Chapter VII Treeing a Preacher
Had I but bethought myself in time to call this history by one of those gentle titles now in vogue, as “The Wild Hunters of the Far West,” or even by one of the labels with which juvenile and Sunday-school literature—milk for babes—is now made attractive, as, for instance, “Kike, the Young Bear Hunter.” I might here have entertained the reader with a vigorous description of the death of Bruin, fierce and fat, at the hands of the triumphant Kike, and of the exciting chase after deer under the direction of Morton.
After two weeks of such varying success as hunters have, they found that it would be necessary to forego the discomforts of camp-life for a day, and visit the nearest settlement in order to replenish their stock of ammunition. Wilkins’ store, which was the center of a settlement, was a double log-building. In one end the proprietor kept for sale powder and lead, a few bonnets, cheap ribbons, and artificial flowers, a small stock of earthenware, and cheap crockery, a little homespun cotton cloth, some bolts of jeans and linsey, hanks of yarn and skeins of thread, tobacco for smoking and tobacco for “chawing,” a little “store-tea”—so called in contra-distinction to the sage, sassafras and crop-vine teas in general use—with a plentiful stock of whisky, and some apple-brandy. The other end of this building was a large room, festooned with strings of drying pumpkin, cheered by an enormous fireplace, and lighted by one small window with four lights of glass. In this room, which contained three beds, and in the loft above, Wilkins and his family lived and kept a first-class hotel.
In the early West, Sunday was a day sacred to Diana and Bacchus. Our young friends visited the settlement at Wilkins’ on that day, not because they wished to rest, but because they had begun to get lonely, and they knew that Sunday would not fail to find some frolic in progress, and in making new acquaintances, fifty miles from home, they would be able to relieve the tedium of the wilderness with games at cards, and other social enjoyments.
Morton and Kike arrived at Wilkins’ combined store and tavern at ten o’clock in the morning, and found the expected crowd of loafers. The new-comers “took a hand” in all the sports, the jumping, the foot-racing, the quoit-pitching, the “wras’lin’,” the target-shooting, the poker-playing, and the rest, and were soon accepted as clever fellows. A frontierman could bestow no higher praise—to be a clever fellow in his sense was to know how to lose at cards, without grumbling, the peltries hard-earned in hunting, to be always ready to change your coon-skins into “drinks for the crowd,” and to be able to hit a three-inch “mark” at two hundred paces without bragging.
Just as the sports had begun to lose their zest a little, there walked up to the tavern door a man in homespun dress, carrying one of his shoes in his hand, and yet not seeming to be a plain backwoodsman. He looked a trifle over thirty years of age, and an acute observer might have guessed from his face that his life had been one of daring adventure, and many vicissitudes. There were traces also of conflicting purposes, of a certain strength, and a certain weakness of character; the melancholy history of good intentions overslaughed by bad passions and evil associations was written in his countenance.
“Some feller ‘lectioneerin’, I’ll bet,” said one of Morton’s companions.
The crowd gathered about the stranger, who spoke to each one as though he had known him always. He proposed “the drinks” as the surest road to an acquaintance, and when all had drunk, the stranger paid the score, not in skins but in silver coin.
“See here, stranger,” said Morton, mischievously, “you’re mighty clever, by hokey. What are you running fer?”
“Well, gentlemen, you guessed me out that time. I ’low to run for sheriff next heat,” said the stranger, who affected dialect for the sake of popularity.
“What mout your name be?” asked one of the company.
“Marcus Burchard’s my name when I’m at home. I live at Jenkinsville. I sot out in life a poor boy. I’m so used to bein’ bar’footed that my shoes hurts my feet an’ I have to pack one of ’em in my hand most of the time.”
Morton here set down his glass, and looking at the stranger with perfect seriousness said, dryly: “Well, Mr. Burchard, I never heard that speech so well done before. We’re all goin’ to vote for you, without t’other man happens to do it up slicker’n you do. I don’t believe he can, though. That was got off very nice.”
Burchard was acute enough to join in the laugh which this sally produced, and to make friends with Morton, who was clearly the leader of the party, and whose influence was worth securing.
Nothing grows wearisome so soon as idleness and play, and as evening drew on, the crowd tired even of Mr. Burchard’s choice collection of funny anecdotes—little stories that had been aired in the same order at every other tavern and store in the county. From sheer ennui it was proposed that they should attend Methodist preaching at a house two miles away. They could at least get some fun out of it. Burchard, foreseeing a disturbance, excused himself. He wished he might enjoy the sport, but he must push on. And “push on” he did. In a closely contested election even Methodist votes were not to be thrown away.
Morton and Kike relished the expedition. They had heard that the Methodists were a rude, canting, illiterate race, cloaking the worst practices under an appearance of piety. Mr. Donaldson had often fulminated against them from the pulpit, and they felt almost sure that they could count on his apostolic approval in their laudable enterprise of disturbing a Methodist meeting.
The preacher whom they heard was of the roughest type. His speech was full of dialectic forms and ungrammatical phrases. His illustrations were exceedingly uncouth. It by no means followed that he was not an effective preacher. All these defects were rather to his advantage,—the backwoods rhetoric was suited to move the backwoods audience. But the party from the tavern were in no mood to be moved by anything. They came for amusement, and set themselves diligently to seek it. Morton was ambitious to lead among his new friends, as he did at home, and on this occasion he made use of his rarest gift. The preacher, Mr. Mellen, was just getting “warmed up” with his theme; he was beginning to sling his rude metaphors to the right and left, and the audience was fast coming under his influence, when Morton Goodwin, who had cultivated a ventriloquial gift for the diversion of country parties, and the disturbance of Mr. Brady’s school, now began to squeak like a rat in a trap, looking all the while straight at the preacher, as if profoundly interested in the discourse. The women were startled and the grave brethren turned their austere faces round to look stern reproofs at the young men. In a moment the squeaking ceased, and there began the shrill yelping of a little dog, which seemed to be on the women’s side of the room. Brother Mellen, the preacher, paused, and was about to request that the dog should be removed, when he began to suspect from the sensation among the young men that the disturbance was from them.
“You needn’t be afeard, sisters,” he said, “puppies will bark, even when they walk on two legs instid of four.”
This rude joke produced a laugh, but gained no permanent advantage to the preacher, for Morton, being a stranger, did not care for the good opinion of the audience, but for the applause of the young revelers with whom he had come. He kept silence now, until the preacher again approached a climax, swinging his stalwart arms and raising his voice to a tremendous pitch in the endeavor to make the day of doom seem sufficiently terrible to his hearers. At last, when he got to the terror of the wicked, he cried out dramatically, “What are these awful sounds I hear?” At this point he made a pause, which would have been very effective, had it not been for young Goodwin.
“Caw! caw! caw-aw! cah!” he said, mimicking a crow.
“Young man,” roared the preacher, “you are hair-hung and breeze-shaken over that pit that has no bottom.”
“Oh, golly!” piped the voice of Morton, seeming to come from nowhere in particular. Mr. Mellen now ceased preaching, and started toward the part of the room in which the young men sat, evidently intending to deal out summary justice to some one. He was a man of immense strength, and his face indicated that he meant to eject the whole party. But they all left in haste except Morton, who staid and met the preacher’s gaze with a look of offended innocence. Mr. Mellen was perplexed. A disembodied voice wandering about the room would have been too much for Hercules himself. When the baffled orator turned back to begin to preach again, Morton squeaked in an aggravating falsetto, but with a good imitation of Mr. Mellen’s inflections, “Hair-hung and breeze-shaken!”
And when the angry preacher turned fiercely upon him, the scoffer was already fleeing through the door.