THE BELL FOR CHURCH
What with telling little Skeezucks of all the things he meant to make,
and fondling the grave bit of babyhood, and trying to work out the
story of how he came to be utterly unsought for, deserted, and
parentless, Jim had hardly more than time enough remaining, that day,
in which to entertain the visiting men, who continued to climb the hill
to the house.
Throughout that Saturday there was never more than fifteen minutes when
some of the big, rough citizens of Borealis were not on hand,
attempting always to get the solemn little foundling to answer some
word to their efforts at baby conversation. But neither to them, for
the strange array of presents they offered, nor to Jim himself, for all
his gentle coaxing, would the tiny chap vouchsafe the slightest hint of
who he was or whence he had come.
It is doubtful if he knew. By the hour he sat where they placed him,
holding his doll with something more deep and hungry than affection,
and looking at Jim or the visitors in his pretty, baby way of gravity
and questioning.
When he sat on old Jim's knee, however, he leaned in confidence against
him, and sighed with a sweet little sound of contentment, as poignant
to reinspire a certain ecstasy of sadness in the miner's breast as it
was to excite an envy in the hearts of the others.
Next to Jim, he loved Tintoretto--that joyous, irresponsible bit of
pup-wise gladness whose tail was so utterly inadequate to express his
enthusiasm that he wagged his whole fuzzy self in the manner of an
awkward fish. Never was the tiny man seated with his doll on the floor
that the pup failed to pounce upon him and push him over, half a dozen
times. Never did this happen that one of the men, or Jim himself, did
not at once haul Tintoretto, growling, away by the tail or the ear and
restore their tiny guest to his upright position. Never did such a
good Samaritan fail to raise his hand for a cuff at the pup, nor ever
did one of them actually strike. It ended nearly always in the pup's
attack on the hand in question, which he chewed and pawed at and
otherwise befriended as only a pup, in his freedom from worries and
cares, can do.
With absolutely nothing prepared, and with nothing but promises made
and forgotten, old Jim beheld the glory of Sunday morning come, with
the bite and crystalline sunshine of the season in the mountain air.
God's thoughts must be made in Nevada, so lofty and flawless is the
azure sky, so utterly transparent is the atmosphere, so huge, gray, and
passionless the mighty reach of mountains!
Man's little thought was expressed in the camp of Borealis, which
appeared like a herd of small, brown houses, pitifully insignificant in
all that immensity, and gathered together as if for company, trustfully
nestling in the hand of the earth-mother, known to be so gentle with
her children. On the hill-sides, smaller mining houses stood, each one
emphasized by the blue-gray heap of earth and granite--the dump--formed
by the labors of the restless men who burrowed in the rock for precious
metal. The road, which seemed to have no ending-place, was blazed
through the brush and through the hills in either direction across the
miles and miles of this land without a people. The houses of Borealis
stood to right and left of this path through the wilderness, as if by
common consent to let it through.
Meagre, unknown, unimportant Borealis, with her threescore men and one
decent woman, shared, like the weightiest empire, in the smile, the
care, the yearning of the ever All-Pitiful, greeting the earth with
another perfect day.
Intelligence of what could be expected, in the way of a celebration at
the blacksmith-shop of Webber, had been more than merely spread; it had
almost been flooded over town. Long before the hour of ten, scheduled
by common consent for church to commence, Webber was sweeping sundry
parings of horse-hoof and scraps of iron to either side of his hard
earth floor, and sprinkling the dust with water that he flirted from
his barrel. He likewise wiped off the anvil with his leathern apron,
and making a fire in the forge to take off the chill, thrust in a huge
hunk of iron to irradiate the heat.
Many of the denizens of Borealis came and laid siege to the barber-shop
as early as six in the morning. Hardly a man in the place, except
Parky, the gambler, had been dressed in extravagance so imposing since
the 4th of July as was early apparent in the street. Bright new
shirts, red, blue, and even white, came proudly to the front. Trousers
were dropped outside of boots, and the boots themselves were polished.
A run on bear's-grease and hair-oil lent a shining halo to nearly every
head the camp could boast. Then the groups began to gather near the
open shop of the smith.
"We'd ought to have a bell," suggested Lufkins, the teamster.
"Churches always ring the bell to let the parson know it's time he was
showin' up to start the ball."
"Well, I'll string up a bar of steel," said Webber. "You can get a
crackin' fine lot of noise out of that."
He strung it up in a framework just outside the door, ordinarily
employed for hoisting heavy wagons from the earth. Then with a hammer
he struck it sharply.
The clear, ringing tone that vibrated all through the hills was a
stirring note indeed. So the bell-ringer struck his steel again.
"That ain't the way to do the job," objected Field. "That sounds like
scarin' up voters at a measly political rally."
"Can you do it any better?" said the smith, and he offered his hammer.
"Here comes Doc Dennihan," interrupted the barkeep. "Ask Doc how it's
done. If he don't know, we'll have to wait for old If-only Jim
hisself."
