Higgins Part 2

"Can't help it," said he. "That's where my stake 'll go. Jake Boore 'll get the most of it; and among the lot of them they'll get every cent. I'll blow four hundred dollars in two weeks--if I'm lucky enough to make it go that far."

"When you know that they rob you?"

"Certainly they will rob me; everybody knows _that_! But every year for nine years, now, I've tried to get out of the woods with my stake, and haven't done it. I intend to this year; but I know I won't. I'll strike for Deer River when I get my money; and I'll have a drink at Jake Boore's saloon, and when I get that drink down I'll be on my way.

It isn't because I want to; it's because I have to."

"But why?"

"They won't let you do anything else," said the cook. "I've tried it for nine years. Every winter I've said to myself that I'll get out of the woods in the spring, and every spring I've been kicked out of a saloon dead broke. It's always been back to the tall timber for me."

"What you need, Jones," said Higgins, who stood by, "is the grace of G.o.d in your heart."

Jones laughed.

"You hear me, Jones?" the Pilot repeated. "What you need is the grace of G.o.d in your heart."

"The Pilot's mad," the cook laughed, but not unkindly. "The Pilot and I don't agree about religion," he explained; "and now he's mad because I won't go to church."

This banter did not disturb the Pilot in the least.

"I'm not mad, Jones," said he. "All I'm saying," he repeated, earnestly, fetching the cook's flour-board a thwack with his fist, "is that what you need is the grace of G.o.d in your heart."

Again Jones laughed.

"That's all right, Jones!" cried the indignant preacher. "But I tell you that what you need is the grace of G.o.d in your heart. _And you know it!_ And when I get you in the snake-room of Jake Boore's saloon in Deer River next spring," he continued, in righteous anger, "_I'll rub it into you!_ Understand me, Jones? When I haul you out of the snake-room, and wash you, and get you sobered up, I'll rub it into you that what you need is the grace of G.o.d in your heart to give you the first splinter of a man's backbone."

"I'll be humble--then," said Jones.

"You'll have to be a good deal more than humble, friend," Higgins retorted, "before there'll be a man in the skin that _you_ wear."

"I don't doubt it, Pilot."

"Huh!" the preacher sniffed, in fine scorn.

The story fortunately has an outcome. I doubt that the cook took the Pilot's prescription; but, at any rate, he had wisdom sufficient to warn the Pilot when his time was out, and his money was in his pocket, and he was bound out of the woods in another attempt to get through Deer River. It was midwinter when the Pilot prescribed the grace of G.o.d; it was late in the spring when the cook secretly warned him to stand by the forlorn essay; and it was later still--the drive was on--when, one night, as we watched the sluicing, I inquired.

"Jones?" the Pilot replied, puzzled. "What Jones?"

"The cook who couldn't get through."

"Oh," said the Pilot, "you mean Jonesy. Well," he added, with satisfaction, "Jonesy got through this time."

I asked for the tale of it.

"You'd hardly believe it," said the Pilot, "but we cashed that big check right in Jake Boore's saloon. I wouldn't have it any other way, and neither would Jonesy. In we went, boys, brave as lions; and when Jake Boore pa.s.sed over the money Jonesy put it in his pocket. Drink? Not he! Not a drop would he take. They tried all the tricks they knew, but Jonesy wouldn't fall to them. They even put liquor under his nose; and Jonesy let it stay there, and just laughed. I tell you boys, it was fine! It was _great_! Jonesy and I stuck it out night and day together for two days; and then I put Jonesy aboard train, and Jonesy swore he'd never set foot in Deer River again. He was going South, somewhere, to see--somebody."

It was doubtless the grace of G.o.d, after all, that got the cook through: if not the grace of G.o.d in the cook's heart, then in the Pilot's.

