I'LL TELL HER YOU'RE A BAPTIST
It rained that night. The storm which hung for hours, a threatening
bank of black in the south, finally tore north at sundown, to break
with vicious fury. And again Caleb spent a sleepless night, this time
alone before the fireplace, but the thoughts which kept him awake
failed to grow fantastic and romantically absurd with prolonged
contemplation, as they had the night before.
Never until that day had he considered his oft-repeated theory that
there was many a boy in those back-woods who, with a chance, might go
far, as anything but an idealistic truth, in the abstract. The
realization that a chance had come to test it, in the concrete, stunned
him at first.
Dispassionately he summed up all the boy's characteristics that night
and reviewed them, one by one: His poise and utter lack of
self-consciousness, his fearless directness and faith in himself, in
all that he said or did; and they came through the mental assay without
fault or flaw.
He had already decided that he must go up-river and explore the old tin
box which had been left there, locked in the "cubberd," but he was a
little proud to make his decision before he learned all that it might,
or might not, reveal; he was proud to believe that he knew a
thorough-bred, without a pedigree for confirmation. And when Sunday
morning dawned and the floodlike downpour had subsided to a gray and
steady rainfall, even Caleb, none too weatherwise, knew that it had
come to "stay fer a spell." He knew that the boy who had come marching
down the valley road, two days before, was going to stay, too, if it
lay within his power to persuade him.
Steve was most taciturn at the table the following morning; his moody
silence puzzled even Sarah Hunter. But when the latter, whose Sunday
schedule no storm could alter, came home from church and found Caleb
and the boy immersed in a mass of flies and leaders, and lines which
had been skeined to dry, her thorough disapproval loosed the boy's
tongue. She stood in the doorway surveying with a frown their
preoccupied industry.
"It seems to me, Cal," she commented, "that even if _you_ haven't any
regard for the Sabbath, you might do better than lead those younger
than yourself into doing things which might better be left for days
which were meant for such things."
She swished upstairs before Caleb had a chance to answer. But minutes
after she had gone Steve looked up from a line he was spooling.
"She ain't particularly pleased, I take it," he remarked.
"Not particularly," Caleb chuckled. "It's funny, too, because I do
most of this sort of work on Sunday. You'd think she'd become resigned
to it, but she doesn't."
The boy thought deeply for a while.
"Didn't--didn't the 'Postles cast their nets on Sunday?" he asked
presently.
Up shot Caleb's head.
"Huh-h-h?" he gasped.
"I sed--didn't the 'Postles cast their nets on Sunday?" Steve repeated.
"Seems to me they did, but I can't just rec'lict now what chapter it
was in."
Caleb pulled his face into a semblance of sobriety.
"Seems to me they did," he agreed, a little weakly, "now that you
mention it. I don't just recollect where it occurred, either, at the
moment, but we'll have to look it up, because, as a case of precedent,
it'll be a clincher for Sarah."
He chuckled for a full hour over the thought before he forgot it. The
boy, however, upon whom Sarah's disapproval had made a more lasting
impression, recalled it to him later.
Allison joined them Monday morning at daybreak. All day they drove
through the seeping rain--drove north in Caleb's buckboard, to turn off
finally upon a woods trail that ran into the cast, along the lesser
branch of the river. During the ride Steve's bearing toward the third
member of the party was too plain to escape notice, for he never looked
at nor directed a word to Allison unless it was in reply to a direct
question, and then his answers were almost monosyllabic. But Allison,
who, as usual, gave his undivided attention to the country through
which they were passing, in attitude toward the boy was even more
remarkable.
Once when they had halted at noon he pointed out a hillside of pine,
black beneath the rain, close-clustered and of mastlike straightness.
"There's a wonderful stand of pine, Cal," he remarked. "I'd venture to
say that it would cut at least two million feet."
Instantly, although the remark was addressed to him, Caleb knew that it
was Stephen's comment for which Allison was angling. And hard upon his
casual statement the boy's head came sharply around.
"She'll run nigh double that," he swallowed the bait. "She'll run
double--and mebby a trifle more."
