The Preacher of Cedar Mountain: A Tale of the Open Country

  CHAPTER X

  Escape to Cedar Mountain

  It is generally admitted that a college offers two main things, booklearning and atmosphere. Of these the latter is larger and more vital,if it be good. If the college lose ground in either essential, the lossis usually attributable to a leading set of students. Coulter was losingground, and the growth of a spirit of wildness in its halls was no smallworry to the president. He knew whence it sprang, and his anxiety wasthe greater as he thought of it. Then a happy inspiration came. Jim'sdislike of books had intensified. He had promised to study for one year.According to the rules, a student, after completing his first year,might be sent into the field as an assistant pastor, to be in actualservice under an experienced leader for one year, during which he wasnot obliged to study.

  To Jim this way out was an escape from a cavern to the light of day, andevery officer of Coulter College breathed a sigh of relief as he packedhis bag and started for the West.

  It was in truth a wending of the Spirit Trail when Jim set out; as ifthe Angel of Destiny had said to the lesser Angel of Travel: "Behold,now for a time he is yours. You can serve him best." Jim's blood wasmore than red; it was intense scarlet. He hankered for the sparklingcups of life, being alive in every part--to ride and fight and burn inthe sun, to revel in strife, to suffer, struggle, and quickly strike andwin, or as quickly get the knockout blow! Valhalla and its ancientfighting creed were the hunger in his blood, and how to translate thatage-old living feeling into terms of Christianity was a problem to whichJim's reason found no adequate answer. He talked of a better world, ofpeace and harps and denial and submission, because that was his job. Hehad had it drilled into him at Coulter; but his flashing eye, his mightysweeping hand, gave the lie to every word of meekness that fell from hisschool-bound tongue. He longed for life in its fullest, best, most humanform. He was fiery as a pirate among the wild rowdies he had lived withyet he had that other side--a child or a little girl could bully himinto absolute, abject submission.

  Whoever knows the West of the late '70s can have no doubt as to wherethe whirlpool of red-blooded life surged deepest, most irresistibly;where the strong alone could live and where the strongest only couldwin. In the Black Hills the strongest of the savages met the strongestof the whites, and there every human lust and crime ran riot. It was notaccident but a far-sighted wisdom on the part of his directors that sentJim to Cedar Mountain.

  This town of the Black Hills was then in the transition stage. Thecut-throat border element was gone. The law and order society had doneits work. The ordinary machinery of justice was established and doingfairly well. The big strikes of gold were things of the past; nowplodding Chinese and careful Germans were making profitable daily wages;and farmers were taking the places of the ranchmen. But there was stilla rowdy element in the one end of the town, where cowboy and miner lefttheir horses waiting for half the night, by the doors of noisy life andriot. This was the future field of pastoral work selected for the Rev.James Hartigan by elders wise in the testing of the human spirit.

  All alone, Jim set forth on his three days' journey from Coulter, by wayof Toronto, Detroit, and Chicago, to the West, and seldom has a grownman had so little knowledge of the world to rely upon. On the train hemet with a painted woman, whose smirks and overtures he did notunderstand; and some farmer folk of simple kindness. In the coach, whereall slept on their seats at night, he was like another brother to thelittle folks, and when a lumberjack, taking advantage of his size,sought to monopolize two seats, whereby the old farmer was leftstanding, Jim's mild and humorous "Sure, I wouldn't do that; it doesn'tseem neighbourly," as he tapped the ruffian's shoulder, put a new lighton the matter; and the lumberjack, after noting the shoulders of thespeaker, decided that it _wasn't_ neighbourly, and removed his feet.

  Most of the passengers said "good-bye" at Chicago, and the rest atSidney Junction, where Jim changed cars for the last leg of the journey.

  He had no sooner transferred himself and his bag to the waiting trainthan there entered his coach five new passengers who at once attractedhis full attention--a Jesuit missionary and four Sioux Indians. Thelatter were in the clothes of white men, the Jesuit in his clericalgarb. They settled into the few available places and Jim found himselfsharing his seat with the black-robed missionary.

