Other Main Travelled Roads

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"I want to ask a favor. I'm going back to my family. I'm going to say
something of what you've said, to my congregation--but--I'm in debt--and
the moment they know I'm a backslider, they're going to bear down on me
pretty heavy. I'd like to be independent."

"I see. How much do you need?" mused Radbourn.

"I guess two hundred would stave off the worst of them."

"I guess Brown and I can fix that. Come in again to-night. Or no, I'll
bring it round to you."

The two men parted with a silent pressure of the hand that meant more
than any words.

When Mr. Pill told his wife that he could preach no more, she cried, and
gasped, and scolded till she was in danger of losing her breath
entirely. "A guinea-hen sort of a woman" Councill called her. "She can
talk more an' say less 'n any woman I ever see," was Bacon's verdict,
after she had been at dinner at his house. She was a perpetual irritant.

Mr. Pill silenced her at last with a note of impatience approaching a
threat, and drove away to the Corners to make his confession without
her. It was Saturday night, and Elder Wheat was preaching as he entered
the crowded room. A buzz and mumble of surprise stopped the orator for a
few moments, and he shook hands with Mr. Pill dubiously, not knowing
what to think of it all, but as he was in the midst of a very effective
oratorical scene, he went on.

The silent man at his side felt as if he were witnessing a burlesque of
himself as he listened to the pitiless and lurid description of torment
which Elder Wheat poured forth,--the same figures and threats he had
used a hundred times. He stirred uneasily in his seat, while the
audience paid so little attention that the perspiring little orator
finally called for a hymn, saying:--

"Elder Pill has returned from his unexpected absence, and will exhort in
his proper place."

When the singing ended, Mr. Pill rose, looking more like himself than
since the previous Sunday. A quiet resolution was in his eyes and voice
as he said:--

"Elder Wheat has more right here than I have. I want 'o say that I'm
going to give up my church in Douglass and--" A murmur broke out, which
he silenced with his raised hand. "I find I don't believe any longer
what I've been believing and preaching. Hold on! let me go on. I don't
quite know where I'll bring up, but I think my religion will simmer down
finally to about this: A full half-bushel to the half-bushel and sixteen
ounces to the pound." Here two or three cheered. "Do unto others as
you'd have others do unto you." Applause from several, quickly
suppressed as the speaker went on, Elder Wheat listening as if
petrified, with his mouth open.

"I'm going out of preaching, at least for the present. After things get
into shape with me again, I may set up to teach people how to live, but
just now I can't do it. I've got all I can do to instruct myself. Just
one thing more. I owe two or three of you here. I've got the money for
William Bacon, James Bartlett, and John Jennings. I turn the mare and
cutter over to Jacob Bensen, for the note he holds. I hain't got much
religion left, but I've got some morality. That's all I want to say
now."

When he sat down there was a profound hush; then Bacon arose.

"That's _man's_ talk, that is! An' I jest want 'o say, Andrew Pill, that
you kin jest forgit you owe me anything. An' if ye want any help come to
me. Y're jest gittun' ready to preach, 'n' I'm ready to give ye my
support."

"That's the talk," said Councill. "I'm with ye on that."

Pill shook his head. The painful silence which followed was broken by
the effusive voice of Wheat:--

"Let us pray--and remember our lost brother."

* * * * *

The urgings of the people were of no avail. Mr. Pill settled up his
affairs and moved to Cresco, where he went back into trade with a
friend, and for three years attended silently to his customers, lived
down their curiosity, and studied anew the problem of life. Then he
moved away, and no one knew whither.

One day last year Bacon met Jennings on the road.

"Heerd anything o' Pill lately?"

"No, have you?"

"Waal, yes. Brown told me he ran acrost him down in Eelinoy, doun' well,
too."

"In dry goods?"

"No, preachun'."

"Preachun'?"

"So Brown said. Kind of a free-f'r-all church, I reckon, from what Jedge
told me. Built a new church; fills it twice a Sunday. I'd like to hear
him, but he's got t' be too big a gun f'r us. Ben studyun', they say;
went t' school."

Jennings drove sadly and thoughtfully on.

"Rather stumps Brother Jennings," laughed Bacon, in a good-humored
growl.

A DAY OF GRACE

Sunday is the day for courtship on the prairie. It has also the piety of
cleanliness. It allows the young man to get back to a self-respecting
sweetness of person, and enables the girls to look as nature intended,
dainty and sweet as posies.

The change from everyday clothing on the part of young workmen like Ben
Griswold was more than change; it approached transformation. It took
more than courage to go through the change,--it required love.

