

Brother Hyatt:—

“The lilies of the field,
That quickly fade away,
May well to us a lesson yield,
For we are frail as they!”

Brother Butters:—“Dear friends, tomorrow is not our own. There are many ways and means whereby the lives of men are ended. It is written in the book of Job, chapter 21, verse 23, that ‘One dieth in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet.’”

Brother Hyatt:—“A-A-MEN!—Now listen ye unto these words!”

“Melt, melt, these frozen hearts,
These stubborn wills subdue;
Each evil passion overcome,
And form them all anew!”

Brother Butters:—“Oh, ye unregenerates, that wallow in sin and wickedness on that platform! God despises you, and the flames await you! Go down upon your accursed knees tonight and beseech salvation. This is Friday, Saturday may be too late, and everything in the way of grace may be gone!”

Brother Hyatt:—“Slim chance fer this bunch! It’s you to the red hot hooks!”

“Hark! What celestial notes,
What melody do we hear?
Soft on the morn it floats,
And fills the ravished ear!”

Brother Butters:—“How can you be reasonably quiet for one day, or for one night, when you know not when the end will come? If you should be found unregenerate, how fearful would be the consequence! Consider and harken unto this counsel! Repent and be prepared for death! The bow of wrath is bent, the arrow is made ready on the string, and nothing but the restraint of Almighty anger keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood!”

Brother Hyatt:—“A-A-MEN!! A-A-MEN!!—Oh, ye tight wads of iniquity, loosen up, fer this is the last call!”

“Let floods of penitential grief
Burst forth from ev’ry eye!”

Brother Butters:—“Be prepared for the opening of the eternal gates of pearl that are bathed in the light that shines for the meek and the pure in heart. The blessings of repentance are now before you. The choice of taking or leaving is yours!”

Brother Hyatt:—“Nuthin’ could be fairer than that!”

“Oh, Bless the harps that played the tune,
That brings us together this afternoon!”

Brother Butters:—“Be prepared for that awful day of judgment, when the paths that lead to heaven and the paths that lead to hell are divided by the width of a hair!”

Brother Hyatt:—“A-A-MEN—A-A-MEN!!!”

“There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.”

At this point the rain descended out of the kindly skies, the flaming oratory was extinguished, and everybody retreated into the store. It was getting dark, and while the services were not completed, the exhorters felt that much spiritual progress had been made.

Most of the regulars departed silently when the shower was over.

“Say, Rat, was that you down on the marsh the night we tried the goose call?” asked Bill Wirrick. “I seen somebody out near the channel w’en them funny streaks was in the sky. Since it all come out about the goose call we don’t try to keep it dark no more. The fellers ’round the store got onto it, an’ they’ve been devillin’ the life out o’ me an’ Tip. The dad gasted thing wouldn’t work an’ we’ve took it apart. We tried to make it sound like a flock o’ geese, but it sounded more like a flock o’ thunder storms. Them sky streaks that night was a funny thing. They’s a paper here some’rs that’s got it all in. Lemme see if I c’n find it. Tip had it yisterd’y.”

Wirrick finally found the newspaper. Hyatt took it to the dim kerosene lamp and spent some time studying the long account of the magnetic storm. It was explained by scientific authorities, and bemoaned by the interests it had affected. The telegraph and telephone companies had been put out of business for several hours, and commerce had suffered while Hyatt’s soul was being purified in celestial fires.

Disillusionment came. As long as the things that were going on in this world were natural, and could be explained, Rat saw no reason for worrying about the next. A cherished idol was shattered; his piety was dead sea fruit.

With the calmness of a cool gamester, who has thrown and lost his all—slightly pale, but with firm and deliberate step, he went behind the door and secured the rifle and cartridges he had asked Bill Stiles to restore to the swindled trapper. With no word of farewell to those around him, he lighted his long neglected old pipe, reeking with sin and nicotine, whistled to Spot, and walked away down the path to the river bank where the canoe had been left, and disappeared.

Brother Butters went out on the platform and looked longingly after him.

Night had fallen upon the river. Somewhere far away in the purple gloom, that softly lay upon its dimpling and restless tide, was a lost sheep. Its fleece had become black, but it was more precious than the ninety and nine that were still within the fold.

VII
THE TURKEY CLUB

“We’re goin’ to take you up the river to the Turkey Club tomorrer,” announced “Rat” Hyatt, as we left Posey’s store one night. “There’s goin’ to be some doin’s there that you’ll like, an’ you’ll meet a lot o’ people you never seen before, an’ prob’ly some you won’t never want to see ag’in.”

We had spent the evening with the usual group that clustered around the smoky stove when the weather rendered the platform outside uncomfortable. It was late in the fall and Thanksgiving was only a few days away, but Indian Summer still lingered, with its purple days and frosty nights, and I was loth to leave the river country while it lasted.

The council around the stove often varied in composition, but not in character. It was always picturesque, not only in its light and shade and color, but in the primitive philosophy, spontaneous wit, original profanity and ornate narrative that issued from it.

On this occasion “Pop” Wilkins had told, with much circumstantial detail, a long story about his old plug hat. He said it “was minted about thirty years ago some’rs down east,” and was bought for him by subscription by the congregation over which he at that time presided. The hat was in the Allegheny river a couple of days during its journey to his address, but when it finally got to him the congregation had it all fixed up so that everybody said it was just as good as new. Since then he had only had to have it repaired twice. He had a great affection for it, on account of its old associations, and hoped that it would be buried with him when he died—a hope that was shared by all present. The old plug was an echo of years long departed and a never-failing butt of merry jest. The tickets of all the raffles that had ever been held in that part of the country, that anybody could remember, had been shaken up in Pop’s hat.

