Prairie Folks Page 3

  The most of this ignorance and ferocity, however, was centered in the family of Dixons, a dark-skinned, unsavory group of Missourians. It consisted of old man Dixon and wife, and six sons, all man-grown, great, gaunt, sinewy fellows, with no education, but superstitious as savages. If anything went wrong in 'Hell's Corners' everybody knew that the Dixons were "on the rampage again." The school-teachers were warned against the Dixons, and the preachers were besought to convert the Dixons.

  In fact, John Jennings, as he drove Pill to the school-house next day, said:

  "If you can convert the Dixon boys, Elder, I'll give you the best horse in my barn."

  "I work not for such hire," said Mr. Pill, with a look of deep solemnity on his face, belied, indeed, by a twinkle in his small, keen eye—a twinkle which made Milton Jennings laugh candidly.

  There was considerable curiosity, expressed by a murmur of lips and voices, as the minister's tall figure entered the door and stood for a moment in a study of the scene before him. It was a characteristically Western scene. The women were rigidly on one side of the school-room, the men as rigidly on the other; the front seats were occupied by squirming boys and girls in their Sunday splendor.

  On the back, to the right, were the young men, in their best vests, with paper collars and butterfly neckties, with their coats unbuttoned, their hair plastered down in a fascinating wave on their brown foreheads. Not a few were in their shirt-sleeves. The older men sat immediately between the youths and boys, talking in hoarse whispers across the aisles about the state of the crops and the county ticket, while the women in much the same way conversed about children and raising onions and strawberries. It was their main recreation, this Sunday meeting.

  "Brethren!" rang out the imperious voice of the minister, "let us pray."

  The audience thoroughly enjoyed the Elder's prayer. He was certainly gifted in that direction, and his petition grew genuinely eloquent as his desires embraced the "ends of the earth and the utterm'st parts of the seas thereof." But in the midst of it a clatter was heard, and five or six strapping fellows filed in with loud thumpings of their brogans.

  Shortly after they had settled themselves with elaborate impudence on the back seat, the singing began. Just as they were singing the last verse, every individual voice wavered and all but died out in astonishment to see William Bacon come in—an unheard-of thing! And with a clean shirt, too! Bacon, to tell the truth, was feeling as much out of place as a cat in a bath-tub, and looked uncomfortable, even shamefaced, as he sidled in, his shapeless hat gripped nervously in both hands; coatless and collarless, his shirt open at his massive throat. The girls tittered, of course, and the boys hammered each other's ribs, moved by the unusual sight. Milton Jennings, sitting beside Marietta, said:

  "Well! may I jump straight up and never come down!"

  And Shep Watson said: "May I never see the back o' my neck!" Which pleased Marietta so much that she grew purple with efforts to conceal her laughter; she always enjoyed a joke on her father.

  But all things have an end, and at last the room became quiet as Mr. Pill began to read the Scripture, wondering a little at the commotion. He suspected that those dark-skinned, grinning fellows on the back seat were the Dixon boys, and knew they were bent on fun. The physique of the minister being carefully studied, the boys began whispering among themselves, and at last, just as the sermon opened, they began to push the line of young men on the long seat over toward the girls' side, squeezing Milton against Marietta. This pleasantry encouraged one of them to whack his neighbor over the head with his soft hat, causing great laughter and disturbance. The preacher stopped. His cool, penetrating voice sounded strangely unclerical as he said:

  "There are some fellows here to-day to have fun with me. If they don't keep quiet, they'll have more fun than they can hold." At this point a green crab-apple bounded up the aisle. "I'm not to be bulldozed."

  He pulled off his coat and laid it on the table before him, and, amid a wondering silence, took off his cuffs and collar, saying:

  "I can preach the word of the Lord just as well without my coat, and I can throw rowdies out the door a little better in my shirt-sleeves."