Ben arose a little later on Sunday morning than on weekdays, but there
were the chores to do as usual. The horses must be watered, fed, and
curried, and the cows were to milk, but after breakfast Ben threw off
the cares of the hired hand. When he came down from the little garret
into which the hot August sun streamed redly, he was a changed creature.
Clean from tip to toe, newly shaven, wearing a crackling white shirt, a
linen collar and a new suit of store clothes, he felt himself a man
again, fit to meet maidens.

His partner, being a married man, was slouching around in his tattered
and greasy brown denim overalls. He looked at Ben and grinned.

"Got a tag on y'rself?"

"No, why?"

"Nobod'y know ye, if anything happened on the road. There's thirty
dollars gone to the dogs." He sighed. "Oh, well, you'll get over that,
just as I did."

"I hope I won't get over liking to be clean," Ben said a little sourly.
"I won't be back to milk."

"Didn't expect ye. That's the very time o' day the girls are
purtiest,--just about sundown. Better take Rock. I may want the old team
myself."

Ben hitched up and drove off in the warm bright morning, with wonderful
elation, clean and self-respecting once more. His freshly shaven face
felt cool, and his new suit fitted him well. His heart took on a great
resolution, which was to call upon Grace.

The thought of her made his brown hands shake, and he remembered how
many times he had sworn to visit her, but had failed of courage, though
it seemed she had invited him by word and look to do so.

He overtook Milton Jennings on his way along the poplar-lined lane.

"Hello, Milt, where you bound?"

Milton glanced up with a curious look in his laughing eyes. From the
pockets of his long linen duster he drew a handful of beautiful scarlet
and yellow Siberian crab-apples.

"See them crabs?"

"Yes, I see 'em."

Milton drew a similar handful out of his left pocket. "See those?"

"What y' going to do with 'em?"

"Take 'em home again."

Something in Milton's voice led him to ask soberly:--

"What did you intend doing with 'em?"

"Present 'em to Miss Cole."

"Well, why didn't y' do it?"

Milton showed his white teeth in a smile that was frankly derisive of
himself.

"Well, when I got over there I found young Conley's sorrel hitched to
one post and Walt Brown's gray hitched to the other. I went in, but I
didn't stay long; in fact, I didn't sit down. I was afraid those
infernal apples would roll out o' my pockets. I was afraid they'd find
out I brought 'em over there for Miss Cole, like the darn fool I was."

They both laughed heartily. Milton was always as severe upon himself as
upon any one else.

"That's tough," said Ben, "but climb in, and let's go to Sunday-school."

Milton got in, and they ate the apples as they rode along.

The Grove schoolhouse was the largest in the township, and was the only
one with a touch of redeeming grace. It was in a lovely spot; great oaks
stood all about, and back of it the woods grew thick, and a clear creek
gurgled over its limestone bed not far away.

To Ben and Milton there was a wondrous charm about the Grove
schoolhouse. It was the one place where the boys and girls met in
garments disassociated from toil. Sundays in summer, and on winter
nights at lyceums or protracted meetings, the boys came to see the
girls in their bright dresses, with their clear and (so it seemed)
scornful bright eyes.

All through the service Ben sat where he could see Grace by turning his
head, but he had not the courage to do so. Once or twice he caught a
glimpse of the curve of her cheek and the delicate lines of her ear, and
a suffocating throb came into his throat.

He wanted to ask her to go with him down to Cedarville to the Methodist
camp-meeting, but he knew it was impossible. He could not even say "good
day" when she took pains to pass near him after church. He nodded like a
great idiot, all ease and dignity lost, his throat too dry and hot to
utter a sound.

He cursed his shyness as he went out after his horse. He saw her picking
her dainty way up the road with Conrad Sieger walking by her side. What
made it worse for Ben was a dim feeling that she liked him, and would go
with him if he had the courage to ask her.

"Well, Ben," said Milton, "it's settled, we go to Rock River to-night to
the camp-meeting. Did you ask Grace?"

"No, she's going with Con. It's just my blasted luck."

"That's too bad. Well, come with us. Take Maud."

As he rode away Ben passed Grace on the road.

"Going to the camp-meeting, Con?" asked Milton, in merry voice.

"I guess so," said Conrad, a handsome, but slow-witted German.

As they went on Ben could have wept. His keener perception told him
there was a look of appeal in Grace's upturned eyes.

He made a poor companion at dinner, and poor plain Maud knew his mind
was elsewhere. She was used to that and accepted it with a pathetic
attempt to color it differently.

They got away about five o'clock.