  All his early training had aimed to inspire him with hatred of thepapist, and the climax of popery, he believed, was a Jesuit. He hadnever met one before, yet he knew the insignia and he was not at alldisposed to be friendly. But the black-robe was a man of the world,blessed with culture, experience, and power; and before half an hour, inspite of himself, Jim found himself chatting amicably with this archenemy. The missionary was full of information about the country and theIndians; and Jim, with the avidity of the boy that he was, listenedeagerly, and learned at every sentence. The experience held a successionof wholesome shocks for him; for, next to the detested papist, he hadbeen taught to look down on the "poor, miserable bastes of haythens,"that knew nothing of God or Church. And here, to his surprise, was apriest who was not only a kindly, wise, and lovable soul, but who lookedon the heathen not as utterly despicable, but as a human being wholacked but one essential of true religion, the one that he was there tooffer.

  "Yes," continued the missionary, "when I came out here as a young mantwenty-five years ago, I thought about the Indians much as you do. But Ihave been learning. I know now that in their home lives they are a kindand hospitable people. The white race might take them as models in someparticulars, for the widow, the orphan, the old, and the sick are everfirst cared for among them. We are told that the love of money is theroot of all evil; and yet this love of money, in spite of all the whiteman can do to inculcate it, has no place at all in the Indian heart."

  Jim listened in astonishment, first to hear the dreadful savages set sohigh by one who knew them and had a right to speak, but chiefly to findsuch fair-mindedness and goodness in one who, according to all he hadever heard, must be, of course, a very demon in disguise, at war withall who were not of his faith. Then the thought came, "Maybe this is allput on to fool me." But at this point two of the Indians came over tospeak to the missionary. Their respectful but cordial manner could notwell have been put on and was an answer to his unspoken question.

  "Are these men Catholics?" he asked.

  "I'm afraid not yet," said the priest, "although I believe they areinfluenced strongly. They observe some of the practices of the Churchand cling to others of their own."

  "Their own what?"

  "Well, I may say their own Church," said the father.

  "Church? You call theirs a Church?" exclaimed Jim.

  "Why not? Their best teachers inculcate cleanness, courage, kindness,sobriety, and truth; they tell of one Great Spirit who is the creatorand ruler of all things and to whom they pray. Surely, these things aretruth and all light comes from God; and, even though they have notlearned the great story of the redemption, we must respect their faithso far as it goes."

  "And these are the 'beasts of heathen' I have always heard about."

  "Oh, yes," said the missionary, "they have many habits that I hope tosee stamped out; but I have learned that my Church was wise when it sentme, not to antagonize and destroy, but to seek for the good in thesepeople and fortify that as a foundation on which to build the truefaith."

  "Well, this is all a great surprise to me," said Hartigan; and again hisdeepest astonishment lay in the new knowledge of the papist, rather thanof the Indian.

  They were several hours together. The missionary and his Indian friendsfinally left the train at a station nearest their home in Pine Ridge andJim was left alone with some very new ideas and some old-time prejudicesvery badly shaken.

  The rest of the journey he sat alone, thinking--thinking hard.

  * * * * *

  There was no one to meet him at the Cedar Mountain station when hestepped out of the car--the last passenger from the last car, in thelast station--for at that
time this was the north end of the track. Allhis earthly belongings, besides the things he wore, were in a valisethat he carried in his hand; in his pocket he had less than five dollarsin money, and his letter of introduction to the Rev. Dr. Jebb of CedarMountain.

  In all his life, Jim had never seen a mountain, nor even a high hill;and he stood gazing at the rugged pile behind the town with a sense offascination. It seemed so unreal, a sort of pretty thing with prettylittle trees on it. Was it near and little, or far and big? He could notsurely tell. After gazing a while, he turned to the railway agent andsaid:

  "How far off is that mountain top?"

  "A matter of two miles," was the answer.

