Part 3

No need to tell what Higgins said then--what he repeated about repentance and faith and the infinite love of God and the power of Christ for salvation. Alex McKenzie had heard it all before--long before, being Scottish born, and a Highlander--and had not utterly forgotten, prodigal though he was. It was all recalled to him, now, by a man whose life and love and uplifted heart were well known to him--his minister.

"Pray for me," said he, like a child.

McKenzie died that night. He had said never a word in the long interval; but just before his last breath was drawn--while the Pilot still held his hand and the Sister of Charity numbered her beads near by--he whispered in the Pilot's ear:

"Tell the boys I made the grade!"

* * * * *

Pat, the old road-monkey--now come to the end of a long career of furious living--being about to die, sent for Higgins. He was desperately anxious concerning the soul that was about to depart from his ill-kept and degraded body; and he was in pain, and turning very weak.

Higgins waited.

"Pilot," Pat whispered, with a knowing little wink, "I want you to fix it for me."

"To fix it, Pat?"

"Sure, you know what I mean, Pilot," Pat replied. "I want you to fix it for me."

"Pat," said Higgins, "I _can't_ fix it for you."

"Then," said the dying man, in amazement, "what the hell did you come here for?"

"To show you," Higgins answered, gently, "how _you_ can fix it."

"_Me_ fix it?"

Higgins explained, then, the scheme of redemption, according to his creed--the atonement and salvation by faith. The man listened--and nodded comprehendingly--and listened, still with amazement--all the time nodding his understanding. "Uh-_huh!_" he muttered, when the preacher had done, as one who says, I _see!_ He said no other word before he died. Just, "Uh-_huh!_"--to express enlightenment. And when, later, it came time for him to die, he still held tight to Higgins's finger, muttering, now and again, "Uh-_huh!_ Uh-_huh!_"--like a man to whom has come some great astounding revelation.

XIII

STRAIGHT FROM THE SHOULDER

In the bunk-house, after supper, Higgins preaches. It is a solemn service: no minister of them all so punctilious as Higgins in respect to reverent conduct. The preacher is in earnest and single of purpose. The congregation is compelled to reverence. "Boys," says he, in cunning appeal, "this bunk-house is our church--the only church we've got." No need to say more! And a queer church: a low, long hut, stifling and ill-smelling and unclean and infested, a row of double-decker bunks on either side, a great glowing stove in the middle, socks and Mackinaws steaming on the racks, boots put out to dry, and all dim-lit with lanterns. Half-clad, hairy men, and boys with young beards, lounge everywhere--stretched out on the benches, peering from the shadows of the bunks, squatted on the fire-wood, cross-legged on the floor near the preacher. Higgins rolls out a cask for a pulpit and covers it with a blanket. Then he takes off his coat and mops his brow.

Presently, hymn-book or Testament in hand, he is sitting on the pulpit.

"Not much light here," says he, "so I won't read to-night; but I'll _say_ the First Psalm. Are you all ready?"

Everybody is ready.

"All right. '_Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly,_' boys, '_nor standeth in the way of sinners._'"

The door opens and a man awkwardly enters.

"Got any room back there for Bill, boys?" the preacher calls.

There seems to be room.

"I want to see you after service, Bill. You'll find a seat back there with the boys. '_For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous; but the way of the ungodly,_' gentlemen, '_shall perish._'"

There is a prayer, restrained, in the way of the preacher's church--a petition terrible with earnestness. One wonders how a feeling God could turn a deaf ear to the beseeching eloquence of it! And the boys sing--lustily, too--led by the stentorian preacher. An amazing incongruity: these seared, blasphemous barbarians bawling, _What a Friend I Have in Jesus!_

Enjoy it?

"Pilot," said one of them, in open meeting, once, with no irreverence whatsoever, "that's a damned fine toon! Why the hell don't they have toons like that in the shows? Let's sing her again!"

"Sure!" said the preacher, not at all shocked; "let's sing her again!"

