Prairie Folks

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Jennings pulled up. "Good morning, neighbor Bacon."

"Mornin'," rumbled the old man without looking up.

"Taking it easy, as usual, I see. Think it's going to clear up?"

"May, an' may not. Don't make much differunce t' me," growled Bacon,
discouragingly.

"Heard about the plan for a church?"

"Naw."

"Well, we're goin' to hire Elder Pill from Douglass to come over and
preach every Sunday afternoon at the school-house, an' we want help t'
pay him--the laborer is worthy of his hire."

"Sometimes he is an' then agin he ain't. Y' needn't look t' me f'r a
dollar. I ain't got no intrust in y'r church."

"Oh, yes, you have--besides, y'r wife "----

"She ain't got no more time 'n I have t' go t' church. We're obleeged to
do 'bout all we c'n stand t' pay our debts, let alone tryun' to support
a preacher." And the old man shut the pinchers up on a barb with a
vicious grip.

Easy-going Mr. Jennings laughed in his silent way. "I guess you'll help
when the time comes," he said, and, clucking to his team, drove off.

"I guess I won't," muttered the grizzled old giant as he went on with
his work. Bacon was what is called land-poor in the West, that is, he
had more land than money; still he was able to give if he felt disposed.
It remains to say that he was _not_ disposed, being a sceptic and a
scoffer. It angered him to have Jennings predict so confidently that he
would help.

The sun was striking redly through a rift in the clouds, about three
o'clock in the afternoon, when he saw a man coming up the lane, walking
on the grass at the side of the road, and whistling merrily. The old man
looked at him from under his huge eyebrows with some curiosity. As he
drew near, the pedestrian ceased to whistle, and, just as the farmer
expected him to pass, he stopped and said, in a free and easy style:

"How de do? Give me a chaw t'baccer. I'm Pill, the new minister. I take
fine-cut when I can get it," he said, as Bacon put his hand into his
pocket. "Much obliged. How goes it?"

"Tollable, tollable," said the astounded farmer, looking hard at Pill as
he flung a handful of tobacco into his mouth.

"Yes, I'm the new minister sent around here to keep you fellows in the
traces and out of hell-fire. Have y' fled from the wrath?" he asked, in
a perfunctory way.

"You are, eh?" said Bacon, referring back to his profession.

"I am just! How do you like that style of barb fence? Ain't the twisted
wire better?"

"I s'pose they be, but they cost more."

"Yes, costs more to go to heaven than to hell. You'll think so after I
board with you a week. Narrow the road that leads to light, and broad
the way that leads--how's your soul anyway, brother?"

"Soul's all right. I find more trouble to keep m' body go'n'."

"Give us your hand; so do I. All the same we must prepare for the next
world. We're gettin' old; lay not up your treasures where moth and rust
corrupt and thieves break through and steal."

Bacon was thoroughly interested in the preacher, and was studying him
carefully. He was tall, straight, and superbly proportioned;
broad-shouldered, wide-lunged, and thewed like a Greek racer. His rather
small steel-blue eyes twinkled, and his shrewd face and small head, set
well back, completed a remarkable figure. He wore his reddish beard in
the usual way of Western clergymen, with mustache chopped close.

Bacon spoke slowly:

"You look like a good, husky man to pitch in the barnyard; you've too
much muscle f'r preachun'."

"Come and hear me next Sunday, and if you say so then, I'll quit,"
replied Mr. Pill, quietly. "I give ye my word for it. I believe in
preachers havin' a little of the flesh and the devil; they can
sympathize better with the rest of ye." The sarcasm was lost on Bacon,
who continued to look at him. Suddenly he said, as if with an
involuntary determination:

"Where ye go'n' to stay t'night?"

"I don' know; do you?" was the quick reply.

"I reckon ye can hang out with me, 'f ye feel like ut. We ain't very
purty, ol' woman an' me, but we eat. You go along down the road and tell
'er I sent yeh. Y'll find an' ol' dusty Bible round some'rs--I s'pose ye
spend y'r spare time read'n about Joshua an' Dan'l"----

"I spend more time reading men. Well, I'm off! I'm hungrier 'n a gray
wolf in a bear-trap."

And off he went as he came. But he did not whistle; he chewed.

Bacon felt as if he had made too much of a concession, and had a strong
inclination to shout after him, and retract his invitation; but he did
not, only worked on, with an occasional bear-like grin. There was
something captivating in this fellow's free and easy way.

When he came up to the house an hour or two later, in singular good
humor for him, he found the Elder in the creamery, with "the old woman"
and Marietta. Marietta was not more won by him than was Jane Bacon, he
was so genial and put on so few religious frills.

