Chapter IV: Part 4

"We're goin' to lick you tell you promise to go back and never stick your head into the Hissawachee Bottom agin."

"But I won't promise."

"Then we'll put a finishment to ye."

"You are two to one. Will you give me time to draw my coat?"

"Wal, yes, I 'low we will."

The preacher dismounted with quiet deliberation, tied his bridle to a beech limb, offering a mental prayer to the God of Samson, and then laid his coat across the saddle.

"My friends," he said, "I don't want to whip you. I advise you now to let me alone. As an American citizen, I have a right to go where I please. My father was a revolutionary soldier, and I mean to fight for my rights."

"Shet up your jaw!" said Jake, swearing, and approaching the preacher from one side, while Bill came up on the other. Magruder was one of those short, stocky men who have no end of muscular force and endurance. In his unregenerate days he had been celebrated for his victories in several rude encounters. Never seeking a fight even then, he had, nevertheless, when any ambitious champion came from afar for the purpose of testing his strength, felt himself bound to "give him what he came after." He had now greatly the advantage of the two bullies in his knowledge of the art of boxing.

Before Jake had fairly finished his preliminary swearing the preacher had surprised him by delivering a blow that knocked him down. But Bill had taken advantage of this to strike Magruder heavily on the cheek. Jake, having felt the awful weight of Magruder's fist, was a little slow in coming to time, and the preacher had a chance to give Bill a most polemical blow on his nose; then turning suddenly, he rushed like a mad bull upon Sniger, and dealt him one tremendous blow that fractured two of his ribs and felled him to the earth. But Bill struck Magruder behind, knocked him over, and threw himself upon him after the fashion of the Western free fight. Nothing saved Magruder but his immense strength. He rose right up with Bill upon him, and then, by a deft use of his legs, tripped his antagonist and hurled him to the ground. He did not dare take advantage of his fall, however, for Jake had regained his feet and was coming up on him cautiously. But when Sniger saw Magruder rushing at him again, he made a speedy retreat into the bushes, leaving Magruder to fight it out with Bill, who, despite his sorry-looking nose, was again ready. But he now "fought shy," and kept retreating slowly backward and calling out, "Come up on him behind, Jake! Come up behind!" But the demoralized Jake had somehow got a superstitious notion that the preacher bristled with fists before and behind, having as many arms as a Hindoo deity. Bill kept backing until he tripped and fell over a bit of brush, and then picked himself up and made off, muttering:

"I aint a-goin' to try to handle him alone! He must have the very devil into him!"

About nine o'clock on that same Sunday morning, the Irish school-master, who was now boarding at Goodwin's, and who had just made an early visit to the Forks for news, accosted Morton with: "An' did ye hear the nooze, Moirton? Bill Conkey and Jake Sniger hev had a bit of Sunday morning ricreation. They throid to thrash the praycher as he was a-comin' through North's Holler, this mornin'; but they didn't make no allowance for the Oirish blood Magruder's got in him. He larruped 'em both single-handed, and Jake's ribs are cracked, and ye'd lawf to see Bill's nose! Captain must 'a' had some proivate intherest in that muss; hey, Moirton?"

"It's thunderin' mean!" said Morton; "two men on one, and him a preacher; and all I've got to say is, I wish he'd killed 'em both."

"And yer futer father-in-law into the bargain? Hey, Moirton? But fwat did I tell ye about Koike? The praycher's jaw is lamed by a lick Bill gave him, and Koike's to exhort in his place. I tould ye he had the botherin' sperit of prophecy in him."

The manliness in a character like Morton's must react, if depressed too far; and he now notified those who were to help him interrupt the meeting that if any disturbance were made, he should take it on himself to punish the offender. He would not fight alongside Bill McConkey and Jake Sniger, and he felt like seeking a quarrel with Lumsden, for the sake of justitifying himself to himself.

_CHAPTER XIV._

KIKE'S SERMON.

During the time that had intervened between Kike's conversion and Magruder's second visit to the settlement, Kike had developed a very considerable gift for earnest speech in the class meetings. In that day every influence in Methodist association contributed to make a preacher of a man of force. The reverence with which a self-denying preacher was regarded by the people was a great compensation for the poverty and toil that pertained to the office. To be a preacher was to be canonized during one's lifetime. The moment a young man showed zeal and fluency he was pitched on by all the brethren and sisters as one whose duty it was to preach the Gospel; he was asked whether he did not feel that he had a divine call; he was set upon watching the movements within him to see whether or not he ought to be among the sons of the prophets. Oftentimes a man was made to feel, in spite of his own better judgment, that he was a veritable Jonah, slinking from duty, and in imminent peril of a whale in the shape of some providential disaster. Kike, indeed, needed none of these urgings to impel him toward the ministry. He was a man of the prophetic temperament--one of those men whose beliefs take hold of them more strongly than the objects of sense. The future life, as preached by the early Methodists, with all its joys and all its awful torments, became the most substantial of realities to him. He was in constant astonishment that people could believe these things theoretically and ignore them in practice. If men were going headlong to perdition, and could be saved and brought into a paradise of eternal bliss by preaching, then what nobler work could there be than that of saving them? And, let a man take what view he may of a future life, Kike's opinion was the right one--no work can be so excellent as that of helping men to better living.

