The Preacher of Cedar Mountain Part 9

The Lure of the Saddle

One of the needs that Hartigan very soon became aware of in his far-flung pastoral work was that of a good saddle horse. An income of three hundred dollars a year will not maintain very much in the way of a stable, but a horse had to be got, and the idea of looking for one was exceedingly pleasant to him. It needed but the sight and smell of the horse leathers to rouse the old pa.s.sion bred and fostered in Downey's stable. He loved the saddle, he knew horses as few men did, and had he been ninety pounds lighter he would have made a famous jockey.

For many days he was able to put his mind on nothing else. He eagerly took every chance to visit likely stock; he was never so happy as when he was astride of some mettlesome animal, interpreting its moods as only the born horseman can do, and drawing on the reserves of strength which are closed to all but the expert rider. He responded in every fibre of his great physique to the zest of this renewed experience of a loved and lost stable life, and yet the very pa.s.sion of his enjoyment appalled him at times for it seemed to be in some sense a disloyalty to the new life he had taken up and to draw him away from it.

In those days there were motley bands of immigrants crossing the plains from the East, making for the Black Hills as an island of promise in the great open sea, and one of these wanderers from far-off Illinois arrived one evening with the usual outfit of prairie schooner, oxen, milch cow, saddle horses, dogs, and children. Calamity had overtaken the caravan.

The mother had died; the father was disgusted with the country and everything in it; and his one idea was to sell his outfit and get the children back East, back to school and granny. At the auction, the cattle brought good prices, but no one wanted the horses. They were gaunt and weary, saddle-and spur-galled; one young and the other past middle life. It was the young horse that caught Hartigan's eye. It was rising three, a well-built skeleton, but with a readiness to look alert, a full mane and tail, and a glint of gold on the coat that had a meaning and a message for the horse-wise. The auctioneer was struggling to raise a bid.

"Will any one bid on this fine young colt? All he needs is oats, and a few other things."

A laugh went up, which was just what the auctioneer wanted, for merriment is essential to a successful sale.

"Here now, boys, who will start him at five dollars? And him worth a hundred."

It was too much for Hartigan. He raised his finger to the auctioneer.

"There, now, there's a preacher that knows a horse," he prattled away, but no second offer came, and the colt was knocked down to Hartigan for five greasy dollars.

"A good clean-down is worth a bushel of oats to a horse," is old stable wisdom, "and a deal cheaper," as Hartigan added. Within the hour Blazing Star, as the new owner named him from the star blaze in his forehead, was rubbed and curry-combed as probably he never had been in his life before. He was fed with a little grain and an abundance of prairie hay, his wounds were painted with iodine and his mane was plaited. He was handled from forelock to fetlock and rubbed and ma.s.saged like a prizefighter who is out for mighty stakes.

"They are just like humans," Hartigan remarked to the "perchers" at s.h.i.+ves's blacksmith shop. "All they need is kindness and common sense."

Before a month had gone, Hartigan was offered fifty dollars for the colt; and this in a land where twenty-five dollars is the usual price for a saddle horse. In truth, no one would have recognized this fine, spirited young horse as the sorry jade that landed in the town a short four weeks before. But Hartigan, who had a trainer's eye, said to s.h.i.+ves and the "perchers":

"Wait for two months and then you will see something."

And they did. They saw the young Achilles riding down the street on the wonderful chosen steed of all the herd. There were perfectly balanced life and power in every move of both, the eagerness to up and do, the grace of consummate animalism. They had seen many a fine man on a n.o.ble horse, but never before had they beheld a picture so satisfying to both eye and heart as that of the Preacher on his five-dollar steed.

Five miles from Cedar Mountain is Fort Ryan and to the south of it a plain, where every year in the first week of July the Indians gather in their tepees and the whites in tents and prairie schooners for a sort of fair, in which are many kinds of sin on the largest scale. Herds of horses are there, and racing is a favourite sport. It was here on the Fourth of July that an Indian on a rough-looking buckskin pony had won, over all the field that year, a purse containing five hundred dollars.

The whites, who had their racers set at naught, were ready for almost any scheme that promised them revenge, and they made an ill-favoured and sulky lot as they sat on the shady side of the movable saloon that lingered still on the racing plain. Their eyes were pinched at the corners with gazing at the sunlight, and their ragged beards were like autumn gra.s.s. A horseman appeared in the distance, and ambled toward them. This was a common enough sight, but the easy pace was pleasing to the eye, and when he drew near these men of the saddle found a horseman's pleasure in the clean-limbed steed so easily ridden.

"Guess it's the new preacher," said one with a laugh. "He's come down from Cedar Mountain to save us from h.e.l.l, as if h.e.l.l could be any worse than this."

Hartigan drew up to inquire the direction to a certain cabin and when he learned the way he rode on.

"Looks to me like he would have made a cowboy, if they had ketched him young."

"Do you see that horse? Ain't there some blood there?"

"Yes, there is," said Long Bill, "and it strikes me it is worth following up. Let's have another look."

The group sauntered to where the Preacher was making a call and one of them began:

"Say, mister, that's quite a horse you've got there; want to sell him?"

"No."

"Looks like a speeder."

"Yes, there's nothing in Cedar Mountain to touch him."

"Say, mister," said cattleman Kyle, "if he's a winner, here's your chance to roll up a wad."

Hartigan stared and waited. The cult of the horse is very ancient, but its ways are ever modern.