Mrs. Bacon never put on frills of any kind. She was a most frightful
toiler, only excelled (if excelled at all) by her husband. She was still
muscular in her age and shapelessness. Unlovely at her best, when about
her work in her faded calico gown and flat shoes, hair wisped into a
slovenly knot, she was depressing. But she was a good woman, of sterling
integrity, and ambitious for her girl.

Marietta was as attractive as her mother was depressing. She was very
young at this time and had the physical perfection--at least as regards
body--that her parents must have had in youth. She was above the average
height of woman, with strong swell of bosom and glorious, erect
carriage of head. Her features were coarse, but regular and pleasing,
and her manner boyish.

Elder Pill was on the best of terms with them as he watched the milk
being skimmed out of the "submerged cans" ready for the "caaves and
hawgs," as Mrs. Bacon called them.

"Dad told you t' come here 'nd stay t' supper, did he? What's come over
him?" said the girl, with a sort of audacious humor.

"Dad has an awful grutch agin preachers," said Mrs. Bacon, as she wiped
her hands on her apron. "I declare, I don't see how "----

"_Some_ preachers, not _all_ preachers," laughed Pill, in his mellow
nasal. "There are preachers, and then again preachers. I'm one o' the
t'other kind."

"I sh'd think y' was," laughed the girl.

"Now, Merry Etty, you run right t' the pig-pen with that milk, whilst I
go in an' set the tea on."

Mr. Pill seized the can of milk, saying, with a twang: "Show me the way
that I may walk therein," and, accompanied by the laughing girl, made
rapid way to the pig-pen just as the old man set up a ferocious shout to
call the hired hand out of the cornfield.

"How'd y' come to send _him_ here?" asked Mrs. Bacon, nodding toward
Pill.

"Damfino! I kind o' liked him--no nonsense about him," answered Bacon,
going into temporary eclipse behind his hands as he washed his face at
the cistern.

At the supper table Pill was "easy as an old shoe," ate with his knife,
talked on fatting hogs, suggested a few points on raising clover, told
of pioneer experiences in Michigan, and soon won them--hired man and
all--to a most favorable opinion of himself. But he did not trench on
religious matters at all.

The hired man in his shirt-sleeves, and smelling frightfully of tobacco
and sweat (as did Bacon), sat with open month, at times forgetting to
eat, in his absorbing interest in the minister's yarns.

"Yes, I've got a family, too much of a family, in fact--that is, I think
so sometimes when I'm pinched. Our Western people are so indigent--in
plain terms, poor--they _can't_ do any better than they do. But we pull
through--we pull through! John, you look like a stout fellow, but I'll
bet a hat I can _down_ you three out of five."

"I bet you can't," grinned the hired man. It was the climax of all, that
bet.

"I'll take y' in hand an' flop y' both," roared Bacon from his lion-like
throat, his eyes glistening with rare good-nature from the shadow of his
gray brows. But he admired the minister's broad shoulders at the same
time. If this fellow panned out as he promised, he was a rare specimen.

After supper the Elder played a masterly game of croquet with Marietta,
beating her with ease; then he wandered out to the barn and talked
horses with the hired man, and finished by stripping off his coat and
putting on one of Mrs. Bacon's aprons to help milk the cows.

* * * * *

But at breakfast the next morning, when the family were about pitching
into their food as usual without ceremony, "_Wait!_" said the visitor,
in an imperious tone and with lifted hand. "Let us look to the Lord for
His blessing."

They waited till the grace was said, but it threw a depressing
atmosphere over the meal; evidently they considered the trouble begun.
At the end of the meal the minister asked:

"Have you a Bible in the house?"

"I reckon there's one in the house somewhere. Merry, go 'n see 'f y'
can't raise one," said Mrs. Bacon, indifferently.

"Have you any objection to family devotion?" asked Pill, as the book was
placed in his hands by the girl.

"No; have all you want," said Bacon, as he rose from the table and
passed out the door.

"I guess I'll see the thing through," said the hand. "It ain't just
square to leave the women folks to bear the brunt of it."

It was shortly after breakfast that the Elder concluded he'd walk up to
Brother Jennings' and see about church matters.

"I shall expect you, Brother Bacon, to be at the service at 2:30."

"All right, go ahead expectun'," responded Bacon, with an inscrutable
sidewise glance.

"You promised, you remember?"

"The--devil--I did!" the old man snarled.

The Elder looked back with a smile, and went off whistling in the warm,
bright morning.

II.

