Higgins Part 7

Higgins continued to preach in those camps.

One inevitably wonders what would happen if some minister of the cities denounced from his pulpit in these frank and indignantly righteous terms the flagrant sinners and hypocrites of his congregation.

What polite catastrophe would befall him?--suppose he were convinced of the wisdom and necessity of the denunciation and had no family dependent upon him. The outburst leaves Higgins established in the hearts of his hearers; and it leaves him utterly exhausted. He mingles with the boys afterward; he encourages and scolds them, he hears confession, he prays in some quiet place in the snow with those whose hearts he has touched, he confers with men who have been seeking to overcome themselves, he writes letters for the illiterate, he visits the sick, he renews old acquaintanceship, he makes new friends, he yarns of the "cut" and the "big timber" and the "homesteading" of other places, and he distributes the "readin' matter," consisting of old magazines and tracts which he has carried into camp.

At last he quits the bunk-house, worn out and discouraged and downcast.

"I failed to-night," he said, once, at the superintendent's fire.

"It was awfully kind of the boys to listen to me so patiently. Did you notice how attentive they were? I tell you, the boys are _good_ to me! Maybe I was a little rough on them to-night. But somehow all this unnecessary and terrible wickedness enrages me. And n.o.body else much seems to care about it. And I'm their minister. And I yearn to have the souls of these boys awakened. I've just _got_ to stand up and tell them the truth about themselves and give them the same old Message that I heard when I was a boy. I don't know, but it's kind of queer about ministers of the gospel," he went on. "We've got two Creations now, and three Genesises. But take a minister. It wouldn't matter to me if a brother minister fell from grace. I'd pick him out of the mud and never think of it again. It wouldn't cost _me_ much to forgive him. I know that we're all human and liable to sin. But when an ordained minister gets up in his pulpit and dodges his duty--when he gets up and dodges the truth--why, bah! _I've got no time for him!_"

XV

CAUSE AND EFFECT

This sort of preaching--this genuine and practical ministry consistently and unremittingly carried on for love of the men, and without prospect of gain--wins respect and loyal affection. The dogged and courageous method will be sufficiently ill.u.s.trated in the tale of the Big Scotchman of White Pine--to Higgins almost a forgotten incident of fourteen years'

service. The Big Scotchman was discovered drunk and shivering with apprehension--he was in the first stage of _delirium tremens_--in a low saloon of White Pine, some remote and G.o.d-forsaken settlement off the railroad, into which the Pilot had chanced on his rounds. The man was a homesteader, living alone in a log-cabin on his grant of land, some miles from the village.

"Well," thought the Pilot, quite familiar with the situation, "first of all I've got to get him home."

There was only one way of accomplishing this, and the Pilot employed it; he carried the Big Scotchman.

"Well," thought the Pilot, "what next?"

The next thing was to wrestle with the Big Scotchman, upon whom the "whiskey sickness" had by that time fallen--to wrestle with him in the lonely little cabin in the woods, and to get him down, and to hold him down. There was no congregation to listen to the eloquent sermon which the Pilot was engaged in preaching; there was no choir, there was no report in the newspapers. But the sermon went on just the same. The Pilot got the Big Scotchman down, and kept him down, and at last got him into his bunk. For two days and nights he sat there ministering--hearing, all the time, the ravings of a horrible delirium.

There was an interval of relief then, and during this the Pilot gathered up every shred of the Big Scotchman's clothing and safely hid it. There was not a garment left in the cabin to cover his nakedness.

The Big Scotchman presently wanted whiskey.

"No," said the Pilot; "you stay right here."

The Big Scotchman got up to dress.

"Nothing to wear," said the Pilot.

Then the fight was on again. It was a long fight--merely a physical thing in the beginning, but a fight of another kind before the day was done.

And the Pilot won. When the Big Scotchman got up from his knees he took the Pilot's hand and said that, by G.o.d's help, he would live better than he had lived. Moreover, he was as good as his word. Presently White Pine knew him no more; but news of his continuance in virtue not long ago came down to the Pilot from the north. It was what the Pilot calls a real reformation _and_ conversion. It seems that there is a difference.