Nor did Allison even smile now.
"What makes you think so?" he asked.
Again there came the boy's pat answer.
"I ain't thinkin'," he said. "It's jest there! They're close
set--them trees--and they're clear, clean to the tops. There ain't a
stump there that won't run near ten standard."
Allison squinted and finally nodded his head.
"Maybe," he agreed, "maybe."
But later Caleb saw him enter some figures in his small, black-bound
notebook.
That night the episode was repeated with a bit of variation. They had
set up their tent and made camp, a little before nightfall. Far below
them, hidden by the trees, the east branch cut a threadlike gash
through the center of a valley broad enough and round enough to have
been a veritable amphitheater of the gods. The whole great hollow was
clothed with evergreen, a sea of dripping tops in the semi-gloom, and
Allison, when he had set aside his plate and lighted his pipe, lifted a
hand in a gesture which embraced it all.
"If you weren't so lazy-brained, Cal," he said, "that sight would stir
in you something more than a mere appreciation of what you call the
'sublimity of sheer immensity.' For the man who can look ahead ten or
a dozen years there is an undreamed of fortune right here in this
alley."
Caleb yawned.
"No doubt," he agreed. "But I didn't coin that phrase for immense
fortunes. I guess I'm old-fashioned enough to like it a whole lot
better just as it is."
Then he became suddenly aware of the tense earnestness with which
Stephen O'Mara was listening. And when Allison, thinking aloud, mused
that the cost of driving the timber down the shallow stream to the
far-off mills would be, perhaps, prohibitive, words fairly leaped to
the boy's lips.
"But they--they won't be drivin' that timber by floods, when they git
to tacklin' these here valleys," he exclaimed. "Old Tom ses when they
really git to lumberin' these mountains they'll skid it daown to the
railroad tracks and yank it out by steam!"
That sober statement in the piping voice had a strange effect upon
Allison. He leaned forward, a sort of guarded astonishment in his
attitude, to peer at the childish face in the fire-glow. Then he
seemed to remember that it was just a bit of a woods-waif who had
spoken. But Caleb, who was lazy-brained in some matters, sensed that
Steve had put into words Allison's own unspoken thought, just as
Allison at that moment voiced the question which he was about to utter
himself.
"I suppose it was this--this Old Tom who taught you all these things
you know about timber?" he said, curious.
Steve pondered the question.
"Wal-l-l, yes," he answered at last. "Old Tom learned me some,
but--but most of it I kind of feel as if I always knowed."
The boy was fast asleep, curled up beneath the blankets, when Caleb
finally broached, that night, the matter which had kept him awake the
entire night before. And when he had finished Allison sat quiet for a
long time before he offered any reply.
"You mean----" he began, at length.
"I just mean that I'm going to give him his chance," Caleb cut in. His
voice was hushed, but vehement. "Why, man, think what he has this
minute, to start with! A brain as clear as a diamond, absolutely
fresh, absolutely unspoiled or fagged with the nonsensical fol-de-rol
which makes up the bulk of the usual boy's education of his age, and a
working knowledge, for instance, of this north country which most men
might envy. Why, the possibilities are limitless!"
Allison puffed his pipe in silence.
"No doubt you're right," he admitted. "In ten years, with a technical
education to back up his practical knowledge, he might prove priceless
to someone who had need of such a specialist. Always assuming, of
course, that he developed according to promise. But the possibilities
are limitless, too, in the other directions, aren't they?"
"Meaning?" invited Caleb.
"Well, you don't know any too much concerning his antecedents, do you?"
Allison suggested. "And still----"
"I don't have to," Caleb interrupted, "not after one look at him!"
"--And still, if you catch a boy young enough," Allison finished
serenely, "you can make a fairly presentable gentleman out of almost
any material, with time enough and money enough to teach him what to
do."
"You can," Caleb came back, "but no matter how much money you spend,
you can't make the sort of a gentleman out of him, that knows without
being taught, what _not_ to do! They--they have to be born to that,
Dexter."