Ben drove the team, driving took his mind off his weakness and failure;
while Milton in the seclusion of the back seat of the carryall was happy
with Amelia Turner.

It was growing dark as they entered upon the curving road along the
river which was a relief from the rectangular and sun-smitten roads of
the prairie. They lingered under the great oaks and elms which shaded
them. It would have been perfect Ben thought, if Grace had been beside
him in Maud's place.

He wondered how he should manage to speak to Grace. There was a time
when it seemed easier. Now the consciousness of his love made the
simplest question seem like the great question of all.

Other teams were on the road, some returning, some going. A camp-meeting
had come to be an annual amusement, like a circus, and young people from
all over the country drove down on Sundays, as if to some celebration
with fireworks.

"There's the lane," said Milton. "See that team goin' in?"

Ben pulled up and they looked at it doubtfully. It looked dangerously
miry. It was quite dark now and Ben said:--

"That's a scaly piece of road."

"Oh, that's all right. Hark!"

As they listened they could hear the voice of the exhorter nearly a mile
away. It pushed across the cool spaces with a wild and savage sound. The
young people thrilled with excitement.

Insects were singing in the grass. Frogs with deepening chorus seemed to
announce the coming of night, and above these peaceful sounds came the
wild shouts of the far-off preacher, echoing through the cool green
arches of the splendid grove.

The girls became silent, as the voice grew louder.

Lights appeared ahead, and the road led up a slight hill to a gate. Ben
drove on under a grove of oaks, past dimly lighted tents, whose open
flaps showed tumbled beds and tables laden with crockery. Heavy women
were moving about inside, their shadows showing against the tent walls
like figures in a pantomime.

The young people alighted in curious silence. As they stood a moment,
tying the team, the preacher lifted his voice in a brazen, clanging,
monotonous reiteration of worn phrases.

"Come to the _Lord_! Come _now_! Come to the _light_! Jesus will give
it! _Now_ is the appointed time,--come to the _light_!"

From a tent near by arose the groaning, gasping, gurgling scream of a
woman in mortal agony.

"O my God!"

It was charged with the most piercing distress. It cut to the heart's
palpitating centre like a poniard thrust. It had murder and outrage in
it.

The girls clutched Ben and Milton. "Oh, let's go home!"

"No, let's go and see what it all is."

The girls hung close to the arms of the young men and they went down to
the tent and looked in.

It was filled with a motley throng of people, most of them seated on
circling benches. A fringe of careless or scoffing onlookers stood back
against the tent wall. Many of them were strangers to Ben.

Occasionally a Norwegian farm-hand, or a bevy of young people from some
near district, lifted the flap and entered with curious or laughing or
insolent faces.

The tent was lighted dimly by kerosene lamps, hung in brackets against
the poles, and by stable lanterns set here and there upon the benches.

Ben and Milton ushered the girls in and seated them a little way back.
The girls smiled, but only faintly. The undertone of women's cries moved
them in spite of their scorn of it all.

"What cursed foolishness!" said Ben to Milton.

Milton smiled, but did not reply. He only nodded toward the exhorter, a
man with a puffy jumble of features and the form of a gladiator, who was
uttering wild and explosive phrases.

"Oh, my friends! I bless the Lord for the SHALL in the word. You SHALL
get light. You SHALL be saved. Oh, the SHALL in the word! You SHALL be
redeemed!"

As he grew more excited, his hoarse voice rose in furious screams, as if
he were defying hell's legions. Foam lay on his lips and flew from his
mouth. At every repetition of the word "shall" he struck the desk a
resounding blow with his great palm.

"He's a hard hitter," said Milton.

At length he leaped, apparently in uncontrollable excitement, upon the
mourners' bench, and ran up and down close to the listening, moaning
audience. He walked with a furious rhythmic, stamping action, like a
Sioux in the war dance. Wild cries burst from his audience, antiphonal
with his own.

"He 'SHALL' send light!"

"_Send Thy arrows, O Lord._"

"O God, come!"

"He 'SHALL' keep His word!"

One old negro woman, fat, powerful, and gloomy, suddenly arose and
uttered a scream that had the dignity and savagery of a mountain lion's
cry. It rang far out into the night.

The exhorter continued his mad, furious, thumping, barbaric walk.

Behind him a row of other exhorters sat, a relay ready to leap to his
aid. They urged on the tumult with wild cries.

"A-men, brother."

"YES, brother, YES!" clapping their hands in rhythm.

The exhorter redoubled his fury. He was like a jaded actor rising at
applause, carried out of his self-command.