Kike had been poring over some works of Methodist biography which he had borrowed, and the sublimated life of Fletcher was the only one that fulfilled his ideal. Methodism preached consecration to its disciples. Kike had already learned from Mrs. Wheeler, who was the class-leader at Hissawachee settlement, and from Methodist literature, that he must "keep all on the altar." He must be ready to do, to suffer, or to perish, for the Master. The sternest sayings of Christ about forsaking father and mother, and hating one's own life and kindred, he heard often repeated in exhortations. Most people are not harmed by a literal understanding of hyperbolical expressions. Laziness and selfishness are great antidotes to fanaticism, and often pass current for common sense. Kike had no such buffers; taught to accept the words of the Gospel with the dry literalness of statutory enactments, he was too honest to evade their force, too earnest to slacken his obedience. He was already prepared to accept any burden and endure any trial that might be given as a test of discipleship. All his natural ambition, vehemence, and persistence, found exercise in his religious life; and the simple-hearted brethren, not knowing that the one sort of intensity was but the counter-part of the other, pointed to the transformation as a "beautiful conversion," a standing miracle. So it was, indeed, and, like all moral miracles, it was worked in the direction of individuality, not in opposition to it.

It was a grievous disappointment to the little band of Methodists that Brother Magruder's face was so swollen, after his encounter, as to prevent his preaching. They had counted much upon the success of this day's work, and now the devil seemed about to snatch the victory. Mrs. Wheeler enthusiastically recommended Kike as a substitute, and Magruder sent for him in haste. Kike was gratified to hear that the preacher wanted to see him personally. His sallow face flushed with pleasure as he stood, a slender stripling, before the messenger of God.

"Brother Lumsden," said Mr. Magruder, "are you ready to do and to suffer for Christ?"

"I trust I am," said Kike, wondering what the preacher could mean.

"You see how the devil has planned to defeat the Lord's work to-day. My lip is swelled, and my jaw so stiff that I can hardly speak. Are you ready to do the duty the Lord shall put upon you?"

Kike trembled from head to foot. He had often fancied himself preaching his first sermon in a strange neighborhood, and he had even picked out his text; but to stand up suddenly before his school-mates, before his mother, before Brady, and, worse than all, before Morton, was terrible. And yet, had he not that very morning made a solemn vow that he would not shrink from death itself!

"Do you think I am fit to preach?" he asked, evasively.

"None of us are fit; but here will be two or three hundred people hungry for the bread of life. The Master has fed you; he offers you the bread to distribute among your friends and neighbors. Now, will you let the fear of man make you deny the blessed Lord who has taken you out of a horrible pit and set your feet upon the Rock of Ages?"

Kike trembled a moment, and then said: "I will do whatever you say, if you will pray for me."

"I'll do that, my brother. And now take your Bible, and go into the woods and pray. The Lord will show you the way, if you put your whole trust in him."

The preacher's allusion to the bread of life gave Kike his subject, and he soon gathered a few thoughts which he wrote down on a fly-leaf of the Bible, in the shape of a skeleton. But it occurred to him that he had not one word to say on the subject of the bread of life beyond the sentences of his skeleton. The more this became evident to him, the greater was his agony of fear. He knelt on the brown leaves by a prostrate log; he made a "new consecration" of himself; he tried to feel willing to fail, so far as his own feelings were involved; he reminded the Lord of his promises to be with them he had sent; and then there came into his memory a text of Scripture: "For it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak." Taking it, after the manner of the early Methodist mysticism, that the text had been supernaturally "suggested" to him, he became calm; and finding, from the height of the sun, that it was about the hour for meeting, he returned to the house of Colonel Wheeler, and was appalled at the sight that met his eyes. All the settlement, and many from other settlements, had come. The house, the yard, the fences, were full of people. Kike was seized with a tremor. He did not feel able to run the gauntlet of such a throng. He made a detour, and crept in at the back door like a criminal. For stage-fright--this fear of human presence--is not a thing to be overcome by the will. Susceptible natures are always liable to it, and neither moral nor physical courage can avert it.

A chair had been placed in the front door of the log house, for Kike, that he might preach to the congregation indoors and the much larger one outdoors. Mr. Magruder, much battered up, sat on a wooden bench just outside. Kike crept into the empty chair in the doorway with the feeling of one who intrudes where he does not belong. The brethren were singing, as a congregational voluntary, to the solemn tune of "Kentucky," the hymn which begins:

"A charge to keep I have,
A God to glorify;
A never-dying soul to save
And fit it for the sky."

Magruder saw Kike's fright, and, leaning over to him, said: "If you get confused, tell your own experience." The early preacher's universal refuge was his own experience. It was a sure key to the sympathies of the audience.

Kike got through the opening exercises very well. He could pray, for in praying he shut his eyes and uttered the cry of his trembling soul for help. He had been beating about among two or three texts, either of which would do for a head-piece to the remarks he intended to make; but now one fixed itself in his mind as he stood appalled by his situation in the presence of such a throng. He rose and read, with a tremulous voice:

"There is a lad here which hath five barley loaves and two small fishes; but what are they among so many?"