"You say he's a great speeder; will you try him against Kyle's horse?"

said Long Bill.

Jim looked a rebuff and shook his head.

"Oh, just a friendly race," the man went on; "Kyle thinks he has the best American horse in town." And as various members of the party looked more critically at Blazing Star and felt his limbs they became more insistent.

When Jim had joined the Church, horse-racing was one of the deadly sins he had abjured. So while he refused to enter a race, he was easily persuaded to ride his horse against Kyle's for a friendly mile. Whether begun as a race or not, it was in deadly earnest after the first fifty yards and it proved just what they needed to know: that Kyle's horse, which had been a good second best with the Indian, was a poor second in the race with Blazing Star. With this essential information, Kyle asked if he could hire Hartigan's horse for a brush with the Indian.

Hartigan went through a most painful struggle with his conscience. But clearly "this was not a regular race." It was "just a sort of speed test with an Indian pony like the one he had had with Kyle." He was not going to ride in it. He would only rent his horse for wages. "Sure, every one hires out his horse when he has a good one." So Blazing Star was hired out to Kyle, and a new though unimportant race was arranged, for a stake, otherwise the Indian would not have taken the trouble to ride.

The Red-men's black eyes looked keenly on as he measured the new horse.

Then the unexpected happened. Blazing Star was not accustomed to the new jockey, the gentle ways that had fostered his speed were lacking. The rider's idea was whip and spur and go from the start. The horse got "rattled" and the Indian pony won. The defeat stirred Hartigan to a rage such as he had not experienced in months. The unrest of his conscience over the affair, coupled with his contempt and fury at the bad horsemans.h.i.+p of the rider, set loose from his tongue a lurid torrent blended of Links, Scripture, and Black Hills.

"Here, you jelly-backed cowpuncher, let me show you how to ride. Will you ride again?" he shouted to the Indian, as the latter put the roll of bills in his tobacco pouch.

The Indian shook his head.

"I will put that up twenty-five dollars to nothing," and Hartigan held up the twenty-five dollars he had received as hire for his horse. Again the Indian shook his head. "I'll give you that if you'll ride." Jim held up a ten, "and double it if you win."

With a gesture, the Indian consented, received the bill, and put it with the rest. They rode to the starting post, were unceremoniously started, and Hartigan showed how much a man could do for a horse. In spite of his rider's great weight that splendid beast responded to every word, and when on the home run Hartigan used the quirt, Blazing Star seemed to know it was merely a signal, not an insulting urge, and let himself go.

The Indian pony, too, was doing his utmost, but Blazing Star swept past his opponent and led at the finish by more than a length; the race was won; and Hartigan wakened up as a man out of a dream to face the awful fact that he, a minister of the gospel, had not only ridden in a horse race, but had gambled on the same.

CHAPTER XV

Pat Bylow's Spree

At the time of the incidents at Fort Ryan, Belle was away on a visit to Deadwood. Otherwise, Hartigan would surely have consulted her and profited by her calmer judgment in the matter of the race. As it was, his torturing sense of moral iniquity led him to preach a sermon in which he poured forth all the intensity of his nature. Quietly to drop the subject was not his way; he knew that every one was talking about it, so nothing would do but a public denunciation of himself, and all that followed the race track.

The text he chose was: "My wounds stink, and are corrupt, because of my foolishness" (Psalms x.x.xVIII:5). Jim's thought was that once the sinner is saved, all his sins become peculiarly and especially repugnant to him. They acquire nothing less than a stench in his nostrils, and henceforth are as repellent as once they were attractive, no matter what they may be; and he enumerated drunkenness, swearing, gambling, and horse-racing. At mention of the last a smile spread over the faces of the congregation. He noted it at once, and said:

"Yes, I know what you are thinking. You are wondering how I came to ride my horse in a race at Fort Ryan. Well, it was the devil laid a snare for me, and I fell in. But this I will say: I promise you I will never do the like again, and if each of you will stand up now and give me the same promise about your own particular besetting sin, then I'll feel that we have made a great gain, and I will be glad I rode that race after all."

In this land of the horse no one was long inclined to take the matter seriously. A nature so buoyant as his could not long be downcast, and Hartigan's sense of sin for his part in the race was soon put behind him. Then happened an incident that gave him a chance to score a triumph.

In a remote part of the valley some five miles back of Cedar Mountain was Bylow's Corner, a group of three or four houses near the road, the log cabins of homesteaders. These men had, indeed, few pleasures in life. Their highest notion of joy was a spree; and every month or two they would import a keg of liquor, generally of a quality unfit for human consumption. The word had been pa.s.sed around that Pat Bylow had got a keg of the "real stuff," and the rest of the Corner a.s.sembled on a certain Sat.u.r.day night for an orgy, which it was expected would last about two days. Word of it reached Hartigan, too, and he decided that here was a glorious opportunity to save bodies and souls at once.

Without consulting any one he mounted Blazing Star, and in half an hour was at the Corner. Tying his horse to a tree, he went to the house that was the known meeting place. There were lights in the window and boisterous noises issuing forth. At the door he stopped and listened; rough voices were grumbling; there was an occasional curse, a laugh, then a woman speaking shrilly; a minute's silence, during which the sweet song of a night bird was heard in the dark bushes by the stream, whereupon a hoa.r.s.e, brutalized voice shouted:

"Oh, hurry up and start that bung, you act like a schoolgirl."