Out of the obscure tumult of faces and tossing hands there came at last
certain recognizable features. The people were mainly farming folks of
the more ignorant sort, rude in dress and bearing, hard and bent with
toil. They were recognizably of a class subject to these low forms of
religious excitement which were once well-nigh universal.

The outer fringe continued to smile scornfully and to jest, yet they
were awed, in a way, by this suddenly revealed deep of barbaric emotion.

The girls were appalled by the increasing clangor. Milton was amused,
but Ben grew bitter. Something strong came out in him, too. His lip
curled in disgust.

Suddenly, out of the level space of bowed shoulders, tossing hands, and
frenzied, upturned faces, a young girl leaped erect. She was strong and
handsome, powerful in the waist and shoulders. Her hair was braided like
a child's, and fell down her back in a single strand. Her head was
girlish, but her face looked old and drawn and tortured.

She moaned pitifully; she clapped her hands with wild gestures, ending
in a quivering motion. The action grew to lightning-like quickness. Her
head seemed to set in its socket. Her whole body stiffened. Gasping
moans came from her clenched teeth as she fell to the ground and rolled
under the seats, wallowing in the muddy straw and beating her feet upon
the ground like a dying partridge.

The people crowded about her, but the preacher, roared above the
tumult:--

"Si' down! Never mind that party. She's all right; she's in the hands of
the Lord!"

The people settled into their seats, and the wild tumult went on again.
Ben rose to go over where the girl was and the others followed.

A young man seated by the struggling sinner held her hand and fanned her
with his hat, while some girl friends, scared and sobbing, kept the
tossing limbs covered. She rolled from side to side restlessly,
thrusting forth her tongue as if her throat were dry. She looked like a
dying animal.

Maud clung to Milton.

"Oh, can't something be done?"

"Her soul is burdened for _you_!" cried a wild old woman to the
impassive youth who clung to the frenzied girl's hand.

A moment later, as the demoniacal chorus of yells, songs, incantations,
shrieks, groans, and prayers swelled high, a farmer's wife on the left
uttered a hoarse cry and stiffened and fell backward upon the ground.
She rolled her head from side to side. Her eyes turned in; her lips wore
a maniac's laugh, and her troubled brow made her look like the death
mask of a tortured murderer, the hell horror frozen on it.

She sank at last into a hideous calm, with her strained and stiffened
hands pointing weirdly up. She was like marble. She did not move a
hair's breadth during the next two hours.

Over to the left a young man leaped to his feet with a scream:--

"Jesus, _Jesus_, JESUS!"

The great negress caught him in her arms as he fell, and laid him down,
then leaped up and down, shrieking:--

"O Jesus, come. Come, God's Lamb!"

Around her a dozen women took up her cry. Most of them had no voices.
Their horrifying screams had become hoarse hisses, yet still they
strove. Scores of voices were mixed in the pandemonium of prayer.

All order was lost. Three of the preachers now stood shouting before the
mourners' bench, two were in the aisles.

One came down the aisle toward the girl with the braided hair. As he
came he prayed. Foam was on his lips, but his eyes were cool and
calculating; they betrayed him.

As he came he fixed his gaze upon a woman seated near the prostrate
girl, and with a horrible outcry the victim leaped into the air and
stiffened as if smitten with epilepsy. She fell against some scared
boys, who let her fall, striking her head against the seats. She too
rolled down upon the straw and lay beside her sister. Both had round,
pretty, but childish faces.

Milton's party retreated. They smiled no more; they were
horror-stricken.

Squads of "workers" now moved down the aisles; in one they surrounded
two people, a tall, fair girl and a young man.

"Why, it's Grace!" exclaimed Maud.

Ben turned quickly, "Where?"

They pointed her out.

"She can't get away. See! Oh, boys, don't let them--"

Ben pushed his way toward her, his face set in a fierce frown, bitter,
desperate.

Grace stood silently beside one of the elders; a woman exhorter stood
before her. Conrad, overawed, had fallen into a trembling stupor; Grace
was defenseless.

The elder's hand hovered over her head, on her face a deadly pallor had
settled, her eyes were cast down, she breathed painfully and trembled
from head to foot. She was about to fall, when Ben set his eyes upon
her.

"Get out o' my way," he shouted, shouldering up the aisle. His words had
oaths, his fists were like mauls.

"Grace!" he cried, and she heard. She looked up and saw him coming; the
red flamed over her face.

The power of the preacher was gone.

"Let me go," she cried, trying to wring herself loose.

"You are going to hell. You are lost if you do not--"

"God damn ye. Get out o' way. I'll kill ye if you lay a hand on her."

With one thrust Ben cleared her tormentor from her arm. For one moment
the wordless young man looked into her eyes; then she staggered toward
him. He faced the preacher.

