Thunder sat imminent upon the missionary’s brow. Many were to be at his
mercy soon. But for us he had sunshine still. “I am truly sorry to be
turning you upside down,” he said importantly. “But it seems the best
place for my service.” He spoke of the tables pushed back and the chairs
gathered in the hall, where the storm would presently break upon the
congregation. “Eight-thirty?” he inquired.
This was the hour appointed, and it was only twenty minutes off. We
threw the unsmoked fractions of our cigars away, and returned to offer
our services to the ladies. This amused the ladies. They had done
without us. All was ready in the hall.
“We got the cook to help us,” Mrs. Ogden told me, “so as not to
disturb your cigars. In spite of the cow-boys, I still recognize my own
country.”
“In the cook?” I rather densely asked.
“Oh, no! I don’t have a Chinaman. It’s in the length of after-dinner
cigars.”
“Had you been smoking,” I returned, “you would have found them short
this evening.”
“You make it worse,” said the lady; “we have had nothing but Dr.
MacBride.”
“We’ll share him with you now,” I exclaimed.
“Has he announced his text? I’ve got one for him,” said Molly Wood,
joining us. She stood on tiptoe and spoke it comically in our ears. “‘I
said in my haste, All men are liars.’” This made us merry as we stood
among the chairs in the congested hall.
I left the ladies, and sought the bunk house. I had heard the cheers,
but I was curious also to see the men, and how they were taking it.
There was but little for the eye. There was much noise in the room.
They were getting ready to come to church,--brushing their hair,
shaving, and making themselves clean, amid talk occasionally profane
and continuously diverting.
“Well, I’m a Christian, anyway,” one declared.
“I’m a Mormon, I guess,” said another.
“I belong to the Knights of Pythias,” said a third.
“I’m a Mohammedist,” said a fourth; “I hope I ain’t goin’ to hear
nothin’ to shock me.”
And they went on with their joking. But Trampas was out of the joking.
He lay on his bed reading a newspaper, and took no pains to look
pleasant. My eyes were considering him when the blithe Scipio came in.
“Don’t look so bashful,” said he. “There’s only us girls here.”
He had been helping the Virginian move his belongings from the bunk
house over to the foreman’s cabin. He himself was to occupy the
Virginian’s old bed here. “And I hope sleepin’ in it will bring me some
of his luck,” said Scipio. “Yu’d ought to’ve seen us when he told us in
his quiet way. Well,” Scipio sighed a little, “it must feel good to
have your friends glad about you.”
“Especially Trampas,” said I. “The Judge knows about that,” I added.
“Knows, does he? What’s he say?” Scipio drew me quickly out of the bunk
house.
“Says it’s no business of his.”
“Said nothing but that?” Scipio’s curiosity seemed strangely intense.
“Made no suggestion? Not a thing?”
“Not a thing. Said he didn’t want to know and didn’t care.”
“How did he happen to hear about it?” snapped Scipio. “You told him!”
he immediately guessed. “He never would.” And Scipio jerked his thumb
at the Virginian, who appeared for a moment in the lighted window of
the new quarters he was arranging. “He never would tell,” Scipio
repeated. “And so the Judge never made a suggestion to him,” he
muttered, nodding in the darkness. “So it’s just his own notion. Just
like him, too, come to think of it. Only I didn’t expect--well, I guess
he could surprise me any day he tried.”
“You’re surprising me now,” I said. “What’s it all about?”
“Oh, him and Trampas.”
“What? Nothing surely happened yet?” I was as curious as Scipio had
been.
“No, not yet. But there will.”
“Great Heavens, man! when?”
“Just as soon as Trampas makes the first move,” Scipio replied easily.
I became dignified. Scipio had evidently been told things by the
Virginian.
“Yes, I up and asked him plumb out,” Scipio answered. “I was liftin’
his trunk in at the door, and I couldn’t stand it no longer, and I
asked him plumb out. ‘Yu’ve sure got Trampas where yu’ want him.’
That’s what I said. And he up and answered and told me. So I know.” At
this point Scipio stopped; I was not to know.
“I had no idea,” I said, “that your system held so much meanness.”
“Oh, it ain’t meanness!” And he laughed ecstatically.
“What do you call it, then?”
“He’d call it discretion,” said Scipio. Then he became serious. “It’s
too blamed grand to tell yu’. I’ll leave yu’ to see it happen. Keep
around, that’s all. Keep around. I pretty near wish I didn’t know it
myself.”
