NEW Boston has once been the most promising of the growing cities of the
West, according to some New York gentleman who constituted a land
improvement company, distributed handsome maps gratis, and courted
susceptible Eastern editors. Its water-power was unrivaled; ground for
all desirable public buildings, and for a handsome park with ready-grown
trees and a natural lake, had been securely provided for by the terms of
the company’s charter; building material abounded; the water was good;
the soil of unequaled fertility; while the company, with admirable
forethought, had a well-stocked store on the ground, and had made
arrangements to send to the town a skillful physician, and a popular
preacher.
A reasonable number of colonists found their way to the ground in the
pleasant Spring time, and, in spite of sundry local peculiarities not
mentioned in the company’s circular, they might have remained, had not a
mighty freshet, in June, driven them away, and even saved some of them
the trouble of moving their houses.
When, however, most of the residences floated down the river, some of
them bearing their owners on their roofs, such of the inhabitants as had
money left the promised land for ever; while the others made themselves
such homes as they could in the nearest settlements which were above
water, and fraternized with the natives through the medium of that
common bond of sympathy in the Western lowlands, the ague.
Only a single one of the original inhabitants remained, and he, although
he might have chosen the best of the abandoned houses for his residence,
or even the elegant but deserted “company’s store,” continued to inhabit
the cabin he had built upon his arrival. The solid business men of the
neighboring town of Mount Pisgah, situated upon a bluff, voted him a
fool whenever his name was mentioned; but the wives of these same men,
when they chanced to see old Wardelow passing by, with the wistful face
he always wore, looked after him tenderly, and never lost an opportunity
to speak to him kindly. When they met at tea-parties, or quilting-bees,
or sewing-societies, or in other gatherings exclusively feminine, there
were not a few of them who had the courage to say that the world would
be better if more men were like old Wardelow.
For love seemed the sole motive of old Wardelow’s life. The cemetery
which the thoughtful projectors of New Boston had presented to the
inhabitants had for its only occupant the wife of old Wardelow; and she
had been conveyed thereto by a husband who was both young and handsome.
The freshet which had, soon afterward, swept the town, had carried with
it Wardelow’s only child, a boy of seven years, who had been playing in
a boat which he, in some way, unloosed.
From that day the father had found no trace of his child, yet he never
ceased hoping for his return. Every steamboat captain on the river knew
the old man, and the roughest of them had cheerfully replied in the
affirmative when asked if they wouldn’t bring up a small boy who might
some day come on board, report himself as Stevie Wardelow, and ask to be
taken to New Boston.
Almost every steamboat man, from captain and pilot down to fireman and
roustabout, carried and posted Wardelow’s circulars wherever they
went—up Red River, the Yazoo, the White, the Arkansas, the Missouri, and
all the smaller tributaries of the Mississippi.
New Boston had long been dropped from the list of post-towns, but every
cross-road for miles around had a fingerboard showing the direction and
telling the distance to New Boston. Upon a tall cottonwood-tree on the
river-bank, and nearly in front of Wardelow’s residence, was an immense
signboard bearing the name of “New Boston Landing,” and on the other
side of the river, at a ferry-staging belonging to a crossing whose
other terminus was a mile further down the river, was a sign which
informed travelers that persons wishing to go to New Boston would find a
skiff marked “Wardelow” tied near the staging.
The old man never went to Mount Pisgah for stores, or up the river to
fish, or even into his own cornfield and garden, without affixing to his
door a placard telling where he had gone and when he would return.
When he went to the cemetery, which he frequently did, a statement to
that effect, and a plan showing the route to and through the cemetery,
was always appended to his door, and, as he could never clearly imagine
his boy as having passed the childhood in which he had last seen him,
all the signboards, placards, and circulars were in large capital
letters.
Even when the river overflowed its banks, which it did nearly every
Spring, the old man did not leave his house. He would not have another
story built upon it, as he was advised to do, lest Stevie might fail to
recognize it on his return; but, after careful study, he had the house
raised until the foundation was above high-water mark, and then had the
ground made higher, but sloped so gradually that the boy could not
notice the change.
When one after another of the city’s “plots,” upon which deserted houses
stood, were sold for default in payment of taxes, old Wardelow bought
them himself—they always went for a song, and the old man preferred to
own them, lest some one else might destroy the ruins, and thus make the
place unfamiliar to the returning wanderer.
[Illustration:
THE OLD MAN NEVER LEFT HIS HOUSE WITHOUT AFFIXING TO HIS DOOR A
PLACARD
TELLING WHERE HE HAD GONE AND WHEN HE WOULD RETURN.
]
Of friends he had almost none. Although he was intelligent, industrious,
ingenious, and owned a library which passed for quite a large one in
those days and in the new West, he cared to talk on only one subject,
and as that was
of no particular interest to other people, and became, in the course of
time, extremely stale to those who did not like it, the people of Mount
Pisgah and the adjoining country did not spend more time upon old
Wardelow than was required by the necessities of business.
There were a few exceptions to this rule. Old Mrs. Perry, who passed for
a saint, and whose life did not belie her reputation, used to drive her
old pony up to New Boston about once a month, carrying some home-made
delicacy with her, and chatting sympathetically for an hour or two.
