The Leatherwood God Part 20

"I'm all weak yet from the fever I had there, with nothing but water and berries," Dylks resumed in his self-pity. "I _did_ think some of my friends might have come--"

"I took good care of that," Redfield said. "They did come, at first, with something to eat, but they knew blame well we'd have wrung their necks if we'd 'a' caught 'em. We meant to starve you out, that's what, and we did it, and if it hadn't been for that good-for-nothing whelp sleeping over his gun you wouldn't have got out alive."

"Well, that's all right now, Jim, and you'd better forgive and forget, both of you," the Squire interposed. "Dylks has reformed, he tells me; he's sorry for having been a G.o.d, and he's going to try to be a man, or as much of a man as he can. He's going to tell the Little Flock so, and then he's going to get out of Leatherwood right off--"

Dylks cleared his throat to ask tremulously, "Did I say that, Squire Braile?"

"Yes, you did, my friend, and what's more you're going to keep your word, painful as it may be to you. I'll let you manage it your own way, but some way you're going to do it; and in the meantime I'm going to put you under the protection of Jim Redfield, here--"

"_My_ protection?" Redfield protested.

"Yes, I've sworn you in as special constable, or I will have as soon as I can make out the oath, and have you sign it. And Dylks will get out of the county as soon as he can--he tells me it won't be so easy as we would think; and when he does, it will be much more to the purpose than riding on a rail in a coat of tar and feathers. Why!" he broke off, with a stare at Dylks as if he saw his raggedness for the first time, "you'll want a coat of _some_ kind to show yourself to the Little Flock in; the Herd of the Lost won't mind; they don't want to be so proud of you. I must look up something for you; or perhaps send to Brother Hingston; he's about your size. But that don't matter, now! What I want is your promise, Jim Redfield, and I know you'll do what you say, that you won't tell anybody that the Supreme Being is hiding in my loft, here, till I say so, and when I do, that you'll see no harm comes to him from mortals--from Hounds, and such like, or even the Herd of the Lost. Do you promise?"

Redfield hesitated. "If he'll leave the county, yes."

"And _you_, 'Jehovah, Jove or Lord'?"

"I will, as quick as I can, Squire Braile; I will, indeed."

The Squire rose from the edge of the bed. "Then this court stands adjourned," he said formally.

Redfield went out with him, leaving Dylks trembling behind. He said, "I ain't sure you ain't making a fool of me, Squire Braile."

"Well, _I_ am," the Squire retorted. "And don't you make one of yourself, and then there won't be any."

Redfield still hesitated. "I'd just like to had another pull at that horse-tail of his," he said wistfully.

"Well, I knew old man Gillespie hadn't quite the strength. But I thought maybe Hughey Blake helped pull--"

"Hughey Blake," Redfield returned scornfully, "had nothing to do with it."

"Well, anyway, I hear it's converted Jane Gillespie, and she was worth it, though it was rather too much like scalping a live Indian."

"She's worth more than all the other girls in this settlement put together," Redfield said, without comment on the phase of the act which had interested the Squire, and went down the cabin steps into the lane.

Braile turned back and opened the door of the room where Dylks was lurking.

"Better come out, now," he said, not ungently, "and get into a safe place before folks begin to be about much. Or wait--I'll put the ladder up first." He brought the ladder from the kitchen where he exchanged a fleeting joke with his wife, still at her work of clearing the breakfast things away, and set it against the wall under the trapdoor of the loft.

"Now, then!" he called and Dylks came anxiously out.

"Ain't you afraid--" he began.

