So he picked his way among the rocks and came around in front of the cabin, dismounted, and knocked. If there was anybody still living here, perhaps they could tell him who the girl was and about her people. He would be careful, of course, and not mention her, for she had seemed to be afraid of someone. But he could find out a great deal just by judicious questioning.
So he tapped at the cabin door.
There was a sound like hollow surprise through the place and then a harsh movement like a heavy bench being shoved back. Heavy boots, too, dragging across the floor. A fumbling with the lock, and then the door was open a crack, and a gleaming sinister metal eye looked out, its cold menace almost in the face of the young man. Behind the gun there was a hand—gnarled and hairy—and behind the hand there appeared a face—dirty, unkempt, wild eyed, and full of hate.
“I beg your pardon,” said Seagrave, stepping back a pace. “I’m not an enemy; I merely stopped to inquire the way. I seem to be lost.”
But the shining gun did not withdraw a hair’s breadth.
“Lost! I guess ya air! In more ways ’n you know. Don’t you stir now. I’m goin’ to shoot around ya, just to give the rest of the gang a call!”
And the words were scarcely spoken when a bullet hissed by Seagrave’s ear, almost grazing it.
The door was opened a little wider, showing more of the ugly, unshaven face and bleared eyes. The breath of whisky came strongly out like an evil wind and struck his nostrils. It was combined with the smell of unwashed flesh and unlaundered garments.
“Now, stand still!” ordered the voice. “A fella never comes up here without intendin’, and he never goes out when he gets here. Stand still!”
Seagrave measured the distance from himself to his horse, which had reared and backed at the sound of the gunshot. He guessed at his chance if he tried to bolt and decided not to risk it.
“Oh, I say,” he began, putting on his best manner, “what’s your grouch, pardner? I had no intention of getting in bad with you. I’m just a stranger from the East out riding. I lost my way, that was all. If you’ll tell me which way to go I’ll get out and never trouble you again. I’m just the guy that’s holding down the preacher’s job over at the log schoolhouse till the right man gets here.”
“Oh, that’s who you are, is it? I been layin’ fer you. So you’re the man that’s stole my girl away from me.”
“Your girl?” asked Seagrave guilelessly. “Who is your girl, and how could I steal her? I haven’t got any girl.”
“You haven’t got any girl, haven’t ye? You didn’t take her over ta the railroad an’ put her on the train didn’t ya? I learnt all about it. I got watchers everywheres. I know what you was doin’. I heard how you an’ she rid to the meetin’ and then went off to where you was stayin’, an’ next mornin’ you took ’er to tha train. I just ben waitin’ till I got goo’n ready to comen over an’ lay ya out, but now you’ve saved me the trouble, an’ we’ll fight it out right here an’ now!”
Brand threw the cabin door open wide, revealing the dreary room where Fraley had lived her young life and where her poor mother had died without comfort.
“We got ’nother grudge agin ye, too. One of our men’s got a gir, name o’ Car’line. She’s no good to him anymore ’count o’ you. You got ’er goin’ on that there meetin’ stuff, an’ readin’ the Bible, an’ she’s just natur’ly ruined fer his purposes. See? So I’m comin’ out there an’ shoot ya up. I’d like ta wait till the boys get here ta he’p enjoy it, but I ain’t s’ sure they wouldn’t take the job from me ef I did, so I’ll just leave ’em look on the corpse after the work’s done. Air ya ready? When I shoot, I shoot to kill!”
Seagrave had not spent nine months at the front in France for nothing.
“Well,” he responded airily, “if I had known it was to be an affair of this sort, of course I would have brought my gun along; but since I came in peace just a minute…”
Suddenly Brand’s gun flew up in the air, and Brand took a blow on his jawbone that banished from his drunken mind all knowledge of what was happening and left him lying unconscious across the threshold of the cabin door.
Seagrave waited only to pick up the gun and unstrap the cartridge belt from Brand’s waist, and then he swung to his horse and was off.
Not down the trail where the narrow precipice lay but out into the open, past Fraley’s big pine, past rock and river and valley, on and on as fast as his horse’s flying feet could go.
He had sense enough to know that if there was a gang anywhere near, the sound of those shots would summon them, and they knew better how to follow him than he knew how to run from them; therefore, he must not lose a moment. He knew now that he must be within those mysterious limits that were known as Bad Man’s Land, and he knew that his life depended on getting out of those limits before darkness dropped down.
This time he did not try to guide the horse. He let him take his own way, and the beast seemed to understand and picked his way with marvelous sense.
Half an hour they must have been on their way before Seagrave heard shots behind him—very far away, it is true, but still it meant serious business.
