Chapter XIII Two to One
Magruder had been so pleased with his success in organizing a class in the Hissawachee settlement that he resolved to favor them with a Sunday sermon on his next round. He was accustomed to preach twice every week-day and three times on every Sunday, after the laborious manner of the circuit-rider of his time. And since he expected to leave Hissawachee as soon as meeting should be over, for his next appointment, he determined to reach the settlement before breakfast that he might have time to confirm the brethren and set things in order.
When the Sunday set apart for the second sermon drew near, Morton, with the enthusiastic approval of Captain Lumsden, made ready his tin horns to interrupt the preacher with a serenade. But Lumsden had other plans of which Morton had no knowledge.
John Wesley’s rule was, that a preacher should rise at four o’clock and spend the hour until five in reading, meditation and prayer. Five o’clock found Magruder in the saddle on his way to Hissawachee, reflecting upon the sermon he intended to preach. When he had ridden more than an hour, keeping himself company by a lusty singing of hymns, he came suddenly out upon the brow of a hill overlooking the Hissawachee valley. The gray dawn was streaking the clouds, the preacher checked his horse and looked forth on the valley just disclosing its salient features in the twilight, as a General looks over a battle-field before the engagement begins. Then he dismounted, and, kneeling upon the leaves, prayed with apostolic fervor for victory over “the hosts of sin and the devil.” When at last he got into the saddle again the winter sun was sending its first horizontal beams into his eyes, and all the eastern sky was ablaze. Magruder had the habit of turning the whole universe to spiritual account, and now, as he descended the hill, he made the woods ring with John Wesley’s hymn, which might have been composed in the presence of such a scene:
“O sun of righteousness, arise
With healing in thy wing;
To my diseased, my fainting soul,
Life and salvation bring.
“These clouds of pride and sin dispel,
By thy all-piercing beam;
Lighten my eyes with faith; my heart
With holy hopes inflame.”
By the time he had finished the second stanza, the bridle-path that he was following brought him into a dense forest of beech and maple, and he saw walking toward him two stout men, none other than our old acquaintances, Bill McConkey and Jake Sniger.
“Looky yer,” said Bill, catching the preacher’s horse by the bridle: “you git down!”
“What for?” said Magruder.
“We’re goin’ to lick you tell you promise to go back and never stick your head into the Hissawachee Bottom agin.”
“But I won’t promise.”
“Then we’ll put a finishment to ye.”
“You are two to one. Will you give me time to draw my coat?”
“Wal, yes, I ’low we will.”
The preacher dismounted with quiet deliberation, tied his bridle to a beech limb, offering a mental prayer to the God of Samson, and then laid his coat across the saddle.
“My friends,” he said, “I don’t want to whip you. I advise you now to let me alone. As an American citizen, I have a right to go where I please. My father was a revolutionary soldier, and I mean to fight for my rights.”
“Shet up your jaw!” said Jake, swearing, and approaching the preacher from one side, while Bill came up on the other. Magruder was one of those short, stocky men who have no end of muscular force and endurance. In his unregenerate days he had been celebrated for his victories in several rude encounters. Never seeking a fight even then, he had, nevertheless, when any ambitious champion came from afar for the purpose of testing his strength, felt himself bound to “give him what he came after.” He had now greatly the advantage of the two bullies in his knowledge of the art of boxing.
Before Jake had fairly finished his preliminary swearing the preacher had surprised him by delivering a blow that knocked him down. But Bill had taken advantage of this to strike Magruder heavily on the cheek. Jake, having felt the awful weight of Magruder’s fist, was a little slow in coming to time, and the preacher had a chance to give Bill a most polemical blow on his nose; then turning suddenly, he rushed like a mad bull upon Sniger, and dealt him one tremendous blow that fractured two of his ribs and felled him to the earth. But Bill struck Magruder behind, knocked him over, and threw himself upon him after the fashion of the Western free fight. Nothing saved Magruder but his immense strength. He rose right up with Bill upon him, and then, by a deft use of his legs, tripped his antagonist and hurled him to the ground. He did not dare take advantage of his fall, however, for Jake had regained his feet and was coming up on him cautiously. But when Sniger saw Magruder rushing at him again, he made a speedy retreat into the bushes, leaving Magruder to fight it out with Bill, who, despite his sorry-looking nose, was again ready. But he now “fought shy,” and kept retreating slowly backward and calling out, “Come up on him behind, Jake! Come up behind!” But the demoralized Jake had somehow got a superstitious notion that the preacher bristled with fists before and behind, having as many arms as a Hindoo deity. Bill kept backing until he tripped and fell over a bit of brush, and then picked himself up and made off, muttering:
“I aint a-goin’ to try to handle him alone! He must have the very devil into him!”
About nine o’clock on that same Sunday morning, the Irish school-master, who was now boarding at Goodwin’s, and who had just made an early visit to the Forks for news, accosted Morton with: “An’ did ye hear the nooze, Moirton? Bill Conkey and Jake Sniger hev had a bit of Sunday morning ricreation. They throid to thrash the praycher as he was a-comin’ through North’s Holler, this mornin’; but they didn’t make no allowance for the Oirish blood Magruder’s got in him. He larruped ’em both single-handed, and Jake’s ribs are cracked, and ye’d lawf to see Bill’s nose! Captain must ‘a’ had some proivate intherest in that muss; hey, Moirton?”
“It’s thunderin’ mean!” said Morton; “two men on one, and him a preacher; and all I’ve got to say is, I wish he’d killed ’em both.”
“And yer futer father-in-law into the bargain? Hey, Moirton? But fwat did I tell ye about Koike? The praycher’s jaw is lamed by a lick Bill gave him, and Koike’s to exhort in his place. I tould ye he had the botherin’ sperit of prophecy in him.”
The manliness in a character like Morton’s must react, if depressed too far; and he now notified those who were to help him interrupt the meeting that if any disturbance were made, he should take it on himself to punish the offender. He would not fight alongside Bill McConkey and Jake Sniger, and he felt like seeking a quarrel with Lumsden, for the sake of justitifying himself to himself.