The text arrested the attention of all. Magruder, though unable to speak without pain, could not refrain from saying aloud, after the free old Methodist fashion: "The Lord multiply the loaves! Bless and break to the multitude!" "Amen!" responded an old brother from another settlement, "and the Lord help the lad!" But Kike felt that the advantage which the text had given him would be of short duration. The novelty of his position bewildered him. His face flushed; his thoughts became confused; he turned his back on the audience out of doors, and talked rapidly to the few friends in the house: the old brethren leaned their heads upon their hands and began to pray. Whatever spiritual help their prayers may have brought him, their lugubrious groaning, and their doleful, audible prayers of "Lord, help!" depressed Kike immeasurably, and kept the precipice on which he stood constantly present to him. He tried in succession each division that he had sketched on the fly-leaf of the Bible, and found little to say on any of them. At last, he could not see the audience distinctly for confusion--there was a dim vision of heads swimming before him. He stopped still, and Magruder, expecting him to sit down, resolved to "exhort" if the pain should kill him. The Philistines meanwhile were laughing at Kike's evident discomfiture.

But Kike had no notion of sitting down. The laughter awakened his combativeness, and his combativeness restored his self-control. Persistent people begin their success where others end in failure. He was through with the sermon, and it had occupied just six minutes. The lad's scanty provisions had not been multiplied. But he felt relieved. The sermon over, there was no longer necessity for trying to speak against time, nor for observing the outward manner of a preacher.

"Now," he said, doggedly, "you have all seen that I cannot preach worth a cent. When David went out to fight, he had the good sense not to put on Saul's armor. I was fool enough to try to wear Brother Magruder's. Now, I'm done with that. The text and sermon are gone. But I'm not ashamed of Jesus Christ. And before I sit down, I am going to tell you all what he has done for a poor lost sinner like me."

Kike told the story with sincere directness. His recital of his own sins was a rebuke to others; with a trembling voice and a simple earnestness absolutely electrical, he told of his revengefulness, and of the effect of Magruder's preaching on him. And now that the flood-gates of emotion were opened, all trepidation departed, and there came instead the fine glow of martial courage. He could have faced the universe. From his own life the transition to the lives of those around him was easy. He hit right and left. The excitable crowd swayed with consternation as, in a rapid and vehement utterance, he denounced their sins with the particularity of one who had been familiar with them all his life. Magruder forgot to respond; he only leaned back and looked in bewilderment, with open eyes and mouth, at the fiery boy whose contagious excitement was fast setting the whole audience ablaze. Slowly the people pressed forward off the fences. All at once there was a loud bellowing cry from some one who had fallen prostrate outside the fence, and who began to cry aloud as if the portals of an endless perdition were yawning in his face. Magruder pressed through the crowd to find that the fallen man was his antagonist of the morning--Bill McConkey! Bill had concealed his bruised nose behind a tree, but had been drawn forth by the fascination of Kike's earnestness, and had finally fallen under the effect of his own terror. This outburst of agony from McConkey was fuel to the flames, and the excitement now spread to all parts of the audience. Kike went from man to man, and exhorted and rebuked each one in particular. Brady, not wishing to hear a public commentary on his own life, waddled away when he saw Kike coming; his mother wept bitterly under his exhortation; and Morton sat stock still on the fence listening, half in anguish and half in anger, to Kike's public recital of his sins.

At last Kike approached his uncle; for Captain Lumsden had come on purpose to enjoy Morton's proposed interruption. He listened a minute to Kike's exhortation, and the contrary emotions of alarm at the thought of God's judgment and anger at Kike's impudence contended within him until he started for his horse and was seized with that curious nervous affection which originated in these religious excitements and disappeared with them.* He jerked violently--his jerking only adding to his excitement, which in turn increased the severity of his contortions. This nervous affection was doubtless a natural physical result of violent excitement; but the people of that day imagined that it was produced by some supernatural agency, some attributing it to God, others to the devil, and yet others to some subtle charm voluntarily exercised by the preachers. Lumsden went home jerking all the way, and cursing the Methodists more bitterly than ever.

* It bore, however, a curious resemblance to the "dancing disease" which prevailed in Italy in the Middle Ages.

_CHAPTER XV._

MORTON'S RETREAT.

It would be hard to analyze the emotions with which Morton had listened to Kike's hot exhortation. In vain he argued with himself that a man need not be a Methodist and "go shouting and crying all over the country," in order to be good. He knew that Kike's life was better than his own, and that he had not force enough to break his habits and associations unless he did so by putting himself into direct antagonism with them. He inwardly condemned himself for his fear of Lumsden, and he inly cursed Kike for telling him the blunt truth about himself. But ever as there came the impulse to close the conflict and be at peace with himself by "putting himself boldly on the Lord's side," as Kike phrased it, he thought of Patty, whose aristocratic Virginia pride would regard marriage with a Methodist as worse than death.

And so, in mortal terror, lest he should yield to his emotions so far as to compromise himself, he rushed out of the crowd, hurried home, took down his rifle, and rode away, intent only on getting out of the excitement.

As he rode away from home he met Captain Lumsden hurrying from the meeting with the jerks, and leading his horse--the contortions of his body not allowing him to ride. With every step he took he grew more and more furious. Seeing Morton, he endeavored to vent his passion upon him.