The school-house down on the creek was known as "Hell's Corners" all
through the county, because of the frequent rows that took place therein
at "corkuses" and the like, and also because of the number of teachers
that had been "ousted" by the boys. In fact, it was one of those places
still to be found occasionally in the West, far from railroads and
schools, where the primitive ignorance and ferocity of men still prowl,
like the panthers which are also found sometimes in the deeps of the
Iowa timber lands.

The most of this ignorance and ferocity, however, was centered in the
family of Dixons, a dark-skinned, unsavory group of Missourians. It
consisted of old man Dixon and wife, and six sons, all man-grown, great,
gaunt, sinewy fellows, with no education, but superstitious as savages.
If anything went wrong in 'Hell's Corners' everybody knew that the
Dixons were "on the rampage again." The school-teachers were warned
against the Dixons, and the preachers were besought to convert the
Dixons.

In fact, John Jennings, as he drove Pill to the school-house next day,
said:

"If you can convert the Dixon boys, Elder, I'll give you the best horse
in my barn."

"I work not for such hire," said Mr. Pill, with a look of deep solemnity
on his face, belied, indeed, by a twinkle in his small, keen eye--a
twinkle which made Milton Jennings laugh candidly.

There was considerable curiosity, expressed by a murmur of lips and
voices, as the minister's tall figure entered the door and stood for a
moment in a study of the scene before him. It was a characteristically
Western scene. The women were rigidly on one side of the school-room,
the men as rigidly on the other; the front seats were occupied by
squirming boys and girls in their Sunday splendor.

On the back, to the right, were the young men, in their best vests, with
paper collars and butterfly neckties, with their coats unbuttoned, their
hair plastered down in a fascinating wave on their brown foreheads. Not
a few were in their shirt-sleeves. The older men sat immediately
between the youths and boys, talking in hoarse whispers across the
aisles about the state of the crops and the county ticket, while the
women in much the same way conversed about children and raising onions
and strawberries. It was their main recreation, this Sunday meeting.

"Brethren!" rang out the imperious voice of the minister, "let us pray."

The audience thoroughly enjoyed the Elder's prayer. He was certainly
gifted in that direction, and his petition grew genuinely eloquent as
his desires embraced the "ends of the earth and the utterm'st parts of
the seas thereof." But in the midst of it a clatter was heard, and five
or six strapping fellows filed in with loud thumpings of their brogans.

Shortly after they had settled themselves with elaborate impudence on
the back seat, the singing began. Just as they were singing the last
verse, every individual voice wavered and all but died out in
astonishment to see William Bacon come in--an unheard-of thing! And with
a clean shirt, too! Bacon, to tell the truth, was feeling as much out of
place as a cat in a bath-tub, and looked uncomfortable, even shamefaced,
as he sidled in, his shapeless hat gripped nervously in both hands;
coatless and collarless, his shirt open at his massive throat. The girls
tittered, of course, and the boys hammered each other's ribs, moved by
the unusual sight. Milton Jennings, sitting beside Marietta, said:

"Well! may I jump straight up and never come down!"

And Shep Watson said: "May I never see the back o' my neck!" Which
pleased Marietta so much that she grew purple with efforts to conceal
her laughter; she always enjoyed a joke on her father.

But all things have an end, and at last the room became quiet as Mr.
Pill began to read the Scripture, wondering a little at the commotion.
He suspected that those dark-skinned, grinning fellows on the back seat
were the Dixon boys, and knew they were bent on fun. The physique of the
minister being carefully studied, the boys began whispering among
themselves, and at last, just as the sermon opened, they began to push
the line of young men on the long seat over toward the girls' side,
squeezing Milton against Marietta. This pleasantry encouraged one of
them to whack his neighbor over the head with his soft hat, causing
great laughter and disturbance. The preacher stopped. His cool,
penetrating voice sounded strangely unclerical as he said:

"There are some fellows here to-day to have fun with me. If they don't
keep quiet, they'll have more fun than they can hold." At this point a
green crab-apple bounded up the aisle. "I'm not to be bulldozed."

He pulled off his coat and laid it on the table before him, and, amid a
wondering silence, took off his cuffs and collar, saying:

"I can preach the word of the Lord just as well without my coat, and I
can throw rowdies out the door a little better in my shirt-sleeves."