And there they let it drop. But the next morning, when they were alone
upon the brook, Caleb, after several false starts managed to re-open
the subject with the boy himself.
"Has it ever occurred to you, Steve," he asked, "that all these things
you know about the woods might be valuable, some day, to--to men who
pay well for such knowledge?"
Steve paid no apparent heed to the question until he had landed a trout
which he had hooked a moment before. It was a heavy fish--and Caleb
had promised to teach him how to handle that fly-rod! Then he looked
up.
"Once Old Tom sed they'd be payin' me more'n he ever earned in his
lifetime, jest to go a-raound and tell 'em how much good lumber they
was in standin' trees. Is that--is that what you mean?"
"Partly--partly, but not entirely, either," Caleb went on. "You said
last night that when they got to lumbering these mountains, they'd be
taking it out by steam. When they do they'll want men who know the
woods--but they'll have to know how to bridge rivers and cross swamps,
too, won't they?"
The boy promptly forgot his fishing. Knee-deep in the stream he faced
squarely around toward Caleb, and from that glowing countenance the man
knew that he had only repeated something which, long before, had
already fired the boy's imagination.
"They's places where I kin git 'em to learn me them things, ain't
they?" he demanded.
"Yes," said Caleb. "There are places. And you--you were thinking of
going to school?"
"Thinkin' of it?" echoed Steve. "I always been thinkin' of it. Why,
thet's all I come outen the timber fer!"
"But you said you meant to locate something to do," the man argued,
nonplussed, "after you had looked around a trifle."
Steve's eyes dropped toward the white drill trousers and big boots, the
latter half-hidden from sight by the swirling water.
"I got to earn money first," he explained patiently. "I--I jest
couldn't git to go to school--in these here clothes!"
"Oh!" murmured Caleb. "Oh!" And then, recovering himself: "That'll
take a long time," he ventured.
The boy smiled, strangely--the first smile of man's sophistication
which Caleb had seen upon his face.
"I've always hed to wait a long time fer everything I've wanted," he
answered, "but I always git it, just the same, if I only want it hard
enough."
[Illustration: "I've always hed to wait a long time for everything I've
wanted," the boy answered, "but I always get it, just the same, if I
only want it hard enough."]
Caleb cleared his throat, self-consciously.
"Still," he argued again, "it would waste some very valuable years.
Now--now what do you think of staying with me, and--and starting in
this fall?"
The boy's lips fell apart while he stood and gaped up into Caleb's
slightly red face.
"You mean," he breathed, "you mean--jest live--with you?"
"That was my idea," said Caleb.
And then, slowly, the boy's head dropped again, as it had when he bowed
to gaze at his uncouth, begrimed clothes. The man thought that he
caught the inference of that moment of silence.
"We can fix up the matter of clothes later," he made haste to forestall
any objection in that direction. "That doesn't amount to anything,
anyway."
The clear eyes lifted again, steady and wide and very, very grave.
"I always knowed it was comin'," said Stephen O'Mara. "I always knowed
it was a-comin'--this chance--even when I didn't know _haow_ it would
come. Ner I wa'n't thinkin' about my clothes. I reckon I kin learn
jest as fast in these as in any. I was jest thinkin' about Miss Sarah.
She--she might not like it, hevin' two men folks a-raound the house,
under foot."
It was Caleb's turn to stand, agape.
"Miss Sarah?" he faltered, astonished--and then he remembered. He
laughed, unsteadily, with relief. For an instant he had been
inexplicably afraid that the boy was going to refuse his offer.
"Why, you musn't mind what Sarah said yesterday," he rushed on.
"She--she--well, she's a Baptist, Steve, and you know what that means."
He leaned forward a little, his voice quite stealthily confidential.
"But I can fix that all right," he promised. "I can surely fix that.
For I'll tell her--I'll tell her you're a Baptist, too! Will you--will
you stay?"
And after a time solemnly Steve nodded. Later, when alone, Caleb
chuckled mountainously over his reply.
"Thet's--thet's what I cal'late I be," he said.