"Why didn't--you--blow--why didn't--why didn't you blow your tin horns, this----" but at this point the jerks became so violent as to throw off his hat and shut off all utterance, and he only gnashed his teeth and hurried on with irregular steps toward home, leaving Morton to gauge the degree of the Captain's wrath by the involuntary distortion of his visage.

Goodwin rode listlessly forward, caring little whither he went; endeavoring only to allay the excitement, of his conscience, and to imagine some sort of future in which he might hope to return and win Patty in spite of Lumsden's opposition. Night found him in front of the "City Hotel," in the county-seat village of Jonesville; and he was rejoiced to find there, on some political errand, Mr. Burchard, whom he had met awhile before at Wilkins', in the character of a candidate for sheriff.

"How do you do, Mr. Morton? Howdy do?" said Burchard, cordially, having only heard Morton's first name and mistaking it for his last. "I'm lucky to meet you in this town. Do you live over this way? I thought you lived in our county and 'lectioneered you--expecting to get your vote."

The conjunction of Morton and Burchard on a Sunday evening (or any other) meant a game at cards, and as Burchard was the more skillful and just now in great need of funds, it meant that all the contents of Morton's pockets should soon transfer themselves to Burchard's, the more that Morton in his contending with the religious excitement of the morning rushed easily into the opposite excitement of gambling. The violent awakening of a religious revival has a sharp polarity--it has sent many a man headlong to the devil. When Morton had frantically bet and lost all his money, he proceeded to bet his rifle, then his grandfather's watch--an ancient time-piece, that Burchard examined with much curiosity. Having lost this, he staked his pocket-knife, his hat, his coat, and offered to put up his boots, but Burchard refused them. The madness of gambling was on the young man, however. He had no difficulty in persuading Burchard to take his mare as security for a hundred dollars, which he proceeded to gamble away by the easy process of winning once and losing twice.

When the last dollar was gone, his face was very white and calm. He leaned back in the chair and looked at Burchard a moment or two in silence.

"Burchard," said he, at last, "I'm a picked goose. I don't know whether I've got any brains or not. But if you'll lend me the rifle you won long enough for me to have a farewell shot, I'll find out what's inside this good-for-nothing cocoa-nut of mine."

Burchard was not without generous traits, and he was alarmed. "Come, Mr. Morton, don't be desperate. The luck's against you, but you'll have better another time. Here's your hat and coat, and you're welcome. I've been flat of my back many a time, but I've always found a way out. I'll pay your bill here to-morrow morning. Don't think of doing anything desperate. There's plenty to live for yet. You'll break some girl's heart if you kill yourself, maybe."

This thrust hurt Morton keenly. But Burchard was determined to divert him from his suicidal impulse.

"Come, old fellow, you're excited. Come out into the air. Now, don't kill yourself. You looked troubled when you got here. I take it, there's some trouble at home. Now, if there is"--here Burchard hesitated--"if there is trouble at home, I can put you on the track of a band of fellows that have been in trouble themselves. They help one another. Of course, I haven't anything to do with them; but they'll be mighty glad to get a hold of a fellow like you, that's a good shot and not afraid."

For a moment even outlawry seemed attractive to Morton, so utterly had hope died out of his heart. But only for a moment; then his moral sense recoiled.

"No; I'd rather shoot myself than kill somebody else. I can't take that road, Mr. Burchard."

"Of course you can't," said Burchard, affecting to laugh. "I knew you wouldn't. But I wanted to turn your thoughts away from bullets and all that. Now, Mr. Morton----"

"My name's not Morton. My last name is Goodwin--Morton Goodwin." This correction was made as a man always attends to trifles when he is trying to decide a momentous question.

"Morton Goodwin?" said Burchard, looking at him keenly, as the two stood together in the moonlight. Then, after pausing a moment, he added: "I had a crony by the name of Lew Goodwin, once. Devilish hard case he was, but good-hearted. Got killed in a fight in Pittsburg."

"He was my brother," said Morton.

"Your brother? thunder! You don't mean it. Let's see; he told me once his father's name was Moses--no; Job. Yes, that's it--Job. Is that your father's name?"

"Yes."

"I reckon the old folks must a took Lew's deviltry hard. Didn't kill 'em, did it?"

"No."

"Both alive yet?"

"Yes."

"And now you want to kill both of 'em by committing suicide. You ought to think a little of your mother----"

"Shut your mouth," said Morton, turning fiercely on Burchard; for he suddenly saw a vision of the agony his mother must suffer.

"Oh! don't get mad. I'm going to let you have back your horse and gun, only you must give me a bill of sale so that I may be sure you won't gamble them away to somebody else. You must redeem them on your honor in six months, with a hundred and twenty-five dollars. I'll do that much for the sake of my old friend, Lew Goodwin, who stood by me in many a tight place, and was a good-hearted fellow after all."

Morton accepted this little respite, and Burchard left the tavern. As it was now past midnight, Goodwin did not go to bed. At two o'clock he gave Dolly corn, and before daylight he rode out of the village. But not toward home. His gambling and losses would be speedily reported at home and to Captain Lumsden. And moreover, Kike would persecute him worse than ever. He rode out of town in the direction opposite to that he would have taken in returning to Hissawachee, and he only knew that it was opposite. He was trying what so many other men have tried in vain to do--to run away from himself.