We had gone the rounds of the saloons in Deer River, and had returned late at night to the hotel. The Pilot was very busy--he is always busy, from early morning until the last sot drops unconscious to the bar-room floor, when, often, the real day's work begins; he is one of the hardest workers in any field of endeavor. And he was now heart-sick because of what he had seen that night; but he was not idle--he was still shaking hands with his parishioners in the bar-room, still advising, still inspiring, still scolding and beseeching, still holding private conversations in the corners, for all the world like a popular and energetic politician on primary day.

A curious individual approached me.

"Friend of the Pilot's?" said he.

I nodded.

"He's a good man."

I observed that the stranger was timid and slow--a singular fellow, with a lean face and nervous hands and clear but most unsteady eyes. He was like an old hulk repainted.

"He done me a lot of good," he added, in a slow, soft drawl, hardly above a whisper, at the same time slowly smoothing his chin.

It was a pleasant thing to hear.

"They used to call me Brandy Bill," he continued. He pointed to a group of drunkards lying on the floor. "I used to be like that,"

said he, looking up like a child who perceives that he is interesting.

After a pause, he went on: "But once when the snakes broke out on me I made up my mind to quit. And then I went to the Pilot and he stayed with me for a while, and told me I had to hang on. I thought I could do it if the boys would leave me alone. So the Pilot told me what to do. 'Whenever you come into town,' says he, 'you go on to your sister's and borrow her little girl.' Her little girl was just four years old then. 'And,' says the Pilot, 'don't you never come down street without her.' Well, I done what the Pilot said. I never come down street without that little girl hanging on to my hand; and when she was with me not one of the boys ever asked me to take a drink. Yes," he drawled, glancing at the drunkards again, "I used to be like that.

Pretty near time," he added, like a man displaying an experienced knowledge, "to put them fellows in the snake-room."

Such a ministry as the Pilot's springs from a heart of kindness--from a pure and understanding love of all mankind. "Boys," said he, once, in the superintendent's office, after the sermon in the bunk-house, "I'll never forget a porterhouse steak I saw once. It was in Duluth.

I'd been too busy to have my breakfast, and I was hungry. I'm a big man, you know, and when I get hungry I'm _hungry_. Anyhow, I wasn't thinking about that when I saw the steak. It didn't occur to me that I was hungry until I happened to glance into a restaurant window as I walked along. And there I saw the steak. You know how they fix those windows up: a chunk of ice and some lettuce and a steak or two and some chops. Well, boys, all at once I got so hungry that I ached. I could hardly wait to get in there.

"But I stopped.

"'Look here, Higgins,' thought I, 'what if you didn't have a cent in your pocket?'

"Well, that was a puzzler. 'What if you were a dead-broke lumber-jack, and hungry like this?'

"Boys, it frightened me. I understood just what those poor fellows suffer. And I couldn't go in the restaurant until I had got square with them.

"'Look here, Higgins,' I thought, 'the best thing you can do is to go and find a hungry lumber-jack somewhere and feed him.'

"And I did, too; and I tell you, boys, I enjoyed my dinner."

It is a ministry that wins good friends, and often in unexpected places: friends like the lumber-jack (once an enemy) who would clear a way for the Pilot in town, shouting, "I'm road-monkeying for the Pilot!" and friends like the Blacksmith.

Higgins came one night to a new camp where an irascible boss was in complete command.

"You won't mind, will you," said he, "if I hold a little service for the boys in the bunk-house to-night?"

The boss ordered him to clear out.

"All I want to do," Higgins protested, mildly, "is just to hold a little service for the boys."

Again the boss ordered him to clear out: but Higgins had come prepared with the authority of the proprietor of the camp.

"I've a pa.s.s in my pocket," he suggested.

"Don't matter," said the boss; "you couldn't preach in this camp if you had a pa.s.s from G.o.d Almighty!"

To thrash or not to thrash? that was the Pilot's problem; and he determined not to thrash, for he knew very well that if he thrashed the boss the lumber-jacks would lose respect for the boss and jump the camp. The Blacksmith, however, had heard--and had heard much more than is here written. Next morning he involved himself in a quarrel with the boss; and having thrashed him soundly, and having thrown him into a s...o...b..nk, he departed, but returned, and, addressing himself to that portion of the foreman which protruded from the snow, kicked it heartily, saying: "There's one for the Pilot. And there's another--and another.

I'll learn you to talk to the Pilot like a drunken lumber-jack. There's another for _him_. Take that--and that--for the Pilot."