The sun was very low, almost dropping behind the distant mountains when he reached a spot that he seemed to recognize, and a little later he came around the mountain and out to the lake that he had passed earlier in the day. But soon after that, he heard more shots not far away now, and he thought that after all he was lost. He tried to turn the horse into the woods where he would be out of sight, but the animal knew where he was going, and he fairly flew, mile after mile, over the soft earth, his hoofs making no sound as the dusk grew deeper and the stars came out. And all at once Seagrave saw ahead of him the tree where he had found Fraley and knew where he was. Then hope began to rise. He might be able to make it after all! There was only ominous silence behind, but once he thought he heard a bullet whistle through the air not far away.
Then, for the first time, Seagrave really prayed. “Oh God! If You bring me out of this, I’m going to serve You the rest of my days.”
He said it out loud to the night as he flew by, and he set his lips. There was some glory perhaps in dying in France, but not being shot in his tracks for a foolish blunder because he was a tenderfoot. He wanted to come through this unharmed. But more than anything, he wanted to live to find little Fraley and guard her the rest of her life from all dangers. He had never realized before what womanhood could go through until he saw that drunken brute and the inside of that cheerless cabin.
It was not long after that, however, that he reached the familiar road, which he rode every day, and he knew that he was safe.
As he realized this, he looked up with a reverent gaze.
“I guess it’s a promise!” he said out loud to the stars.
And then there came back to his memory the verse that he had found written on the rock with the girl’s name signed to it, and the miracle of his escape seemed to him a direct fulfillment of its promise.
It was like Seagrave that he said nothing of this incident when he arrived at the ranch house. He merely told his hostess that he had been detained longer than he expected at a place where he had called and couldn’t get back sooner. When they asked him where he was, he said he had neglected to ask the name, and he sat down at the piano and whistled a love song, playing the accompaniment while his hostess was setting out food for him.
He ate his supper, but when he went to his room and took off his clothes, he looked hard at a spot of blood on his sleeve then washed it carefully and bound up a nasty little wound in his arm that had been teasing and stinging him all the way home. “The angel of the Lord…” What was the rest of the verse? He knew it must be in the Bible, and he meant to find it before he slept.
He sat down by his flaming candle and opened the Book, turning to the concordance in the back and finding the word angel. He was a bright young man, and it hadn’t taken him long in this land, whose main attractions were horseback riding and the
unwanted attentions of one’s flirtatious hostess, to find out and use the means provided for his knowledge of this unknown book. Before long he had the verse and was reading the whole psalm, hearing the little girl’s voice in it all. For had he not seen her lovely name signed to the words, written high on the rock?
That night before he slept, after the candle was extinguished, he knelt beside his bed and approached God for the first time in his life on his own behalf. He had made that promise out in the open, more as a promise to himself than a prayer. But this was a prayer. He had come before the almighty God, whom he had ignored all his life, to acknowledge that he was wrong and to put himself into the attitude of humility before his Maker. He had many things yet to learn about sin in himself and the way of salvation, but he had taken the first step to put himself right with God.
Two days later the mail down at the station contained a crude letter for Seagrave, addressed to the preacher at the school house.
Yu got off this tim but it ant fur long. Ile plug yo wne yo ant lukin, so wach out. Ya kant cum in bad Mans land an git awa withit. Ile blo yur bloomin branse out onles you qute this preachin. Brand.
Seagrave read this with much difficulty and then, while still in the post office, wrote an answer.
Thanks for the warning, but you see, I’m working for God,and I can’t quit till He says so. If I’m worth anything to Him,He’ll take care of me.
Brand’s answer was unprintable, but Seagrave wired east for a couple of good revolvers and some ammunition and always went armed thereafter.
The news that came from the young man in the hospital was not encouraging. There had been complications. He was promised that if he would keep quiet and not try to work for six more weeks he might be able to take up his work. Seagrave, with a wistful glance toward the east, wrote him that he would stand by until he was able to come.
By this time the merry, breezy young preacher had created quite a sensation in the wide neighborhood. People rode for fifty and a hundred miles on horseback to attend one of his services. Word went out that he didn’t exhort, he told stories out of the Bible; and more than one poor man came bringing a tattered dollar bill and asking if the preacher could send east for a Bible for him, that his gal or his boy “wanted to read them there stories out of it fer theirsel’s.”
Seagrave sent a large order east to a bookstore, and in due time enough Bibles for the whole circuit arrived and were given out to the eager applicants.
“If I never can do any good here myself,” mused Seagrave as he rode home after that service, thinking of the happy faces of those who had received the Bibles, “I can at least get people to read the greatest book in the world.” For by this time Seagrave had reached that conclusion about the Bible.
Then Seagrave set to work in earnest to study the Bible for himself.
He made a regular business of it, beginning at the beginning and looking up every reference in the margin. The enlightening footnotes became a joy to him as, day by day, he came to know the plan of salvation from the beginning of the universe and the way the whole Bible fitted together like a wonderful picture puzzle.
“Not a contradiction anywhere, from start to finish,” he said to himself after a morning of hard study. “There seems to be a reason for every chapter and verse, for every book in the whole combination; each is a part of the other. I never saw anything like it. Just that fact ought to be enough to convince anybody of its divine origin. No man or men could have possibly done that.” And he had always heard that the Bible was just full of contradictions.