But not the fleetest Arabian charger, nor the swiftest lightning express, ever yet enabled a man to leave a disagreeable self behind. The wise man knows better, and turns round and faces it.

About noon Morton, who had followed an obscure and circuitous trail of which he knew nothing, drew near to a low log-house with deer's horns over the door, a sign that the cabin was devoted to hotel purposes--a place where a stranger might get a little food, a place to rest on the floor, and plenty of whiskey. There were a dozen horses hitched to trees about it, and Goodwin got down and went in from a spirit of idle curiosity. Certainly the place was not attractive. The landlord had a cut-throat way of looking closely at a guest from under his eye-brows; the guests all wore black beards, and Morton soon found reason to suspect that these beards were not indigenous. He was himself the object of much disagreeable scrutiny, but he could hardly restrain a mischievous smile at thought of the disappointment to which any highwayman was doomed who should attempt to rob him in his present penniless condition. The very worst that could happen would be the loss of Dolly and his rifle. It soon occurred to him that this lonely place was none other than "Brewer's Hole," one of the favorite resorts of Micajah Harp's noted band of desperadoes, a place into which few honest men ever ventured.

One of the men presently stepped to the window, rested his foot upon the low sill, and taking up a piece of chalk, drew a line from the toe to the top of his boot.* Several others imitated him; and Morton, in a spirit of reckless mischief and adventure, took the chalk and marked his right boot in the same way.

* In relating this incident, I give the local tradition as it is yet told in the neighborhood. It does not seem that chalking one's boot is a very prudent mode of recognizing the members of a secret band, but I do not suppose that men who follow a highwayman's life are very wise people.

"Will you drink?" said the man who had first chalked his boot.

Goodwin accepted the invitation, and as they stood near together, Morton could plainly discover the falseness of his companion's beard. Presently the man fixed his eyes on Goodwin and asked, in an indifferent tone: "Cut or carry?"

"Carry," answered Morton, not knowing the meaning of the lingo, but finding himself in a predicament from which there was no escape but by drifting with the current. A few minutes later a bag, which seemed to contain some hundreds of dollars, was thrust into his hand, and Morton, not knowing what to do with it, thought best to "carry" it off. He mounted his mare and rode away in a direction opposite to that in which he had come. He had not gone more than three miles when he met Burchard.

"Why, Burchard, how did you come here?"

"Oh, I came by a short cut."

But Burchard did not say that he had traveled in the night, to avoid observation.

"Hello! Goodwin," cried Burchard, "you've got chalk on your boot! I hope you haven't joined the--"

"Well, I'll tell you, Burchard, how that come. I found the greatest set of disguised cut-throats you ever saw, at this little hole back here. You hadn't better go there, if you don't want to be relieved of all the money you got last night. I saw them chalking their boots, and I chalked mine, just to see what would come of it. And here's what come of it;" and with that, Morton showed his bag of money. "Now," he said, "if I could find the right owner of this money, I'd give it to him; but I take it he's buried in some holler, without nary coffin or grave-stone. I 'low to pay you what I owe you, and take the rest out to Vincennes, or somewheres else, and use it for a nest-egg. 'Finders, keepers,' you know."

Burchard looked at him darkly a moment. "Look here, Morton--Goodwin, I mean. You'll lose your head, if you fool with chalk that way. If you don't give that money up to the first man that asks for it, you are a dead man. They can't be fooled for long. They'll be after you. There's no way now but to hold on to it and give it up to the first man that asks; and if he don't shoot first, you'll be lucky. I'm going down this trail a way. I want to see old Brewer. He's got a good deal of political influence. Good-bye!"

Morton rode forward uneasily until he came to a place two miles farther on, where another trail joined the one he was traveling. Here there stood a man with a huge beard, a blanket over his shoulders, holes cut through for arms, after the frontier fashion, a belt with pistols and knives, and a bearskin cap. The stranger stepped up to him, reaching out his hand and saying nothing. Morton was only too glad to give up the money. And he set Dolly off at her best pace, seeking to get as far as possible from the head-quarters of the cut-or-carry gang. He could not but wonder how Burchard should seem to know them so well. He did not much like the thought that Burchard's forbearance had bound him to support that gentleman's political aspirations when he had opportunity. This friendly relation with thieves was not what he would have liked to see in a favorite candidate, but a cursed fatality seemed to be dragging down all his high aspirations. It was like one of those old legends he had heard his mother recite, of men who had begun by little bargains with the devil, and had presently found themselves involved in evil entanglements on every hand.

_CHAPTER XVI._

SHORT SHRIFT.

But Morton had no time to busy himself now with nice scruples. Bread and meat are considerations more imperative to a healthy man than conscience. He had no money. He might turn aside from the trail to hunt; indeed this was what he had meant to do when he started. But ever, as he traveled, he had become more and more desirous of getting away from himself. He was now full sixty or seventy miles from home, but he could not make up his mind to stop and devote himself to hunting. At four o'clock the valley of the Mustoga lay before him, and Morton, still purposeless, rode on. And now at last the habitual thought of his duty to his mother was returning upon him, and he began to be hesitant about going on. After all, his flight seemed foolish. Patty might not yet be lost; and as for Kike's revival, why should he yield to it, unless he chose?