Among the Mount Pisgah merchants there was one—who had never had a child
of his own—who always pressed the old man’s hand warmly, and admitted
the possibility of whatever new hope Wardelow might express.
The pastors of the several churches at Mount Pisgah, however much they
disagreed on doctrinal points, were in perfect accord as to the beauty
of a character which was so completely under the control of a noble
principle that had no promise of money in it; most of them, therefore,
paid the old man professional visits, from which they generally returned
with more benefit than they had conferred.
Time had rolled on as usual, in spite of Wardelow’s great sorrow. The
Mexican war was just breaking out when New Boston was settled, and
Wardelow’s hair was black, and Mount Pisgah was a little cluster of log
huts; but when Lincoln was elected, Wardelow had been gray and called
old for nearly ten years, and Mount Pisgah had quite a number of
two-story residences and brick stores, and was a county town, with
court-house and jail all complete.
None of the railway lines projected toward and through Mount Pisgah had
been completed, however, nor had the town telegraphic communication with
anywhere; so, compared with localities enjoying the higher benefits of
civilization, Mount Pisgah and its surroundings constituted quite a
paradise for horse-thieves.
There were still sparsely settled places, too, which needed the
ministrations of the Methodist circuit-rider.
The young man who had been sent by the Southern Illinois Conference to
preach the Word on the Mount Pisgah circuit was great-hearted and
impetuous, and tremendously in earnest in all that he did or said; but,
like all such men, he paid the penalty of being in advance of his day
and generation by suffering some terrible fits of depression over the
small results of his labor.
And so, following the example of most of his predecessors on the Mount
Pisgah circuit, he paid many a visit to old Wardelow, to learn strength
from this perfect example of patient faith.
As the circuit-rider left the old man one evening, and sought his
faithful horse in the deserted barn in which he had tied him, he was
somewhat astonished to find the horse unloosed, and another man quietly
leading him away.
Courage and decision being among the qualities which are natural to the
successful circuit-rider, he sprang at the thief and knocked him down.
The operator in horse-flesh speedily regained his feet, however, and as
he closed with the preacher the latter saw, under the starlight, the
gleam of a knife.
Commending himself to the Lord, he made such vigorous efforts for the
safety of his body that, within two or three moments, he had the thief
face downward on the ground, his own knee on the thief’s back, one hand
upon the thief’s neck, and in his other hand the thief’s knife. Then the
circuit-rider delivered a short address.
“My sinful friend,” said he, “when two men get into such a scrape as
this, and one of them is in your line of business, one or the other will
have to die, and I don’t propose to be the one. I haven’t finished the
work which the Master has given me to do. If you’ve any dying messages
to send to anybody, I give you my word as a preacher that they shall be
delivered, but you must speak quick. What’s your name?”
“I’ll give you five hundred dollars to let me off—you may holler for
help and tie my hand, and——”
“No use—speak quick,” hissed the preacher—“what’s your name?”
“Stephen Wardelow,” gasped the thief.
“What!” roared the preacher, loosening his grasp, but instantly
tightening it again.
“Stephen Wardelow,” replied the thief. “But I haven’t got any messages
to send to anybody. I haven’t a relative in the world, and nobody would
care if I was dead. I might as well go now as any time. Hit square when
you _do_ let me have it—that’s all!”
“Where’s your parents?” asked the preacher.
“Dead, I reckon,” the thief answered. “Leastways, I know mother is, and
dad lived in a fever an’ aguerish place, an’ I s’pose he’s gone, too,
before this.”
“Where did he live?”
“I don’t know—some new settlement somewheres in Illinois. I got lost in
the river when I was a little boy, an’ was picked up by a tradin’-boat
an’ sold for a nearly-white nigger—I s’pose I _was_ pretty dark.”
There was a silence; the captive lay perfectly quiet, as if expecting
the fatal blow. Suddenly a voice was heard:
“Not wishin’ to interfere in a fair fight—it’s me, parson, Sheriff
Peters—not wishin’ to interfere in a fair fight, I’ve been a-lookin’ on
here, where I’d tracked the thief myself, and would have grabbed him if
you hadn’t been about half a minute ahead of me. And if you want to know
my honest opinion—my professional opinion—it’s just this: There was
stuff for a splendid sheriff spiled when you went a-preachin’. How you’d
get along when it come to collectin’ taxes, I don’t know, never havin’
been at any meetin’ where you took up a collection; but when it come to
an arrest, you’d be just chain-lightning ground down to a pint. The
pris’ner’s yours, and so’s all the rewards that’s offered for him,
though they’re not offered for a man of the name _he_ gives. But honest,
now, don’t you think there’s a chance of mitigatin’ circumstances in his
case? Let’s talk it over—I’ll help you tie him so he can’t slip you.”