"No, but _you_ are, and that'll do for both of us. There's n.o.body round, and if you'll hurry, n.o.body'll see you. Push the lid to one side, and get in, and you'll be perfectly safe," he said as Dylks tremulously mounted the ladder. "I don't say you'll be very comfortable. There's a little window at one end, but it don't give much air, and this August sun is apt to get a little warm on the clapboards. And I don't suppose it smells very well in there; but the c.o.o.n can't help that; it's the way nature scented him; she hadn't any sweet brier handy at the time. And be careful not to step on him. He's not very good-tempered, but I reckon he won't bite you if you don't bite _him."_

The kitchen door opened and Mrs. Braile put her head out. She saw the ladder and the two men. Then she came out into the porch. "Well, Matthew Braile, I might have knowed from the sound of your voice that you was up to some mischief. Was you goin' to send that poor man up into that hot loft? Well, I can tell you you're not." She went into the room they had left, and they heard her stirring vigorously about beyond its closed door, with a noise of rapid steps and hard and soft thumpings. She came out again and said, "Go in there, now, Mr. Dylks, and try to get some rest.

I've made up the bed for you, and _I'll_ see that n.o.body disturbs you. Matthew Braile, you send and tell Mr. Hingston,--or _go_, if you can't ketch anybody goin' past,--and tell him he's here, and bring some decent clothes; he ain't fit to be seen."

"Well, he don't want to be," the Squire said in the attempt to brave her onset. "But I reckon you're right, mother. I should probably have thought of it myself--in time. I'll send Sally or Abel, if they go past--and they nearly always do--or some of the hands from the tobacco patches. Or, as you say, I may go myself, towards evening. He won't want to be troubled before then."

XVIII

At the first meeting in the Temple after the open return of Dylks to his dispensation, the Little Flock had apparently suffered no loss in number.

Some of his followers had left him, but his disciples had been busily preaching him during his abeyance, and the defection of old converts was more than made up by the number of proselytes. The room actually left by the Flock was filled by the Herd of the Lost who occupied all the seats on one side of the Temple, with Matthew Braile and his wife in a foremost place, the lower sort of them worsening into the Hounds who filled the doorway, and hung about the outside of the Temple.

The whole a.s.sembly was orderly. Those of the Little Flock who conducted the services had a quelled air, which might have been imparted to them by the behavior of Dylks; he sat bowed and humble on the bench below the pulpit, while Enraghty preached above him. It was rumored that at the house-meetings the worship of Dylks had been renewed with the earlier ardor; there had been genuflections and prostrations before him, with prayers for pardon and hymns of praise, especially from the proselytes.

Dylks was said to have accepted their adoration with a certain pa.s.sivity but to have done nothing to prevent it; there was not the more scandalous groveling at his feet which had stirred up the community to his arrest.

There was as much decorum as could consist with the sacrilegious rites which were still practised with his apparent connivance.

He now sat without apparent restiveness under the eyes of the two men who had the greatest right to exact the fulfilment of his promise, to forbid this idolatry, to end the infamy of its continuance, and to go out from among the people whose instincts and conventions his presence outraged.

Near Redfield sat David Gillespie with his eyes fixed on Dylks in a stare of hungry hate, and with him sat his daughter, who testified by her removal from the Little Flock her renunciation of her faith in him.

Redfield showed greater patience than Gillespie, and at times his eyes wandered to the face of the girl who did not seem to feel them on her, but sat gazing at her forsaken idol in what might have seemed puzzle for him and wonder at herself. Others who had rejected him merely kept away; but she came as if she would face down the shame of her faith in him before the eyes of her little world. Sometimes Dylks involuntarily put his hand to the black silken cap which replaced the bandage Nancy Billings had tied over the place where the hair had been torn out. When he did this, the girl moved a little; her face hardened, and she stole a glance at Redfield.

The schoolmaster went on and on, preaching Dylks insistently, but not with the former defiance. He did not spare to speak of the cruel sufferings inflicted upon their Savior and their G.o.d, who had borne it with the meekness of the Son and the mercy of the Father. The divine being who had come to sojourn among them at Leatherwood in the flesh, for the purposes of his inscrutable wisdom might have blasted his enemies with a touch, a word, but he had spared them; he had borne insult and injury, but in the Last Day he would do justice, he the judge of all the earth. Till then, let the Little Flock have patience; let them have faith sustained by the daily, hourly miracles which he had wrought among them since his return to their midst, and rest secure in the strong arms which he folded about them.