VII

ROBBING THE BLIND

It it a perfectly simple situation. There are thirty thousand men-more or less of them, according to the season--making the wages of men in the woods. Most of them acc.u.mulate a hot desire to wring some enjoyment from life in return for the labor they do. They have no care about money when they have it. They fling it in gold over the bars (and any sober man may rob their very pockets); they waste in a night what they earn in a winter--and then crawl back to the woods. Naturally the lumber-towns are crowded with parasites upon their l.u.s.ts and prodigality--with gamblers and saloon-keepers and purveyors of low pa.s.sion. Some larger capitalists, more acute and more acquisitive, of a greed less nice -profess the three occupations at once. They are the men of real power in the remoter communities, makers of mayors and chiefs of police and magistrates--or were until Higgins came along to dispute them. And their operations have been simple and enormously profitable--so easy, so free from any fear of the law, that I should think they would (in their own phrase) be ashamed to take the money. It seems to be no trouble at all to abstract a drunken lumber-jack's wages.

It takes a big man to oppose these forces--a big heart and a big body, and a store of hope and courage not easily depleted. It takes, too, a good minister; it takes a loving heart and a fist quick to find the point of the jaw to preach the gospel after the manner of Higgins. And Higgins conceives it to be one of his sacred ministerial duties to protect his paris.h.i.+oners in town. Behind the bunk-houses, in the twilight, they say to him: "When you goin' t' be in Deer River, Pilot? Friday? All right. I'm goin' home. See me through, won't you?" Having committed themselves in this way, nothing can save them from Higgins--neither their own drunken will (if they escape him for an interval) nor the antagonism of the keepers of places. This is perilous and unscholarly work; systematic theology has nothing to do with escorting through a Minnesota lumber-town a weak-kneed boy who wants to take his money home to his mother in Michigan.

Once the Pilot discovered such a boy in the bar-room of a Bemidji saloon.

"Where's your money?" he demanded.

"'N my pocket."

"Hand it over," said the Pilot.

"Ain't going to."

"Yes, you are; and you're going to do it quick. Come out of this!"

Cowed by these large words, the boy yielded to the grip of Higgins's big hand, and was led away a little. Then the bartender leaned over the bar.

A gambler or two lounged toward the group. There was a pregnant pause.

"Look here, Higgins," said the bartender, "what business is this of yours, anyhow?"

"What business--of _mine?_" asked the astounded Pilot.

"Yes; what you b.u.t.tin' in for?"

"This," said Higgins, "_is my job!_"

The Pilot was leaning wrathfully over the bar, his face thrust belligerently forward, alert for whatever might happen. The bartender struck at him. Higgins had withdrawn. The bartender came over the bar at a bound. The preacher caught him on the jaw in mid-air with a stiff blow, and he fell headlong and unconscious. They made friends next day--the boy being then safely out of town. It is not hard for Higgins to make friends with bartenders. They seem to like it; Higgins really does.

It was in some saloon of the woods that the watchful Higgins observed an Irish lumber-jack empty his pockets on the bar and, in a great outburst of joy, order drinks for the crowd. The men lined up; and the Pilot, too, leaned over the bar, close to the lumber-jack. The bartender presently whisked a few coins from the little heap of gold and silver. Higgins edged nearer. In a moment, as he knew--just as soon as the lumber-jack would for an instant turn his back--the rest of the money would be deftly swept away.

The thing was about to happen, when Higgins's big hand shot out and covered the heap.

"Pat," said he, quietly, "I'll not take a drink. This," he added, as he put the money in his pocket, "is my treat."

The Pilot stood them all off--the hangers on, the runners, the gamblers, the bartender (with a gun), and the Irish lumber-jack himself. To the bartender he remarked (while he gazed contemptuously into the muzzle of the gun) that should ever the fellow grow into the heavy-weight cla.s.s he would be glad to "take him on." As it was, he was really not worth considering in any serious way, and had better go get a reputation. It was a pity--for the Pilot (said he) was fit and able--but the thras.h.i.+ng must be postponed for the time.