What with my feelings at Scipio’s discretion, and my human curiosity, I
was not in that mood which best profits from a sermon. Yet even though
my expectations had been cruelly left quivering in mid air, I was not
sure how much I really wanted to “keep around.” You will therefore
understand how Dr. MacBride was able to make a prayer and to read
Scripture without my being conscious of a word that he had uttered. It
was when I saw him opening the manuscript of his sermon that I suddenly
remembered I was sitting, so to speak, in church, and began once more
to think of the preacher and his congregation. Our chairs were in the
front line, of course; but, being next the wall, I could easily see the
cow-boys behind me. They were perfectly decorous. If Mrs. Ogden had
looked for pistols, daredevil attitudes, and so forth, she must have
been greatly disappointed. Except for their weather-beaten cheeks and
eyes, they were simply American young men with mustaches and without,
and might have been sitting, say, in Danbury, Connecticut. Even Trampas
merged quietly with the general placidity. The Virginian did not, to be
sure, look like Danbury, and his frame and his features showed out of
the mass; but his eyes were upon Dr. MacBride with a creamlike
propriety.
Our missionary did not choose Miss Wood’s text. He made his selection
from another of the Psalms; and when it came, I did not dare to look at
anybody; I was much nearer unseemly conduct than the cow-boys. Dr.
MacBride gave us his text sonorously, “‘They are altogether become
filthy; There is none of them that doeth good, no, not one.’” His eye
showed us plainly that present company was not excepted from this. He
repeated the text once more, then, launching upon his discourse, gave
none of us a ray of hope.
I had heard it all often before; but preached to cow-boys it took on
a new glare of untimeliness, of grotesque obsoleteness--as if some one
should say, “Let me persuade you to admire woman,” and forthwith hold
out her bleached bones to you. The cow-boys were told that not only they
could do no good, but that if they did contrive to, it would not help
them. Nay, more: not only honest deeds availed them nothing, but even if
they accepted this especial creed which was being explained to them as
necessary for salvation, still it might not save them. Their sin was
indeed the cause of their damnation, yet, keeping from sin, they might
nevertheless be lost. It had all been settled for them not only before
they were born, but before Adam was shaped. Having told them this, he
invited them to glorify the Creator of the scheme. Even if damned, they
must praise the person who had made them expressly for damnation. That
is what I heard him prove by logic to these cow-boys. Stone upon stone
he built the black cellar of his theology, leaving out its beautiful
park and the sunshine of its garden. He did not tell them the splendor
of its past, the noble fortress for good that it had been, how its tonic
had strengthened generations of their fathers. No; wrath he spoke of,
and never once of love. It was the bishop’s way, I knew well, to hold
cow-boys by homely talk of their special hardships and temptations.
And when they fell he spoke to them of forgiveness and brought them
encouragement. But Dr. MacBride never thought once of the lives of
these waifs. Like himself, like all mankind, they were invisible dots in
creation; like him, they were to feel as nothing, to be swept up in the
potent heat of his faith. So he thrust out to them none of the sweet but
all the bitter of his creed, naked and stern as iron. Dogma was his all
in all, and poor humanity was nothing but flesh for its canons.
Thus to kill what chance he had for being of use seemed to me more
deplorable than it did evidently to them. Their attention merely
wandered. Three hundred years ago they would have been frightened; but
not in this electric day. I saw Scipio stifling a smile when it came to
the doctrine of original sin. “We know of its truth,” said Dr. MacBride,
“from the severe troubles and distresses to which infants are liable,
and from death passing upon them before they are capable of sinning.”
Yet I knew he was a good man; and I also knew that if a missionary is to
be tactless, he might almost as well be bad.
I said their attention wandered, but I forgot the Virginian. At first
his attitude might have been mere propriety. One can look respectfully
at a preacher and be internally breaking all the commandments. But even
with the text I saw real attention light in the Virginian’s eye. And
keeping track of the concentration that grew on him with each minute
made the sermon short for me. He missed nothing. Before the end his gaze
at the preacher had become swerveless. Was he convert or critic? Convert
was incredible. Thus was an hour passed before I had thought of time.
When it was over we took it variously. The preacher was genial and spoke
of having now broken ground for the lessons that he hoped to instil.