The sheriff lighted a pocket-lantern and placed it in a window-frame
behind him, then he tied the prisoner’s feet and legs in several places,
tied his hands behind his back, sat him upon the ground with his face
toward the door, cocked a pistol, and then beckoned the preacher toward
a corner. The sheriff opened his pocketbook and took out a paper,
whispering as he did so:
“I’ve carried this as a sort of a curiosity, but it may come in handy
now. Let’s see—confound it!—the poor old fellow is describing the child
just as it was fifteen years ago. Oh, here’s a point or two!—’brown
eyes, black hair’—oh, bully! here’s the best thing yet!—’first joint of
the left fore-finger gone.’”
The sheriff snatched the light, and both men hastened to examine the
prisoner’s hand. After a single glance their eyes met and each set of
optics inquired of the other.
At length the sheriff remarked:
“He’s _your_ pris’ner.”
The circuit-rider flushed and then turned pale. He took the lantern from
the sheriff, turned the light full on the prisoner’s face, and said:
“Prisoner, suppose you were to find that your father was alive?”
The horse-thief replied with a piercing glance, which was full of
wonder, but said not a word. A moment or two passed, and the preacher
said:
“Suppose you were to find that your father was alive, and had searched
everywhere for _you_, and that he thought of nothing but you, and was
all the time hoping for your return—that he had grown old before his
time, all because of his longing and sorrow for you?” The thief dropped
his eyes, then his face twitched; at last he burst out crying. “Your
father _is_ alive; he isn’t far from this cabin; he’s very sick; I’ve
just left him. Nothing but the sight of you will do him any good; but I
think so much of him that I’d rather kill you this instant than let him
know what business you’ve been in.”
“Them’s my sentiments, too,” remarked the sheriff.
“Let me see him!” exclaimed the prisoner, clasping and raising his
manacled hands, while his face filled with an earnestness which was
literally terrible—“let me see him, if it’s only for a few minutes! You
needn’t be afraid that _I’ll_ tell him what I am, and _you_ won’t be
mean enough to do it, if I don’t try to run away. Have mercy on me! You
don’t know what it is to never have had anybody to love you, and then
suddenly to find that there _is_ some one that wants you!”
The preacher turned to the officer and said:
“I’m a law-abiding citizen, sheriff.”
And the sheriff replied:
“He’s _your_ pris’ner.”
“Then suppose I let him go, on his promise to stick to his father for
the rest of his life!”
“He’s your pris’ner,” repeated the sheriff.
“Suppose, then, I were to insist upon your taking him into custody.”
“Why, then,” said the sheriff, speaking like a man in the depths of
meditation, “I would let him go myself, and—and I’d have to shoot _you_
to save my reputation as a faithful officer.”
The preacher made a peculiar face. The prisoner exclaimed:
“Hurry, you brutes!”
The preacher said, at last:
“Let him loose.”
The sheriff removed the handcuffs, dived into his own pocket, brought
out a pocket-comb and glass, and handed them to the thief; then he
placed the lantern in front of him, and said:
“Fix yourself up a little. Your hat’s a miz’able one—I’ll swap with you.
You’ve got to make up some cock-and-bull story now, for the old man’ll
want to know everything. You might say you’d been a sheriff down South
somewhere since you got away from the feller that owned you.”
The preacher paused over a knot in one of the cords on the prisoner’s
legs, and said:
“Say you were a circuit-rider—that’s more near the literal truth.”
The sheriff seemed to demur somewhat, and he said, at length:
“Without meanin’ any disrespect, parson, don’t you think ’twould tickle
the old man and the citizens more to think he’d been a sheriff? They
wouldn’t dare to ask him so many questions then, either. And it might be
onhandy for him if he was asked to preach, while a smart horse-thief has
naturally got some of the p’ints of a real sheriff about him.”
“You insist upon it that he’s my prisoner,” said the preacher, tugging
away at his knot, “and I insist upon the circuit-rider story. And,”
continued the young man, with one mighty pull at the knot, “he’s _got_
to be a circuit-rider, and I’m going to make one of him. Do you hear
that, young man? I’m the man that’s setting you free and giving you to
your father!”
“You can make anything you please out of me,” said the prisoner. “Only
hurry!”
“As you say, parson,” remarked the sheriff, with admirable meekness;
“he’s _your_ prisoner, but I _could_ make a splendid deputy out of him
if you’d let him take my advice. And I’d agree to work for his
nomination for my place when my term runs out. Think of what he might
get to be!—there _has_ sheriffs gone to the Legislature, and I’ve heard
of one that went to Congress.”
“Circuit-riders get higher than that, sometimes,” said the preacher,
leading his prisoner toward old Wardelow’s cabin; “they get as high as
heaven!”
“Oh!” remarked the sheriff, and gave up the contest.
Both men accompanied the prisoner toward his father’s house. The
preacher began to deliver some cautionary remarks, but the young man
burst from him, threw open the door, and shouted:
“Father!”
The old man started from his bed, shaded his eyes, and exclaimed:
“Stevie!”
The father and son embraced, seeing which the sheriff proved that even
sheriffs are human by snatching the circuit-rider in his arms and giving
him a mighty hug.
* * * * *
The father recovered and lived happily. The son and the preacher
fulfilled their respective promises, and the sheriff, always, on meeting
either of them, so abounded in genial winks and effusive handshakings,
that he nearly lost his next election by being suspected of having
become religious himself.
[Illustration]
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