Had the Dixon boys been a little shrewder as readers of human character,
or if they had known why old William Bacon was there, they would have
kept quiet; but it was not long before they began to push again, and at
last one of them gave a squeak, and a tussle took place. The preacher
was in the midst of a sentence:

"An evil deed, brethren, is like unto a grain of mustard seed. It is
small, but it grows steadily, absorbing its like from the earth and air,
sending out roots and branches, till at last"----

There was a scuffle and a snicker. Mr. Pill paused, and gazed intently
at Tom Dixon, who was the most impudent and strongest of the gang; then
he moved slowly down on the astonished young savage. As he came his eyes
seemed to expand like those of an eagle in battle, steady, remorseless,
unwavering, at the same time that his brows shut down over them--a
glance that hushed every breath. The awed and astounded ruffians sat as
if paralyzed by the unuttered yet terribly ferocious determination of
the preacher's eyes. His right hand was raised, the other was clenched
at his waist. There was a sort of solemnity in his approach, like a
tiger creeping upon a foe.

At last, after what seemed minutes to the silent, motionless
congregation, his raised hand came down on the shoulder of the leader
with the exact, resistless precision of the tiger's paw, and the ruffian
was snatched from his seat to the floor sprawling. Before he could rise,
the steel-like grip of the roused preacher sent him half way to the
door, and then out into the dirt of the road.

Turning, Pill came back down the aisle; as he came the half-risen
congregation made way for him, curiously. When he came within reach of
Dick, the fellow struck savagely out at the preacher, only to have his
blow avoided by a lithe, lightning-swift movement of the body above the
hips (a trained boxer's trick), and to find himself also lying bruised
and dazed on the floor.

By this time the rest of the brothers had recovered from their stupor,
and, with wild curses, leaped over the benches toward the fearless Pill.

But now a new voice was heard in the sudden uproar--a new but familiar
voice. It was the raucous snarl of William Bacon, known far and wide as
a terrible antagonist, a man who had never been whipped. He was like a
wild beast excited to primitive savagery by the smell of blood.

"_Stand back_, you hell-hounds!" he said, leaping between them and the
preacher. "You know me. Lay another hand on that man an', by the livun'
God, you answer t' me. Back thear!"

Some of the men cheered, most stood irresolute. The women crowded
together, the children began to scream with terror, while through it all
Pill was dragging his last assailant toward the door.

Bacon made his way down to where the Dixons had halted, undecided what
to do. If the preacher had the air and action of the tiger, Bacon looked
the grizzly bear--his eyebrows working up and down, his hands clenched
into frightful bludgeons, his breath rushing through his hairy nostrils.

"Git out o' hyare," he growled. "You've run things here jest about long
enough. Git out!"

His hands were now on the necks of two of the boys, and he was hustling
them toward the door.

"If you want 'o whip the preacher, meet him in the public road--one at a
time; he'll take care o' himself. Out with ye," he ended, kicking them
out. "Show your faces here agin, an' I'll break ye in two."

The non-combative farmers now began to see the humor of the whole
transaction and began to laugh; but they were cut short by the calm
voice of the preacher at his desk:

"But a _good_ deed, brethren, is like unto a grain of wheat planted in
good earth, that bringeth forth fruit in due season an hundred fold."

III.

Mr. Pill, with all his seeming levity, was a powerful hand at revivals,
as was developed at the "protracted" meetings held at the Corners during
December. Indeed, such was the pitiless intensity of his zeal that a
gloom was cast over the whole township; the ordinary festivities stopped
or did not begin at all.

The lyceum, which usually began by the first week in December, was put
entirely out of the question, as were the spelling-schools and
"exhibitions." The boys, it is true, still drove the girls to meeting in
the usual manner; but they all wore a furtive, uneasy air, and their
laughter was not quite genuine at its best, and died away altogether
when they came near the school-house, and they hardly recovered from the
effects of the preaching till a mile or two had been spun behind the
shining runners. It took all the magic of the jingle of the bells and
the musical creak of the polished steel on the snow to win them back to
laughter.

As for Elder Pill, he was as a man transformed. He grew more intense
each night, and strode back forth behind his desk and pounded the Bible
like an assassin. No more games with the boys, no more poking the girls
under the chin! When he asked for a chew of tobacco now it was with an
air which said: "I ask it as sustenance that will give me strength for
the Lord's service," as if the demands of the flesh had weakened the
spirit.

Old man Bacon overtook Milton Jennings early one Monday morning, as
Milton was marching down toward the Seminary at Rock River. It was
intensely cold and still, so cold and still that the ring of the cold
steel of the heavy sleigh, the snort of the horses, and the old man's
voice came with astonishing distinctness to the ears of the hurrying
youth, and it seemed a very long time before the old man came up.