  Had the Dixon boys been a little shrewder as readers of human character, or if they had known why old William Bacon was there, they would have kept quiet; but it was not long before they began to push again, and at last one of them gave a squeak, and a tussle took place. The preacher was in the midst of a sentence:

  "An evil deed, brethren, is like unto a grain of mustard seed. It is small, but it grows steadily, absorbing its like from the earth and air, sending out roots and branches, till at last"——

  There was a scuffle and a snicker. Mr. Pill paused, and gazed intently at Tom Dixon, who was the most impudent and strongest of the gang; then he moved slowly down on the astonished young savage. As he came his eyes seemed to expand like those of an eagle in battle, steady, remorseless, unwavering, at the same time that his brows shut down over them—a glance that hushed every breath. The awed and astounded ruffians sat as if paralyzed by the unuttered yet terribly ferocious determination of the preacher's eyes. His right hand was raised, the other was clenched at his waist. There was a sort of solemnity in his approach, like a tiger creeping upon a foe.

  At last, after what seemed minutes to the silent, motionless congregation, his raised hand came down on the shoulder of the leader with the exact, resistless precision of the tiger's paw, and the ruffian was snatched from his seat to the floor sprawling. Before he could rise, the steel-like grip of the roused preacher sent him half way to the door, and then out into the dirt of the road.

  Turning, Pill came back down the aisle; as he came the half-risen congregation made way for him, curiously. When he came within reach of Dick, the fellow struck savagely out at the preacher, only to have his blow avoided by a lithe, lightning-swift movement of the body above the hips (a trained boxer's trick), and to find himself also lying bruised and dazed on the floor.

  By this time the rest of the brothers had recovered from their stupor, and, with wild curses, leaped over the benches toward the fearless Pill.

  But now a new voice was heard in the sudden uproar—a new but familiar voice. It was the raucous snarl of William Bacon, known far and wide as a terrible antagonist, a man who had never been whipped. He was like a wild beast excited to primitive savagery by the smell of blood.

  "Stand back, you hell-hounds!" he said, leaping between them and the preacher. "You know me. Lay another hand on that man an', by the livun' God, you answer t' me. Back thear!"

  Some of the men cheered, most stood irresolute. The women crowded together, the children began to scream with terror, while through it all Pill was dragging his last assailant toward the door.

  Bacon made his way down to where the Dixons had halted, undecided what to do. If the preacher had the air and action of the tiger, Bacon looked the grizzly bear—his eyebrows working up and down, his hands clenched into frightful bludgeons, his breath rushing through his hairy nostrils.

  "Git out o' hyare," he growled. "You've run things here jest about long enough. Git out!"

  His hands were now on the necks of two of the boys, and he was hustling them toward the door.

  "If you want 'o whip the preacher, meet him in the public road—one at a time; he'll take care o' himself. Out with ye," he ended, kicking them out. "Show your faces here agin, an' I'll break ye in two."

  The non-combative farmers now began to see the humor of the whole transaction and began to laugh; but they were cut short by the calm voice of the preacher at his desk:

  "But a good deed, brethren, is like unto a grain of wheat planted in good earth, that bringeth forth fruit in due season an hundred fold."

  * * *

  III.

  Mr. Pill, with all his seeming levity, was a powerful hand at revivals, as was developed at the "protracted" meetings held at the Corners during December. Indeed, such was the pitiless intensity of his zeal that a gloom was cast over the
whole township; the ordinary festivities stopped or did not begin at all.

  The lyceum, which usually began by the first week in December, was put entirely out of the question, as were the spelling-schools and "exhibitions." The boys, it is true, still drove the girls to meeting in the usual manner; but they all wore a furtive, uneasy air, and their laughter was not quite genuine at its best, and died away altogether when they came near the school-house, and they hardly recovered from the effects of the preaching till a mile or two had been spun behind the shining runners. It took all the magic of the jingle of the bells and the musical creak of the polished steel on the snow to win them back to laughter.

  As for Elder Pill, he was as a man transformed. He grew more intense each night, and strode back forth behind his desk and pounded the Bible like an assassin. No more games with the boys, no more poking the girls under the chin! When he asked for a chew of tobacco now it was with an air which said: "I ask it as sustenance that will give me strength for the Lord's service," as if the demands of the flesh had weakened the spirit.