In this painful indecision he resolved to stop and crave a night's lodging at the crossing of the river. He was the more disposed to this that Dolly, having been ridden hard all day without food, showed unmistakable signs of exhaustion, and it was now snowing. He would give her a night's rest, and then perhaps take the road back to the Hissawachee, or go into the wilderness and hunt.

"Hello the house!" he called. "Hello!"

A long, lank man, in butternut jeans, opened the door, and responded with a "Hello!"

"Can I get to stay here all night?"

"Wal, no, I 'low not, stranger. Kinder full to-night. You mout git a place about a mile furder on whar you could hang up for the night, mos' likely; but I can't keep you, no ways."

"My mare's dreadful tired, and I can sleep anywhere," plead Morton.

"She does look sorter tuckered out, sartain; blamed if she don't! Whar did you git her?"

"Raised her," said Morton.

"Whar abouts?"

"Hissawachee."

"You don't say! How far you rid her to-day?"

"From Jonesville."

"Jam up fifty miles, and over tough roads! Mighty purty critter, that air. Powerful clean legs. She's number one. Is she your'n, did you say?"

"Well, not exactly mine. That is--". Here Morton hesitated.

"Stranger," said the settler, "you can't put up here, no ways. I tuck in one of your sort a month ago, and he rid my sorrel mare off in the middle of the night. I'll bore a hole through him, ef I ever set eyes on him." And the man had disappeared in the house before Morton could reply.

To be in a snow-storm without shelter was unpleasant; to be refused a lodging and to be mistaken for a horse-thief filled the cup of Morton's bitterness. He reluctantly turned his horse's head toward the river. There was no ferry, and the stream was so swollen that he must needs swim Dolly across.

He tightened his girth and stroked Dolly affectionately, with a feeling that she was the only friend he had left. "Well, Dolly," he said, "it's too bad to make you swim, after such a day; but you must. If we drown, we'll drown together."

The weary Dolly put her head against his cheek in a dumb trustfulness.

There was a road cut through the steep bank on the other side, so that travelers might ride down to the water's edge. Knowing that he would have to come out at that place, young Goodwin rode into the water as far up the stream as he could find a suitable place. Then, turning the mare's head upward, he started across. Dolly swam bravely enough until she reached the middle of the stream; then, finding her strength well nigh exhausted after her travel, and under the burden of her master, she refused his guidance, and turned her head directly toward the road, which offered the only place of exit. The rapid current swept horse and rider down the stream; but still Dolly fought bravely, and at last struck land just below the road. Morton grasped the bushes over his head, urged Dolly to greater exertions, and the well-bred creature, rousing all the remains of her magnificent force, succeeded in reaching the road. Then the young man got down and caressed her, and, looking back at the water, wondered why he should have struggled to preserve a life that he was not able to regulate, and that promised him nothing but misery and embarrassment.

The snow was now falling rapidly, and Morton pushed his tired filley on another mile. Again he hallooed. This time he was welcomed by an old woman, who, in answer to his inquiry, said he might put the mare in the stable. She didn't ginerally keep no travelers, but it was too orful a night fer a livin' human bein' to be out in. Her son Jake would be in thireckly, and she 'lowed he wouldn't turn nobody out in sech a night. 'Twuz good ten miles to the next house.

Morton hastened to stable Dolly, and to feed her, and to take his place by the fire.

Presently the son came in.

"Howdy, stranger?" said the youth, eyeing Morton suspiciously. "Is that air your mar in the stable?"

"Ye-es," said Morton, hesitatingly, uncertain whether he could call Dolly his or not, seeing she had been transferred to Burchard.

"Whar did you come from?"

"From Hissawachee."

"Whar you makin' fer?"

"I don't exactly know."

"See here, mister! Akordin' to my tell, that air's a mighty peart sort of a hoss fer a feller to ride what don' know, to save his gizzard, whar he mout be a travelin'. We don't keep no sich people as them what rides purty hosses and can't giv no straight account of theirselves. Akordin' to my tell, you'll hev to hitch up yer mar and putt. It mout gin us trouble to keep you."

"You ain't going to send me out such a night as this, when I've rode fifty mile a'ready?" said Morton.

"What in thunder'd you ride fifty mile to-day fer? Yer health, I reckon. Now, stranger, I've jist got one word to say to you, and that is this ere: _Putt_! PUTT THIRECKLY! Clar out of these 'ere diggin's! That's all. Jist putt!"

The young man pronounced the vowel in "put" very flat, as it is sounded in the first syllable of "putty," and seemed disposed to add a great many words to this emphatic imperative when he saw how much Morton was disinclined to leave the warm hearth. "Putt out, I say! I ain't afeard of none of yer gang. I hain't got nary 'nother word."

"Well," said Morton, "I have only got one word--_I won't_! You haven't got any right to turn a stranger out on such a night."

"Well, then, I'll let the reggilators know abouten you."

"Let them know, then," said Morton; and he drew nearer the fire.

The strapping young fellow straightened himself up and looked at Morton in wonder, more and more convinced that nobody but an outlaw would venture on a move so bold, and less and less inclined to attempt to use force as his conviction of Morton's desperate character increased. Goodwin, for his part, was not a little amused; the old mischievous love of fun reasserted itself in him as he saw the decline of the young man's courage.

