The Preacher of Cedar Mountain Part 6

"Their own what?"

"Well, I may say their own Church," said the father.

"Church? You call theirs a Church?" exclaimed Jim.

"Why not? Their best teachers inculcate cleanness, courage, kindness, sobriety, and truth; they tell of one Great Spirit who is the creator and ruler of all things and to whom they pray. Surely, these things are truth and all light comes from G.o.d; and, even though they have not learned the great story of the redemption, we must respect their faith so far as it goes."

"And these are the 'beasts of heathen' I have always heard about."

"Oh, yes," said the missionary, "they have many habits that I hope to see stamped out; but I have learned that my Church was wise when it sent me, not to antagonize and destroy, but to seek for the good in these people and fortify that as a foundation on which to build the true faith."

"Well, this is all a great surprise to me," said Hartigan; and again his deepest astonishment lay in the new knowledge of the papist, rather than of the Indian.

They were several hours together. The missionary and his Indian friends finally left the train at a station nearest their home in Pine Ridge and Jim was left alone with some very new ideas and some old-time prejudices very badly shaken.

The rest of the journey he sat alone, thinking--thinking hard.

There was no one to meet him at the Cedar Mountain station when he stepped out of the car--the last pa.s.senger from the last car, in the last station--for at that time this was the north end of the track. All his earthly belongings, besides the things he wore, were in a valise that he carried in his hand; in his pocket he had less than five dollars in money, and his letter of introduction to the Rev. Dr. Jebb of Cedar Mountain.

In all his life, Jim had never seen a mountain, nor even a high hill; and he stood gazing at the rugged pile behind the town with a sense of fascination. It seemed so unreal, a sort of pretty thing with pretty little trees on it. Was it near and little, or far and big? He could not surely tell. After gazing a while, he turned to the railway agent and said:

"How far off is that mountain top?"

"A matter of two miles," was the answer.

Two miles! It did not seem two hundred rods; and yet it did, for the man on horseback half way there looked toy-like; and the distance grew as he gazed. A rugged, rocky pile with white snow-ravines still showing in the springtime sun, some scattering pines among the ledges and, lower, a breadth of cedars, they were like a robe that hid the shoulders and flanks of the mountain, then spread out on the plain, broken at a place where water glinted, and later blended with the purple sage that lent its colour to the view.

It was all so new and fairylike; "the glamour and dhrei that the banshee works on the eyes of men," was the thought that came, and the Irish tales his mother used to tell of fays and lepricauns seemed realized before his eyes. Then, acting on a sudden impulse, he dropped his bag and started off, intent on going up the mountain.

Swinging a stick that he had picked up, he went away with long, athletic strides, and the motor engines of his frame responding sent his blood a-rus.h.i.+ng and his spirit bounding, till his joy broke forth in song, the song of the singing prophet of Judea's hills, a song he had learned in Coulter for the sweetness of the music rather than for its message:

How beautiful upon the mountains Are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, That publisheth peace, That bringeth good tidings of good, That publisheth salvation, That saith unto Zion, "Thy G.o.d reigneth."

And when he reached the cedar belt he knew that the railway man had spoken the truth, but he held on up the ever-steepening trail, ceasing his song only when he needed the breath to climb. A cottontail waved its beacon for a minute before him, then darted into the underbrush; the mountain jays called out a wailing cry; and the flicker clucked above.

Sharp turns were in the trail, else it had faced an upright cliff or overshot a precipice; but it was easily followed and, at length, he was above the cedars. Here the horse trail ended, but a moccasin path went on. It turned abruptly from a sheer descent, then followed a narrow knife edge to rise again among the rocks to the last, the final height, a little rocky upland with a lonely standing rock. Here Jim turned to see the plain, to face about and gasp in sudden wonder; for the spell of the mountain seen afar is but a little echo of the mountain power when it has raised you up.

He recalled the familiar words, not understood till now:

"Thy mercies are like mountains great, Thy judgments are like floods."

He gazed and his breath came fast as he took in the thought, old thoughts, yet new thoughts, strong and elusive, and wondered what he had found.