The brother of the tall Miss Doc was a small man with outstanding ears,
the palest gray eyes, and the quietest of manners. He was not a doctor
of anything, hence his title. Perhaps the fact that the year before he
had quietly shot all six of the bullets of his Colt revolver into the
body of a murderous assailant before that distinguished person could
fall to the earth had invested his townsmen and admirers with a modest
desire to do him a titular honor. Howsoever that might have been, he
had always subsequently found himself addressed with sincere respect,
while his counsel had been sought on every topic, possible, impossible,
and otherwise, mooted in all Borealis. The fact that his sister was
the "boss of his shack," and that he, indeed, was a henpecked man, was
never, by any slip of courtesy, conversationally paraded, especially in
his hearing.
Appealed to now concerning the method of ringing the bar of steel for
worshipful purposes, he took a bite at his nails before replying. Then
he said:
"Well, I'd ring it a little bit faster than you would for a funeral and
a little bit slower than you would for a fire."
"That's the stuff!" said Field. "I knowed that Doc would know."
But Doc refused them, nevertheless, when they asked if he would deign
to do the ringing himself. Consequently Field, the father of the camp,
made a gallant attempt at the work, only to miss the "bell" with his
hammer and strike himself on the knee, after which he limped to a seat,
declaring they didn't need a bell-ringing anyhow. Upon the blacksmith
the duty devolved by natural selection.
He rang a lusty summons from the steel, that fetched all the dressed-up
congregation of the town hastening to the scene. Still, old Jim, the
faithful Keno, little Skeezucks, and Tintoretto failed to appear. A
deputation was therefore sent up the hill, where Jim was found
informing his household that if only he had the celerity of action he
would certainly make a Sunday suit of clothing for the tiny little man.
For himself, he had washed and re-turned his shirt, combed his hair,
and put on a better pair of boots, which the pup had been chewing to
occupy his leisure time.
The small but impressive procession came slowly down the trail at last,
Jim in the lead, with the grave little foundling on his arm.
"Boys," said he, as at last he entered the dingy shop and sat his
quaint bit of a man on the anvil, over which he had thoughtfully thrown
his coat--"boys, if only I'd had about fifteen minutes more of time I'd
have thought up all the tricks you ever saw in a church."
The men filed in, awkwardly taking off their hats, and began to seat
themselves as best they could, on anything they found available.
Webber, the smith, went stoutly at his bellows, and blew up a fire that
flamed two feet above the forge, fountaining fiercely with sparks of
the iron in the coal, and tossing a ruddy light to the darkest corners
of the place. The incense of labor--that homely fragrance of the
smithy all over the world--spread fresh and new to the very door
itself. Old Jim edged closer to the anvil and placed his hand on the
somewhat frightened little foundling, sitting there so gravely, and
clasping his doll in fondness to his heart.
Outside, it was noted, Field had halted the red-headed Keno for a
moment's whispered conversation. Keno nodded knowingly. Then he came
inside, and, addressing them all, but principally Jim, he said:
"Say, before we open up, Miss Doc would like to know if she kin come."
A silence fell on all the men. Webber went hurriedly and closed the
ponderous door.
"Wal, she wouldn't be apt to like it till we get a little practised
up," said the diplomatic Jim, who knew the tenor of his auditors.
"Tell her maybe she kin--some other time."
"This ain't no regular elemercenary institution," added the teamster.
"Why not now?" demanded Field. "Why can't she come?"
"Becuz," said the smith, "this church ain't no place for a woman,
anyhow."
A general murmur of assent came from all the men save Field and Doc
Dennihan himself.
"Leave the show commence," said a voice.
"Start her up," said another.
"Wal, now," drawled Jim, as he nervously stroked his beard, "let's take
it easy. Which opening do all you fellers prefer?"
No one answered.
One man finally inquired. "How many kinds is there?"
Jim said, "Wal, there's the Methodist, the Baptist, the Graeco-Roman,
Episcopalian, and--the catch-as-catch-can."
"Give us the ketch-and-kin-ketch-as-you-kin," responded the spokesman.
"Mebbe we ought to begin with Sunday-school," suggested the blacksmith.
"That would sort of get us ready for the real she-bang."
"How do you do it?" inquired Lufkins, the teamster.
"Oh, it's just mostly catechism," Jim imparted, sagely.
"And what's catechism?" said Bone.
"Catechism," drawled the miner, "is where you ask a lot of questions
that only the children can answer."
"I know," responded the blacksmith, squatting down before the anvil.
"Little Skeezucks, who made you?"
The quaint little fellow looked at the brawny man timidly. How pale,
how wee he appeared in all that company, as he sat on the great lump of
iron, solemnly winking his big, brown eyes and clinging to his
make-shift of a doll!
"Aw, say, give him something easy," said Lufkins.
"That's what they used to bang at me," said the smith, defending his
position. "But I'll ask him the easiest one of the lot. Baby boy," he
said, in a gentle way of his own, "who is it makes everything?--who
makes all the lovely things in the world?"
Shyly the tiny man leaned back on the arm he felt he knew, and gravely,
to the utter astonishment of the big, rough men, in his sweet baby
utterance, he said:
"Bruv-ver--Jim."
A roar of laughter instantly followed, giving the youngster a start
that almost shook him from his seat.
"By jinks!" said Keno. "That's all right. You bet he knows."
But the Sunday-school programme was not again attempted. When
something like calm had settled once more on the audience, If-only Jim
remarked that he guessed they would have to quit their fooling and get
down to the business of church.