The old man’s story had reminded his listeners of others, and it was quite late when Posey remarked that he was going upstairs to bed, and “to keep things from bein’ carried off” he was “goin’ to lock up.”

At ten the next morning five of us started up stream in three of the small boats that were usually attached to stakes under the bridge. Hyatt and I were in his duck canoe, which he skilfully propelled with his long paddle. Posey and Pop Wilkins followed, in a leaky green craft with squeaky oars. Far in the rear Bill Stiles stemmed the gentle current in his “push boat,” which he declared was never intended for anybody but him. This idea had been generally accepted along the river, for Bill’s boat was the only one for many miles up and down stream that had never been borrowed or stolen. The fact that it was so “tippy” that nobody but Bill seemed to be able to sit in it without being spilled into the river accounted for its immunity.

“BILL” STILES
]

“Some day,” remarked Bill, “a cold wet stranger’ll come to the store to git warm, an’ tell some kind of a story about fallin’ offen the bridge into the river, but ev’rybody’ll know what’s happened. Nobody that’s acquainted ’round ’ere’ll ever try to navigate with my push boat.”

He called the craft “The Flapjack.” The roughly lettered name appeared in yellow paint on each side of the bow, and to his subtle mind, it was a sufficient warning to the unwary. He said that the name was also lettered along the bottom of the boat underneath, “an’ anybody that wants to c’n take e’r out’n the river an’ read it. She won’t keep ’im wait’n more’n a few minutes.”

The river was low and we scraped gently over a few sand bars on the way up. After proceeding about two miles we came to a wobbly and much patched bridge, on which were several figures. A fringe of cane fish poles drooped idly from its sides. The figures were motionless and would remain so until the Turkey Club activities began.

“Here’s where we git off,” said Hyatt, as we turned in near the bridge. We waited for the rest of the flotilla to come up. When our party had all arrived we climbed a zig-zag path and walked along the road to the little gray church a few hundred feet away. It was here that the Reverend Daniel Butters—“The Javelin of the Lord”—was wont to expound the gospels, formulate dreary doctrines, and to depict the frightfulness of damnation to his superannuated and docile flock.

So far as human faith and opinion could influence the destinies of any of these aged and serene believers, their spiritual safety had been assured for many years. They went regularly to church, principally because they wanted to be seen there, and because they had nothing else particularly to do or think about Sundays. Alas, how the ranks of worldly worshipers would dwindle were it not for these things!

Like that of many preachers, the voice of Butters was of one crying in a desert to passing airs and unheeding sands. There were none to succor or uplift, and none to be beckoned to the fold. They were all in, and further effort was painting the lily and adding perfume to the rose. The strife was won, but yet he battled on. The great tide of human error flowed far beyond his ken, and he could drag no spiritual spoil from its turbid waters.

In fancy his religious establishment might be likened to a cocoon, into which none might enter, and from which none might emerge, except in a new and glorified state.

Some mournful Lombardy poplars stood in front of the unpainted structure, and on one side was the little cemetery, with its serried mounds and conventional epitaphs. A weeping willow wept near the center of the plot, some rabbits hopped about near the broken fence at the farther side of the enclosure, and a stray cow fed peacefully among the leaning slabs.

“There’s a lot o’ people represented in that flock o’ tombstones,” observed Hyatt, as we turned in from the road, “an’ they’s a lot o’ cussedness out there that it’s a good thing to have covered up.”

Both physically and spiritually the old church was a dismal remnant, but it was the regional social center. The building was utilized in many profane ways that saddened the pious heart of the Reverend Butters, but to him, its crowning desecration was the Turkey Club.

The membership of this unique organization comprised practically all of the male population within eight or ten miles up and down the river—and Sophy Perkins, of whom more hereafter. Most of the small politicians of the county were affiliated with the club, and used it for such propaganda as from time to time befitted their objects and petty ambitions. Originally its purpose was to foster and finance the annual “turkey shoot.” This popular event usually just preceded Thanksgiving, and was the occasion of a general holiday.

During the forty odd years of the club’s existence it had gradually broadened the scope of its early activities until it became more or less identified with pretty much everything of a local public character. Its only rival as a social focus was Posey’s store.

Under its auspices the Fourth of July, golden weddings, and other anniversaries, were celebrated. Dances, amateur theatricals, old settlers’ picnics, tax protest meetings, lectures, political “rallies,” “grand raffles,” dog and chicken fights, greased pig contests, quilting bees, ministerial showers and other affairs were “pulled off” during the year. The ministerial showers were about the only functions that the Reverend Butters did not consider unholy.

There were special meetings for discussion of diverse subjects, including the mistakes of congress, advice to the President, the tariff, the oppressions of capital, the tyranny of labor, prohibition, the negro question, restriction of immigration, Shakespeare criticism, the Wrongs of Ireland, and a host of other things that generated heat and lasting acrimony. The meetings sometimes approached turbulency when some over-zealous orator gave vent to unpopular ideas, or made statements that seemed to justify somebody in the audience in calling him a liar. Few participants ever left convinced of anything in particular, except the correctness of the opinions they had brought with them.

We found a gathering of about a hundred club members and numerous small boys in the grove back of the church. We strolled about through the crowd and I was introduced by my companions to a number of their old friends.

Bill was the official head of the club and deservedly popular. To the small boys he was a deified personage. His constitutional title was “Chief Gobbler,” and he bore it with easy grace and a quiet air of _noblesse oblige_. His opinion prevailed on club matters, except when Sophy Perkins was in contact with the situation, and this was most of the time.

Sophy was the secretary, treasurer, general manager, board of directors, and, to her mind, constituted the greater part of the membership, although her duties were supposed to be merely clerical. All her life she had yearned for something besides her husband to regulate and superintend, and the Turkey Club had been a godsend.