  Old man Bacon overtook Milton Jennings early one Monday morning, as Milton was marching down toward the Seminary at Rock River. It was intensely cold and still, so cold and still that the ring of the cold steel of the heavy sleigh, the snort of the horses, and the old man's voice came with astonishing distinctness to the ears of the hurrying youth, and it seemed a very long time before the old man came up.

  "Climb on!" he yelled, out of his frosty beard. He was seated on the "hind bob" of a wood-sleigh, on a couple of blankets. Milton clambered on, knowing well he'd freeze to death there.

  "Reckon I heerd you prowlun' around the front door with my girl last night," Bacon said at length. "The way you both 'tend out t' meetun' ought 'o sanctify yeh; must 'a' stayed to the after-meetun', didn't yeh?"

  "Nope. The front part was enough for"——

  "Danged if I was any more fooled with a man in m' life. I b'lieve the whole thing is a little scheme on the bretheren t' raise a dollar."

  "Why so?"

  "Waal, y' see Pill ain't got much out o' the app'intment thus fur, and he ain't likely to, if he don't shake 'em up a leetle. Borrud ten dollars o' me t'other day."

  Well, thought Milton, whatever his real motive is, Elder Pill is earning all he gets. Standing for two or three hours in his place night after night, arguing, pleading, but mainly commanding them to be saved.

  Milton was describing the scenes of the meeting to Bradley Talcott and Douglas Radbourn the next day, and Radbourn, a young law student said:

  "I'd like to see him. He must be a character."

  "Let's make up a party and go out," said Milton, eagerly.

  "All right; I'll speak to Lily Graham."

  Accordingly, that evening a party of students, in a large sleigh, drove out toward the school-house, along the drifted lanes and through the beautiful aisles of the snowy woods. A merry party of young people, who had no sense of sin to weigh them down. Even Radbourn and Lily joined in the songs which they sang to the swift clanging of the bells, until the lights of the school-house burned redly through the frosty air.

  Not a few of the older people present felt scandalized by the singing and by the dancing of the "town girls," who could not for the life of them take the thing seriously. The room was so little, and hot, and smoky, and the men looked so queer in their rough coats and hair every-which-way.

  But they took their seats demurely on the back seat, and joined in the opening songs, and listened to the halting prayers of the brethren and the sonorous prayers of the Elder, with commendable gravity. Miss Graham was a devout Congregationalist, and hushed the others into gravity when their eyes began to dance dangerously.

  However, as Mr. Pill warmed to his work, the girls grew sober enough. He awed them, and frightened them with the savagery of his voice and manner. His small gray eyes were like daggers unsheathed, and his small, round head took on a cat-like ferocity, as he strode to and fro, hurling out his warnings and commands in a hoarse howl that terrified the sinner, and drew 'amens' of admiration from the saints.

  "Atavism; he has gone back to the era of the medicine man," Radbourn murmured.

  As the speaker went on, foam came upon his thin lips; his lifted hand had prophecy and threatening in it. His eyes reflected flames; his voice had now the tone of the implacable, vindictive judge. He gloated on the pictures that his words called up. By the power of his imagination the walls widened, the floor was no longer felt, the crowded room grew still as death, every eye fixed on the speaker's face.

  "I tell you, you must repent or die. I can see the great judgment angel now!" he said, stopping suddenly and pointing above the stove-pipe. "I can see him as he stands weighing your souls as a man 'ud weigh wheat and chaff. Wheat goes into the Father's garner; chaff is blown to hell's devouring flame! I can see him now! He seizes a poor, damned, struggling soul by the neck, he holds him over the flaming forge of hell till his bones melt like wax; he shrivels like thread in a flame of a candle; he is nothing but a charred husk, and the angel flings him back into outer darkness; life was not in him."