"If you think I am one of Micajah Harp's band, why don't you be careful how you treat me? The band might give you trouble. Let's have something to eat. I haven't had anything since last night; I am starving."

"Marm," said the young man, "git him sompin'. He's tuck the house and we can't help ourselves."

Morton had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, and in his amusement at the success of his ruse and in the comfortable enjoyment of food after his long fast his good spirits returned.

When he awoke the next morning in his rude bed in the loft, he became aware that there were a number of men in the room below, and he could gather that they were talking about him. He dressed quickly and came down-stairs. The first thing he noticed was that the settler who had refused him lodging the night before was the centre of the group, the next that they had taken possession of his rifle. This settler had roused the "reggilators," and they had crossed the creek in a flat-boat some miles below and come up the stream determined to capture this young horse-thief. It is a singular tribute to the value of the horse that among barbarous or half-civilized peoples horse-stealing is accounted an offense more atrocious than homicide. In such a community to steal a man's horse is the grandest of larcenies--it is to rob him of the stepping-stone to civilization.

For such philosophical reflections as this last, however, Morton had no time. He was in the hands of an indignant crowd, some of whom had lost horses and other property from the depredations of the famous band of Micajah Harp, and all of whom were bent on exacting the forfeit from this indifferently dressed young man who rode a horse altogether too good for him.

Morton was conducted three miles down the river to a log tavern, that being a public and appropriate place for the rendering of the decisions of Judge Lynch, and affording, moreover, the convenient refreshments of whiskey and tobacco to those who might become exhausted in their arduous labors on behalf of public justice. There was no formal trial. The evidence was given in in a disjointed and spontaneous fashion; the jury was composed of the whole crowd, and what the Quakers call the "sense of the meeting" was gathered from the general outcry. Educated in Indian wars and having been left at first without any courts or forms of justice, the settlers had come to believe their own expeditious modes of dealing with the enemies of peace and order much superior to the prolix method of the lawyers and judges.

And as for Morton, nothing could be much clearer than that he was one of the gang. The settler who had refused him a lodging first spoke:

"You see, I seed in three winks," he began, "that that feller didn't own the hoss. He looked kinder sheepish. Well, I poked a few questions at him and I reckon I am the beatin'est man to ax questions in this neck of timber. I axed him whar he come from, and he let it out that he'd rid more'n fifty miles. And I kinder blazed away at praisin' his hoss tell I got him off his guard, and then, unbeknownst to him, I treed him suddently. I jest axed him ef the hoss was his'n and he hemmed and hawed and says, says he: 'Well, not exactly mine.' Then I tole him to putt out."

"Did he tell you the mar wuzn't adzackly his'n?" put in the youth whose unwilling hospitality Morton had enjoyed.

"Yes."

"Well, then, he lied one time or nuther, that's sartain shore. He tole me she wuz. And when I axed him whar he was agoin', he tole me he didn' know. I suspicioned him then, and I tole him to clar out; and he wouldn'. Well, I wuz agoin' to git down my gun and blow his brains out; but marm got skeered and didn' want me to, and I 'lowed it was better to let him stay, and I 'low'd you fellers mout maybe come over and cotch him, or liker'n not some feller'd come along and inquire arter that air mar. Then he ups and says ef the ole woman don' give him sompin' to eat she'd ketch it from Micajah Harp's band. He said as how he was a member of that gang. An' he said he hadn't had nothin' to eat sence the night before, havin' rid fer twenty-four hours."

"I didn't say----" began Morton.

"Shet up your mouth tell I'm done. Haint you got no manners? I tole him as how I didn't keer three continental derns* fer his whole band weth Micajah Harp throw'd onto the top, but the ole woman wuz kinder sorter afeared to find she'd cotch a rale hoss-thief and she gin him a little sompin' to eat. And he did gobble it, I tell _you_!"

* A saying having its origin, no doubt, in the worthlessness of the paper money issued by the Continental Congress.

Young rawbones had repeated this statement a dozen times already since leaving home with the prisoner. But he liked to tell it. Morton made the best defense he could, and asked them to send to Hissawachee and inquire, but the crowd thought that this was only a ruse to gain time, and that if they delayed his execution long, Micajah Harp and his whole band would be upon them.

The mob-court was unanimously in favor of hanging. The cry of "Come on, boys, let's string him up," was raised several times, and "rushes" at him were attempted, but these rushes never went further than the incipient stage, for the very good reason that while many were anxious to have him hung, none were quite ready to adjust the rope. The law threatened them on one side, and a dread of the vengeance of Micajah Harp's cut-throats appalled them on the other. The predicament in which the crowd found themselves was a very embarrassing one, but these administrators of impromptu justice consoled themselves by whispering that it was best to wait till night.

And the rawboned young man, who had given such eager testimony that he "warn't afeard of the whole gang with ole Micajah throw'd onto the top," concluded about noon that he had better go home--the ole woman mout git skeered, you know. She wuz powerful skeery and mout git fits liker'n not, you know.

The weary hours of suspense drew on. However ready Morton may have been to commit suicide in a moment of rash despair, life looked very attractive to him now that its duration was measured by the descending sun. And what a quickener of conscience is the prospect of immediate death! In these hours the voice of Kike, reproving him for his reckless living, rang in his memory ceaselessly. He saw what a distorted failure he had made of life; he longed for a chance to try it over again. But unless help should come from some unexpected quarter, he saw that his probation was ended.