"I'd smash hell out o' you for a leather cent," he said. In the tumult
his words were lost, but the look on his face was enough. The exhorter
fell away.

Their retreat was unnoted in the tumult. At the door they looked back
for an instant at the scene.

At the mourners' bench were six victims in all stages of induced
catalepsy, one man with head flung back, one with his hands pointing,
fixed in furious appeal. Another with bowed head was being worked upon
by a brother of hypnotic appeal. He struck with downward, positive
gestures on either side of the victim's head.

Over another the negress towered, screaming with panther-like
ferocity:--

"Git under de blood! Git under de blood!"

As she screamed she struck down at the mourner with her clenched fist.
On her face was the grin of a wildcat.

Out under the cool, lofty oaks, the outcry was more inexpressibly
hellish, because overhead the wind rustled the sweet green leaves,
crickets were chirping, and the scent of flowering fields of buckwheat
was in the air.

Grace grew calmer, but she clung with strange weakness to her lover. She
felt he had saved her from something, she did not know what, but it was
something terrifying to look back upon.

Conrad was forgotten--set aside. Ben bundled him into the carryall and
took his place with Grace. He no longer hesitated, argued, or
apologized. He had claimed his own.

On the long ride home, Grace lay within his right arm, and the young
man's tongue was unchained. He talked, and his spirit grew tender and
manly and husbandlike, as he told his plans and his hopes. Hell was very
far away, and Heaven was very near.

LUCRETIA BURNS

I

Lucretia Burns had never been handsome, even in her days of early
girlhood, and now she was middle-aged, distorted with work and
child-bearing, and looking faded and worn as one of the boulders that
lay beside the pasture fence near where she sat milking a large white
cow.

She had no shawl or hat and no shoes, for it was still muddy in the
little yard, where the cattle stood patiently fighting the flies and
mosquitoes swarming into their skins, already wet with blood. The
evening was oppressive with its heat, and a ring of just-seen
thunderheads gave premonitions of an approaching storm.

She rose from the cow's side at last, and, taking her pails of foaming
milk, staggered toward the gate. The two pails hung from her lean arms,
her bare feet slipped on the filthy ground, her greasy and faded calico
dress showed her tired and swollen ankles, and the mosquitoes swarmed
mercilessly on her neck and bedded themselves in her colorless hair.

The children were quarrelling at the well, and the sound of blows could
be heard. Calves were querulously calling for their milk, and little
turkeys, lost in a tangle of grass, were piping plaintively.

The sun just setting struck through a long, low rift, like a boy peeping
beneath the eaves of a huge roof. Its light brought out Lucretia's face
as she leaned her sallow forehead on the top bar of the gate and looked
toward the west.

It was a pitifully worn, almost tragic face--long, thin, sallow,
hollow-eyed. The mouth had long since lost the power to shape itself
into a kiss, and had a droop at the corners which seemed to announce a
breaking-down at any moment into a despairing wail. The collarless neck
and sharp shoulders showed painfully.

She felt vaguely that the night was beautiful. The setting sun, the
noise of frogs, the nocturnal insects beginning to pipe--all in some way
called her girlhood back to her, though there was little in her girlhood
to give her pleasure. Her large gray eyes grew round, deep, and wistful
as she saw the illimitable craggy clouds grow crimson, roll slowly up,
and fire at the top. A childish scream recalled her.

"Oh, my soul!" she half groaned, half swore, as she lifted her milk and
hurried to the well. Arriving there, she cuffed the children right and
left with all her remaining strength, saying in justification:--

"My soul! can't you--you young'uns, give me a minute's peace? Land
knows, I'm almost gone up; washin', an' milkin' six cows, and tendin'
you, and cookin' f'r _him_, ought 'o be enough f'r one day! Sadie, you
let him drink now 'r I'll slap your head off, you hateful thing! Why
can't you behave, when you know I'm jest about dead?" She was weeping
now, with nervous weakness. "Where's y'r pa?" she asked after a moment,
wiping her eyes with her apron.

One of the group, the one cuffed last, sniffed out, in rage and grief:--

"He's in the corn-field; where'd ye s'pose he was?"

"Good land! why don't the man work all night? Sile, you put that dipper
in that milk agin, an' I'll whack you till your head'll swim! Sadie, le'
go Pet, an' go 'n get them turkeys out of the grass 'fore it gits dark!
Bob, you go tell y'r dad if he wants the rest o' them cows milked he's
got 'o do it himself. I jest can't, and what's more, I _won't_," she
ended, rebelliously.

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