  It was this astonishing figure, powerfully acted, that scared poor Tom Dixon into crying out for mercy. The effect on the rest was awful. To see so great a sinner fall terror-stricken seemed like a providential stroke of confirmatory evidence, and nearly a dozen other young people fell crying. Whereat the old people burst out into amens with unspeakable fervor. But the preacher, the wild light still in his eyes, tore up and down, crying above the tumult:

  "The Lord is come with power! His hand is visible here. Shout aloud and spare not. Fall before him as dust to his feet! Hypocrites, vipers, scoffers! the lash o' the Lord is on ye!"

  In the intense pause which followed as he waited with expectant, uplifted face—a pause so deep even the sobbing sinners held their breath—a dry, drawling, utterly matter-of-fact voice broke the tense hush.

  "S-a-y, Pill, ain't you a bearun' down on the boys a leetle too hard?"

  The preacher's extended arm fell as if life had gone out of it. His face flushed and paled; the people laughed hysterically, some of them the tears of terror still on their cheeks; but Radbourn said, "Bravo, Bacon!"

  Pill recovered himself.

  "Not hard enough for you, neighbor Bacon."

  Bacon rose, retaining the same dry, prosaic tone:

  "I ain't bitin' that kind of a hook, an' I ain't goin' to be yanked into heaven when I c'n slide into hell. Waal! I must be goin'; I've got a new-milk's cow that needs tendin' to."

  The effect of all this was indescribable. From being at the very mouth of the furnace, quivering with fear and captive to morbid imaginings, Bacon's dry intonation had brought them all back to earth again. They saw a little of the absurdity of the whole situation.

  Pill was beaten for the first time in his life. He had been struck below the belt by a good-natured giant. The best he could do, as Bacon shuffled calmly out, was to stammer: "Will some one please sing?" And while they sang, he stood in deep thought. Just as the last verse was quivering into silence, the full, deep tones of Radbourn's voice rose above the bustle of feet and clatter of seats:

  "And all that he preaches in the name of Him who came bringing peace and good-will to men."

  Radbourn's tone had in it reproach and a noble suggestion. The people looked at him curiously. The deacons nodded their heads together in counsel, and when they turned to the desk Pill was gone!

  "Gee whittaker! That was tough," said Milton to Radbourn; "knocked the wind out o' him like a cannon-ball. What'll he do now?

  "He can't do anything but acknowledge his foolishness."

  "You no business t' come here an' 'sturb the Lord's meetin'," cried old Daddy Brown to Radbourn. "You're a sinner and a scoffer."

  "I thought Bacon was the disturbing ele"——

  "You're just as bad!"

  "He's all right," said William Councill. "I've got sick, m'self, of bein' scared into religion. I never was so fooled in a man in my
life. If I'd tell you what Pill said to me the other day, when we was in Robie's store, you'd fall in a fit. An' to hear him talkin' here t'night, is enough to make a horse laugh."

  "You're all in league with the devil," said the old man wildly; and so the battle raged on.

  Milton and Radbourn escaped from it, and got out into the clear, cold, untainted night.

  "The heat of the furnace don't reach as far as the horses," Radbourn moralized, as he aided in unhitching the shivering team. "In the vast, calm spaces of the stars, among the animals, such scenes as we have just seen are impossible." He lifted his hand in a lofty gesture. The light fell on his pale face and dark eyes.

  The girls were a little indignant and disposed to take the preacher's part. They thought Bacon had no right to speak out that way, and Miss Graham uttered her protest, as they whirled away on the homeward ride with pleasant jangle of bells.

  "But the secret of it all was," said Radbourn in answer, "Pill knew he was acting a part. I don't mean that he meant to deceive, but he got excited, and his audience responded as an audience does to an actor of the first class, and he was for the time in earnest; his imagination did see those horrors,—he was swept away by his own words. But when Bacon spoke, his dry tone and homely words brought everybody, preacher and all, back to the earth with a thump! Every body saw that, after weeping and wailing there for an hour, they'd go home, feed the calves, hang up the lantern, put out the cat, wind the clock, and go to bed. In other words, they all came back out of their barbaric powwow to their natural modern selves."

  This explanation had palpable truth, but Lily had a dim feeling that it had wider application than to the meeting they had just left.