"Climb on!" he yelled, out of his frosty beard. He was seated on the
"hind bob" of a wood-sleigh, on a couple of blankets. Milton clambered
on, knowing well he'd freeze to death there.

"Reckon I heerd you prowlun' around the front door with my girl last
night," Bacon said at length. "The way you both 'tend out t' meetun'
ought 'o sanctify yeh; must 'a' stayed to the after-meetun', didn't
yeh?"

"Nope. The front part was enough for"----

"Danged if I was any more fooled with a man in m' life. I b'lieve the
whole thing is a little scheme on the bretheren t' raise a dollar."

"Why so?"

"Waal, y' see Pill ain't got much out o' the app'intment thus fur, and
he ain't likely to, if he don't shake 'em up a leetle. Borrud ten
dollars o' me t'other day."

Well, thought Milton, whatever his real motive is, Elder Pill is earning
all he gets. Standing for two or three hours in his place night after
night, arguing, pleading, but mainly commanding them to be saved.

Milton was describing the scenes of the meeting to Bradley Talcott and
Douglas Radbourn the next day, and Radbourn, a young law student said:

"I'd like to see him. He must be a character."

"Let's make up a party and go out," said Milton, eagerly.

"All right; I'll speak to Lily Graham."

Accordingly, that evening a party of students, in a large sleigh, drove
out toward the school-house, along the drifted lanes and through the
beautiful aisles of the snowy woods. A merry party of young people, who
had no sense of sin to weigh them down. Even Radbourn and Lily joined in
the songs which they sang to the swift clanging of the bells, until the
lights of the school-house burned redly through the frosty air.

Not a few of the older people present felt scandalized by the singing
and by the dancing of the "town girls," who could not for the life of
them take the thing seriously. The room was so little, and hot, and
smoky, and the men looked so queer in their rough coats and hair
every-which-way.

But they took their seats demurely on the back seat, and joined in the
opening songs, and listened to the halting prayers of the brethren and
the sonorous prayers of the Elder, with commendable gravity. Miss Graham
was a devout Congregationalist, and hushed the others into gravity when
their eyes began to dance dangerously.

However, as Mr. Pill warmed to his work, the girls grew sober enough. He
awed them, and frightened them with the savagery of his voice and
manner. His small gray eyes were like daggers unsheathed, and his small,
round head took on a cat-like ferocity, as he strode to and fro, hurling
out his warnings and commands in a hoarse howl that terrified the
sinner, and drew 'amens' of admiration from the saints.

"Atavism; he has gone back to the era of the medicine man," Radbourn
murmured.

As the speaker went on, foam came upon his thin lips; his lifted hand
had prophecy and threatening in it. His eyes reflected flames; his voice
had now the tone of the implacable, vindictive judge. He gloated on the
pictures that his words called up. By the power of his imagination the
walls widened, the floor was no longer felt, the crowded room grew
still as death, every eye fixed on the speaker's face.

"I tell you, you must repent or die. I can see the great judgment angel
now!" he said, stopping suddenly and pointing above the stove-pipe. "I
can see him as he stands weighing your souls as a man 'ud weigh wheat
and chaff. Wheat goes into the Father's garner; chaff is blown to hell's
devouring flame! I can see him _now_! He seizes a poor, damned,
struggling soul by the _neck_, he holds him over the flaming forge of
_hell_ till his bones melt like wax; he shrivels like thread in a flame
of a candle; he is nothing but a charred husk, and the angel flings him
back into _outer darkness_; life was not in him."

It was this astonishing figure, powerfully acted, that scared poor Tom
Dixon into crying out for mercy. The effect on the rest was awful. To
see so great a sinner fall terror-stricken seemed like a providential
stroke of confirmatory evidence, and nearly a dozen other young people
fell crying. Whereat the old people burst out into amens with
unspeakable fervor. But the preacher, the wild light still in his eyes,
tore up and down, crying above the tumult:

"The Lord is come with _power_! His hand is visible _here_. Shout
_aloud_ and spare _not_. Fall before him as _dust_ to his feet!
Hypocrites, vipers, scoffers! the _lash_ o' the _Lord_ is on ye!"

In the intense pause which followed as he waited with expectant,
uplifted face--a pause so deep even the sobbing sinners held their
breath--a dry, drawling, utterly matter-of-fact voice broke the tense
hush.

"S-a-y, Pill, ain't you a bearun' down on the boys a _leetle too_ hard?"

The preacher's extended arm fell as if life had gone out of it. His face
flushed and paled; the people laughed hysterically, some of them the
tears of terror still on their cheeks; but Radbourn said, "Bravo,
Bacon!"

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