It is barely possible that the crowd might have become so demoralized by waiting as to have let Morton go, or at least to have handed him over to the authorities, had there not come along at that moment Mr. Mellen, the stern and ungrammatical Methodist preacher of whom Morton had made so much sport in Wilkins's Settlement. Having to preach at fifty-eight appointments in four weeks, he was somewhat itinerant, and was now hastening to a preaching place near by. One of the crowd, seeing Mr. Mellen, suggested that Morton had orter be allowed to see a preacher, and git "fixed up," afore he died. Some of the others disagreed. They warn't nothin' in the nex' world too bad fer a hoss-thief, by jeeminy hoe-cakes. They warn't a stringin' men up to send 'em to heaven, but to t' other place.

Mellen was called in, however, and at once recognized Morton as the ungodly young man who had insulted him and disturbed the worship of God. He exhorted him to repent, and to tell who was the owner of the horse, and to seek a Saviour who was ready to forgive even the dying thief upon the cross. In vain Morton protested his innocence. Mellen told him that he could not escape, though he advised the crowd to hand him over to the sheriff. But Mellen's additional testimony to Morton's bad character had destroyed his last chance of being given up to the courts. As soon as Mr. Mellen went away, the arrangements for hanging him at nightfall began to take definite shape, and a rope was hung over a limb, in full sight of the condemned man. Mr. Mellen used with telling effect, at every one of the fifty-eight places upon his next round, the story of the sad end of this hardened young man, who had begun as a scoffer and ended as an impenitent thief.

Morton sat in a sort of stupor, watching the sun descending toward the horizon. He heard the rude voices of the mob about him. But he thought of Patty and his mother.

While the mob was thus waiting for night, and Morton waiting for death, there passed upon the road an elderly man. He was just going out of sight, when Morton roused himself enough to observe him. When he had disappeared, Goodwin was haunted with the notion that it must be Mr. Donaldson, the old Presbyterian preacher, whose sermons he had so often heard at the Scotch Settlement. Could it be that thoughts of home and mother had suggested Donaldson? At least, the faintest hope was worth clutching at in a time of despair.

"Call him back!" cried Morton. "Won't somebody call that old man back? He knows me."

Nobody was disposed to serve the culprit. The leaders looked knowingly the one at the other, and shrugged their shoulders.

"If you don't call him back you will be a set of murderers!" cried the despairing Goodwin.

_CHAPTER XVII._

DELIVERANCE.

Parson Donaldson was journeying down to Cincinnati--at that time a thriving village of about two thousand people--to attend Presbytery and to contend manfully against the sinful laxity of some of his brethren in the matters of doctrine and revivals. In previous years Mr. Donaldson had been beaten a little in his endeavors to have carried through the extremest measures against his more progressive "new-side" brethren. He considered the doctrines of these zealous Presbyterians as very little better than the crazy ranting of the ungrammatical circuit riders. At the moment of passing the tavern where Morton sat, condemned to death, he was eagerly engaged in "laying out" a speech with which he intended to rout false doctrines and annihilate forever incipient fanaticism. His square head had fallen forward, and he only observed that there was a crowd of godless and noisy men about the tavern. He could not spare time to note anything farther, for the fate of Zion seemed to hang upon the weight and cogency of the speech which he meant to deliver at Cincinnati. He had almost passed out of sight when Morton first caught sight of him; and when the young man, finding that no one would go after him, set up a vigorous calling of his name, Mr. Donaldson did not hear it, or at least did not think for an instant that anybody in that crowd could be calling his own name. How should he hear Morton's cry? For just at that moment he had reached the portion of his argument in which he triumphantly proved that his new-side friends, however unconscious they might be of the fact, were of necessity Pelagians, and, hence, guilty of fatal error.

Morton's earnest entreaties at last moved one of the crowd.

"Well, I don't mind," he said; "I'll call him. 'Pears like as ef he's a-lyin' any how. I don't 'low as he knows the ole coon, or the ole coon knows him--liker'n not he's a-foolin' by lettin' on; but 't won't do no harm to call him back." Saying which, he mounted his gaunt horse and rode away after Mr. Donaldson.

"Hello, stranger! I say, there! Mister! O, mister! Hello, you ole man on horseback!"

This was the polite manner of address with which the messenger interrupted the theological meditations of the worthy Mr. Donaldson at the moment of his most triumphant anticipations of victory over his opponents.

"Well, what is it?" asked the minister, turning round on the messenger a little tartly; much as one would who is suddenly awakened and not at all pleased to be awakened.

"They's a feller back here as we tuck up fer a hoss-thief, and we had three-quarters of a notion of stringin' on him up; but he says as how as he knows you, and ef you kin do him any good, I hope you'll do it, for I do hate to see a feller being hung, that's sartain shore."

"A horse-thief says that he knows me?" said the parson, not yet fairly awake to the situation. "Indeed? I'm in a great hurry. What does he want? Wants me to pray with him, I suppose. Well, it is never too late. God's election is of grace, and often he seems to select the greatest sinners that he may thereby magnify his grace and get to himself a great name. I'll go and see him."