Читать книгу Higgins, a Man's Christian - Duncan Norman - Страница 6

It is “back to the tall timber” for the penniless lumber-jack. Perhaps the familiar slang is derived from the necessity. I recall an intelligent Cornishman–a cook with a kitchen kept sweet and clean–who with a laugh contemplated the catastrophe of the snake-room, and the nervous collapse, and the bedraggled return to the woods.

“Of course,” said he, “that’s where I’ll land in the spring!”

It amazed me.

“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 God in your heart.”

Jones laughed.

“You hear me, Jones?” the Pilot repeated. “What you need is the grace of God 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 God 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 God 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 God 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 God; 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 passed 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