Crossing the little upland, he approached its farther end and stood by the pinnacle of rock that, like a lonely watchman, forever looked down on the blue and golden plains. A mountain chipmunk stared at him, flicked its tail, and dived under a flat ledge; a bird whose real home was a thousand miles off in the north faced the upland breeze and sang in its unknown tongue. Jim drew still nearer the rocky spire, rounded a ledge, and faced an unexpected sight. In a little open lodge of willows, bent and roofed with a canvas cover, sat an Indian youth, alone, motionless, beside him was a pot of water, and between him and the tall rock, a little fire, from which a tiny thread of smoke arose.

Hartigan started, for that very morning he had learned from the old Jesuit enough about the Red-men to know that this was something unusual.

On the rock beyond the fire he saw, painted in red, two symbols that are used in the Red-man's prayers: "the blessed vision" leading up to the "spirit heart of all things." A measure of comprehension came to him, and Father Cyprian's words returned in new force.

The lad in the little lodge raised a hand in the sign of "Stop," then gently waved in a way that, in all lands and languages, means: "Please go away." There was a soft, dreamy look in his face, and Jim, realizing that he had entered another man's holy place, held back and, slowly turning, sought the downward trail.

It came to him clearly now this was one of the interesting things told him that morning by the Jesuit. This Indian boy was taking his _hambeday_, his manhood fast and vigil; seeking for the vision that should be his guide, he was burning his altar fire beside the Spirit Rock.

As he retraced his steps the wonder of this new world enveloped Jim. At the edge of the cedars he paused and, looking out over the great expanse of green plumage, he said aloud: "All my life have I lived in the bottom of a little narrow well, with barely a glimpse of the sky, and never a view of the world. Now I am suddenly brought forth to see the world and the bigness of the heavens, and the things I dimly got from books are here about me, big, living, actual."

He was himself so much, could he be also a part of this wonder-world? It seemed impossible, so wholly new was everything it held.

CHAPTER XI

A New Force Enters His Life

Back at the railway station, Hartigan looked for his bag where he had dropped it, but it was gone. The agent, glancing across and divining his quandary, said stolidly:

"I guess Dr. Jebb took it. Ain't you the party he's looking for? He said 'J. H.' was the initials. You'll find him at that white house with the flowers just where the boardwalk ends."

Jim went down the road with alert and curious eyes and presented himself at the white cottage. He found a grave and kindly welcome from Mrs.

Jebb--a stout, middle-aged, motherly person--and from the Rev. Josiah Jebb, D.D., M.A., etc., pastor of the Methodist Church and his princ.i.p.al to be for the coming year.

A gentle, kindly man and a deep scholar, Dr. Jebb had no more knowledge of the world than a novice in a convent. His wife was his s.h.i.+eld and buckler in all things that concerned the battle with men and affairs; all his thoughts and energies were for his pulpit and his books.

Failing health rather than personal fitness had to do with Dr. Jebb's being sent to the hills. But the vast extent of territory in his charge, the occasional meetings in places separated by long hard rides, together with the crude, blunt ranch and farmer folk who were his flock--all called for a minister with the fullest strength of youth and mental power. It was to meet this need that the trustees of the church had sent James Hartigan to supplement the labours of the Rev. Dr. Jebb. Thus these two, diverse in every particular of bodily and mental equipment, were chosen to meet the same religious problem.

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

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

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

The pa.s.sionate youth in him responded to the beauty of it; he felt it lay hold on him and he would have sung, but he found no words in all his college-born songs to tell of this new joy. "I didn't know it _could_ be so beautiful. I didn't know," he said again and again.

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

Jim was nearly back to the town when a horse and rig appeared coming rapidly toward him. He heard a shout and saw a man run from a house to look. The horse was going very fast and shaking his head; something was wrong. As it came toward him he saw that the driver was a young girl.

She was holding with all her strength to the reins, but the horse, a tall, rawboned creature, was past control. Horses Jim surely understood.

He stepped well aside, then wheeling as the runaway went past, he ran his best. For a little while a swift man can run with a horse, and in that little while Jim was alongside, had seized the back of the seat, and, with a spurt and a mighty leap, had tumbled into the rig beside the driver. Instantly she held the reins toward him and gasped:

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

"No," he said with amazing calmness, "you _can_ control him. Don't be afraid. You hurt yourself pulling; ease up. Keep him straight, that's all."

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

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