He discoursed for a while about trout-fishing and about the rumored
uneasiness of the Indians northward where he was going. It was plain
that his personal safety never gave him a thought. He soon bade us good
night. The Ogdens shrugged their shoulders and were amused. That was
their way of taking it. Dr. MacBride sat too heavily on the Judge’s
shoulders for him to shrug them. As a leading citizen in the Territory
he kept open house for all comers. Policy and good nature made him bid
welcome a wide variety of travellers. The cow-boy out of employment
found bed and a meal for himself and his horse, and missionaries had
before now been well received at Sunk Creek Ranch.
“I suppose I’ll have to take him fishing,” said the Judge, ruefully.
“Yes, my dear,” said his wife, “you will. And I shall have to make his
tea for six days.”
“Otherwise,” Ogden suggested, “it might be reported that you were
enemies of religion.”
“That’s about it,” said the Judge. “I can get on with most people. But
elephants depress me.”
So we named the Doctor “Jumbo,” and I departed to my quarters.
At the bunk house, the comments were similar but more highly salted. The
men were going to bed. In spite of their outward decorum at the service,
they had not liked to be told that they were “altogether become filthy.”
It was easy to call names; they could do that themselves. And they
appealed to me, several speaking at once, like a concerted piece at
the opera: “Say, do you believe babies go to hell?”--“Ah, of course he
don’t.”--“There ain’t no hereafter, anyway.”--“Ain’t there?”--“Who
told yu’?”--“Same man as told the preacher we were all a sifted set of
sons-of-guns.”--“Well, I’m going to stay a Mormon.”--“Well, I’m going
to quit fleeing from temptation.”--“that’s so! Better get it in the
neck after a good time than a poor one.” And so forth. Their wit was not
extreme, yet I should like Dr. MacBride to have heard it. One fellow put
his natural soul pretty well into words, “If I happened to learn what
they had predestinated me to do, I’d do the other thing, just to show
’em!”
And Trampas? And the Virginian? They were out of it. The Virginian had
gone straight to his new abode. Trampas lay in his bed, not asleep, and
sullen as ever.
“He ain’t got religion this trip,” said Scipio to me.
“Did his new foreman get it?” I asked.
“Huh! It would spoil him. You keep around that’s all. Keep around.”
Scipio was not to be probed; and I went, still baffled, to my repose.
No light burned in the cabin as I approached its door.
The Virginian’s room was quiet and dark; and that Dr. MacBride slumbered
was plainly audible to me, even before I entered. Go fishing with him!
I thought, as I undressed. And I selfishly decided that the Judge might
have this privilege entirely to himself. Sleep came to me fairly
soon, in spite of the Doctor. I was wakened from it by my bed’s being
jolted--not a pleasant thing that night. I must have started. And it
was the quiet voice of the Virginian that told me he was sorry to have
accidentally disturbed me. This disturbed me a good deal more. But
his steps did not go to the bunk house, as my sensational mind had
suggested. He was not wearing much, and in the dimness he seemed taller
than common. I next made out that he was bending over Dr. MacBride. The
divine at last sprang upright.
“I am armed,” he said. “Take care. Who are you?”
“You can lay down your gun, seh. I feel like my spirit was going to bear
witness. I feel like I might get an enlightening.”
He was using some of the missionary’s own language. The baffling I had
been treated to by Scipio melted to nothing in this. Did living men
petrify, I should have changed to mineral between the sheets. The Doctor
got out of bed, lighted his lamp, and found a book; and the two retired
into the Virginian’s room, where I could hear the exhortations as I
lay amazed. In time the Doctor returned, blew out his lamp, and settled
himself. I had been very much awake, but was nearly gone to sleep again,
when the door creaked and the Virginian stood by the Doctor’s side.
“Are you awake, seh?”
“What? What’s that? What is it?”
“Excuse me, seh. The enemy is winning on me. I’m feeling less inward
opposition to sin.”
The lamp was lighted, and I listened to some further exhortations.
They must have taken half an hour. When the Doctor was in bed again, I
thought that I heard him sigh. This upset my composure in the dark;
but I lay face downward in the pillow, and the Doctor was soon again
snoring. I envied him for a while his faculty of easy sleep. But I must
have dropped off myself; for it was the lamp in my eyes that now waked
me as he came back for the third time from the Virginian’s room. Before
blowing the light out he looked at his watch, and thereupon I inquired
the hour of him.
“Three,” said he.