  Two miles! It did not seem two hundred rods; and yet it did, for the manon horseback half way there looked toy-like; and the distance grew as hegazed. A rugged, rocky pile with white snow-ravines still showing in thespringtime sun, some scattering pines among the ledges and, lower, abreadth of cedars, they were like a robe that hid the shoulders andflanks of the mountain, then spread out on the plain, broken at a placewhere water glinted, and later blended with the purple sage that lentits colour to the view.

  It was all so new and fairylike; "the glamour and dhrei that the bansheeworks on the eyes of men," was the thought that came, and the Irishtales his mother used to tell of fays and lepricauns seemed realizedbefore his eyes. Then, acting on a sudden impulse, he dropped his bagand started off, intent on going up the mountain.

  Swinging a stick that he had picked up, he went away with long, athleticstrides, and the motor engines of his frame responding sent his blooda-rushing and his spirit bounding, till his joy broke forth in song, thesong of the singing prophet of Judea's hills, a song he had learned inCoulter for the sweetness of the music rather than for its message:

  How beautiful upon the mountains Are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, That publisheth peace, That bringeth good tidings of good, That publisheth salvation, That saith unto Zion, "Thy God reigneth."

  And when he reached the cedar belt he knew that the railway man hadspoken the truth, but he held on up the ever-steepening trail, ceasinghis song only when he needed the breath to climb. A cottontail waved itsbeacon for a minute before him, then darted into the underbrush; themountain jays called out a wailing cry; and the flicker clucked above.Sharp turns were in the trail, else it had faced an upright cliff orovershot a precipice; but it was easily followed and, at length, he wasabove the cedars. Here the horse trail ended, but a moccasin path wenton. It turned abruptly from a sheer descent, then followed a narrowknife edge to rise again among the rocks to the last, the final height,a little rocky upland with a lonely standing rock. Here Jim turned tosee the plain, to face about and gasp in sudden wonder; for the spell ofthe mountain seen afar is but a little echo of the mountain power whenit has raised you up.

  He recalled the familiar words, not understood till now:

  "Thy mercies are like mountains great, Thy judgments are like floods."

  He gazed and his breath came fast as he took in the thought, oldthoughts, yet new thoughts, strong and elusive, and wondered what he hadfound.

  Crossing the little upland, he approached its farther end and stood bythe pinnacle of rock that, like a lonely watchman, forever looked downon the blue and golden plains. A mountain chipmunk stared at him,flicked its tail, and dived under a flat ledge; a bird whose real homewas a thousand miles off in the north faced the upland breeze and sangin its unknown tongue. Jim drew still nearer the rocky spire, rounded aledge, and faced an unexpected sight. In a little open lodge of willows,bent and roofed with a canvas cover, sat an Indian youth, alone,motionless, beside him was a pot of water, and between him and the tallrock, a little fire, from which a tiny thread of smoke arose.

  Hartigan started, for that very morning he had learned from the oldJesuit enough about the Red-men to know that this was something unusual.On the rock beyond the fire he saw, painted in red, two symbols that areused in the Red-man's prayers: "the blessed vision" leading up to the"spirit heart of all things." A measure of comprehension came to him,and Father Cyprian's words returned in new force.

  The lad in the little lodge raised a hand in the sign of "Stop," thengently waved in a way that, in all lands and languages, means: "Pleasego away." There was a soft, dreamy look in his face, and Jim, realizingthat he had entered another man's holy place, held back and, slowlyturning, sought the downward trail.

  It came to him clearly now this was one of the interesting things toldhim that morning by the Jesuit. This Indian boy was taking his_hambeday_, his manhood fast and vigil; seeking for the vision thatshould be his guide, he was burning his altar fire beside the SpiritRock.

  As he retraced his steps the wonder of this new world enveloped Jim. Atthe edge of the cedars he paused and, looking out over the great expanseof green plumage, he said aloud: "All my life have I lived in the bottomof a little narrow well, with barely a glimpse of the sky, and never aview of the world. Now I am suddenly brought forth to see the world andthe bigness of the heavens, and the things I dimly got from books arehere about me, big, living, actual."

  He was himself so much, could he be also a part of this wonder-world? Itseemed impossible, so wholly new was everything it held.