Dylks sat motionless. "Well, mother," Matthew Braile hoa.r.s.ely whispered to his wife, "I reckon you'd better have let me put him up with the c.o.o.n.

The heat might have tried the mischief out of him. He hasn't kept his word."

"No, Matthew, he hasn't," she whispered back, "and I think his lying to you so is almost the worst thing he's done. The next time you may put him with the c.o.o.n. Only, the c.o.o.n's too good for him. But I reckon Jim Redfield will look out for him."

"Jim'll have to let him alone. We can't have any more mobbing, and there's no law that can touch Dylks in the State of Ohio. We settled that the first time."

Enraghty abruptly closed his discourse with a demand for prayer, and addressed his supplication to the Savior and the Judge incarnate there among them. The Little Flock sang the hymn which always opened and closed its devotions, and at the end, Hingston, who sat by Dylks on the bench below the pulpit, made a movement as if to rise. But Dylks put out his hand and stayed him. He welcomed Enraghty to the place which he left beside Hingston, and slowly, with the step of one in a dream, mounted the stairs of the pulpit, amidst the silent amaze of the people. He began without preamble in the blend of scriptural text and crude every-day parlance which he ordinarily used.

"Ye have heard it said aforetime that the New Jerusalem would come down here in Leatherwood, but I say unto you that all that has pa.s.sed away, that the words which were spoken by the prophet might be fulfilled, 'Many are called but few are chosen.' Verily, verily, I said unto you, that heaven and earth shall pa.s.s away, but the words I speak now shall not pa.s.s away. If the works which have been done in Leatherwood had been done in Tyre and Sidon, the New Jerusalem would have come down in both places, for they did not stone the prophets as the Herd of the Lost did in Leatherwood."

"He means that morning when he took up the pike and the fellows chased him into the tall timber," Braile whispered to his wife; "but _I_ can't tell what he's driving at."

"Be still!" she said.

Many of the Little Flock groaned and cried aloud; the Herd of the Lost, except for one shrill note of bitter laughter, were silent, and only those who sat near perceived that it was Jane Gillespie who had laughed.

Redfield looked round at her, unconscious of his look.

"I go a long way off," Dylks proceeded, "and some of my beloved, even my Little Flock, cannot follow me; but though they cannot follow me, even the lame, halt, and blind shall be with me in the spirit, and shall behold the New Jerusalem where I will bring it down."

Many of the Little Flock at this cried out, "Where will it be, Lord?"

"Where will the New Jerusalem come down?" "How shall we see it?"

"With the eyes of faith, even as ye have seen the miracles I have wrought among ye, which were shown to babes and sucklings and were hidden from the wise of this world. But now I go from you, and my feet shall be upon the mountains and shall descend upon the other side and there I will bring down the New Jerusalem, and there ye shall be, in the flesh or in the spirit, to behold the wonder of it."

Some of the Little Flock cried out again. "Oh, don't leave us, Father!"

"Take us all with you in the flesh!" "We want to be taken up with you!"

and then some of them entreated, "Tell us about it; tell us what it will be like."

Dylks lifted his eyes as if in the rapture of the vision. "'Its light shall eclipse the splendor of the sun. The temples thereof, and the residences of the faithful will be built of diamonds excelling the twinkling beauty of the stars. Its walls will be of solid gold, and its gates silver. The streets will be covered with green velvet, richer in l.u.s.ter and fabric than mortal eye ever beheld. The gardens thereof will be filled with all manner of pleasant fruits, precious to the sight, and pleasant to the taste. The faithful shall ride in chariots of crimson, drawn by jet-black horses that need no drivers; and their joys shall go on increasing forever. The air of the city shall be scented with the smell of shrubs and flowers, and ten thousand different instruments all tuned to the songs of heaven shall fill the courts, and the streets and the temples, and the residences, and the gardens with music like ear hath not heard, swelling the soul of the saved with perpetual delight.'"