Day after day he grew more interested, shutting himself in his room every morning for a couple of hours or else going off to some quiet place out-of-doors where he could read.
“Yes, he’s a great student,” admitted the lady of the ranch to the few friends with whom she had thought it worthwhile in this wide land to make contacts. It was most disappointing to her that she was unable to draw him into all her interests and make of him a merry companion. Surely if George Rivington Seagrave’s friends in New York could have looked in on him at this time, they would have been amazed at his new attitude toward life. He had been known as being one of the merriest, idlest, most playful fellows in the world. With all the money he needed and friends on every hand, he had rollicked through life thus far, with seemingly not a serious thought in the world. He had always been eager for all sorts of amusements. Now he withdrew early from the living room where often pleasant things were going on and went to his room to read awhile before he slept.
He was taking the Bible as a man reads an exciting novel, and he could not bear to break off the thread of the story for long. Some power had gotten hold of him that he did not understand.
Then one day he came on the doctrine of the new birth. And he came, spirit-led with Nicodemus, by night to His Lord and heard the mysterious word that a man must be born again before he can enter the kingdom of God. He searched out diligently all the references and cross-references on this subject, and in one of these he came upon the fact that one must die to self and sin and the things of this world if he would share Christ’s risen life. He understood that if he accepted Christ and His death on the cross as a propitiation for his sins he had reached the point some days back where he knew he was a sinner he should die with Him as far as his old self was concerned. He spent hours on the sixth chapter of Romans. He read and reread the verses:
For he that is dead is freed from sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him….For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth,he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body,that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.
Those last sentences got him.
He took them out in the desert and spent the day alone, trying to face God and decide the great question for himself. One verse from his Bible study kept going over in his mind. “As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” The question was, was he willing to receive Him? He had already an intellectual belief, but was it an active belief, one that went all the way and received Christ into his life without reservation? For he knew that if he did it all, he would want to go the whole way.
All day he threshed it out in the wilderness, sitting sometimes under the very tree where he had met the little pilgrim with her guidebook and had first been introduced to the Bible.
That night he went home late, under the stars, with a new light in his eyes and a new peace on his face. He knew that he had been accepted—that he was born again, that he was a new creature in Jesus Christ—and he was happier than he ever remembered to have been in his life.
Stealing quietly into the house because everybody was in bed, he went to his room, lit his candle, and there on his table lay Fraley’s letter, telling him where she was living.
A thrill passed through him as he opened it and saw an address at the top of the page. Now he could write and tell her what a wonderful thing had come to pass that night in his soul. He was now a child of God, and she would be glad, for she was a child of God also. Of all the wide circle of his acquaintances she was the only one to whom he felt he could tell his new joy, who would understand it and be glad with him.
Before he slept, he wrote the little girl a letter, and the next morning he rode to the station to mail it himself. He could not trust it to the ranch hands who were driving down; he wanted to put it in the letter box himself and be sure it went safely.
Turning away from the letter box, he looked up to see a tall shadow standing in the open door—a young man with a scarred face that might have been handsome once, perhaps, but was marred not only by the scar but by a leer of evil in the e
yes.
As was his custom in this friendly country, he bowed and smiled. He was by nature friendly with all men, anyway, and he had found that in his capacity of preacher out here, it was universally expected of him to speak to everybody.
But this dark, evil young face did not break into a courteous smile as most did. Instead, the man stood frowning at him, with an ugly leer in his eyes, and as he passed, there broke from him a taunting laugh.
Seagrave turned with astonished eyes and looked the man straight in the face, and he saw a murderous challenge in the other’s eyes. Well, this must be one of those men from Bad Man’s Land. He looked it. Seagrave hesitated and almost went back to speak to him then thought better of it and, with firm-set lips, walked on to where his horse stood and mounted it. But he turned and looked steadily once more at the man who was still standing in the doorway, watching him with that sneer on his lips and that challenge in his eyes.
That night was the night for the evening worship in the old schoolhouse. Seagrave rode off as usual with his mind intent on what he was going to say. For the first time in his ministrations to these people, he meant to preach a sermon himself. Up until then, he had been content to read them the Bible, occasionally throwing in a word or phrase of his own to make the meaning simpler, that is, when he was sure he understood it himself. Now he was going to tell those people about the new birth and how he had been born again. He was going out to witness what the Lord had done for him, and his heart was full of joy.
It was a wonderful meeting in the old log schoolhouse. The very presence of the Lord Jesus seemed to be there, and the sorrowful lonely members who came their long journeys to get this little time of worship were stirred to tears and prayers of longing and surrender, and one, Caroline, sitting back by the door in the shadow, having stayed the day and night with a friend so she could be present, lingered to talk with the young preacher and ask if there was a way for one who had sinned greatly to be born again.