There is a sermon--composed on the forest roads from camp to camp: for on those long, white, cold, blustering roads Higgins either whistles his blithe way (like a boy) or fashions his preaching. It is a searching, eloquent sermon: none other so exactly suited to environment and congregation--none other so simple and appealing and comprehensible. There isn't a word of cant in it; there isn't a suggestion of the familiar evangelistic rant. Higgins has no time for cant (he says)--nor any faith in ranting. The sermon is all orthodox and significant and reasonable; it has tender wisdom, and it is sometimes terrible with naked truth. The phrasing? It is as homely and brutal as the language of the woods. It has no affectation of slang. The preacher's message is addressed with wondrous cunning to men in their own tongue: wherefore it could not be repeated before a polite congregation. Were the preacher to ejaculate an oath (which he never would do)--were he to exclaim, "By God! boys, this is the only way of salvation!"--the solemnity of the occasion would not be disturbed by a single ripple.

"And what did the young man do?" he asked, concerning the Prodigal; "why, he packed his turkey and went off to blow his stake--_just like you!_" Afterward, when the poor Prodigal was penniless: "What about him _then_, boys? _You_ know. _I_ don't need to tell you. You learned all about it at Deer River. It was the husks and the hogs for him--_just like it is for you!_ It's up the river for you--and it's back to the woods for you--when they've cleaned you out at Deer River!" Once he said, in a great passion of pity: "Boys, you're out here, floundering to your waists, picking diamonds from the snow of these forests, to glitter, not in pure places, but on the necks of the saloon-keepers' wives in Deer River!" There is applause when the Pilot strikes home. "That's damned true!" they shout. And there is many a tear shed (as I saw) by the young men in the shadows when, having spoken long and graciously of home, he asks: "When did you write to your mother last? You, back there--and you! Ah, boys, don't forget her!"

There was pause while the preacher leaned earnestly over the blanketed barrel.

"Write home to-night," he besought them. "_She's--waiting--for--that--letter!_"

They listened.

XIV

THE SHOE ON THE OTHER FOOT

The Pilot is a fearless preacher--fearless of blame and violence--and he is the most downright and pugnacious of moral critics. He speaks in mighty wrath against the sins of the camps and the evil-doers of the towns--naming the thieves and gamblers by name and violently characterizing their ways: until it seems he must in the end be done to death in revenge. "Boys," said he, in a bunk-house denunciation, "that tin-horn gambler Jim Leach is back in Deer River from the West with a crooked game--just laying for you. I watched his game, boys, and I know what I'm talking about; _and you know I know!_" Proceeding: "You know that saloon-keeper Tom Jenkins? Of _course_ you do! Well, boys, the wife of Tom Jenkins nodded toward the camps the other day, and, 'Pshaw!' says she; 'what do I care about expense? My husband has a thousand men working for him in the woods!' She meant you, boys! A thousand of you--think of it!--working for the wife of a brute like Tom Jenkins." Again: "Boys, I'm just out from Deer River. I met ol' Bill Morgan yesterday. 'Hello, Bill!' says I; 'how's business?' 'Slow, Pilot,' says he; 'but I ain't worryin' none--it'll pick up when the boys come in with their stake in the spring.' There you have it! That's what you'll be up against, boys, God help you! when you go in with your stake--a gang of filthy thieves like Jim Leach and Tom Jenkins and Bill Morgan!" It takes courage to attack, in this frank way, the parasites of a lawless community, in which murder may be accomplished in secret, and perjury is as cheap as a glass of whiskey.

* * * * *

It takes courage, too, to denounce the influential parishioner.

"You grown-up men, here," Higgins complained to his congregation, "ought to give the young fellows a chance to live decent lives. Shame to you that you don't! You've lived in filth and blasphemy and whiskey so long that maybe you don't know any better; but I want to tell you--every one of you--that these boys don't want that sort of thing. They remember their mothers and their sisters, and they want what's _clean!_ Now, you leave 'em alone. Give 'em a show to be decent. And I'm talking to _you_, Scotch Andrew"--with an angry thump of the pulpit and a swift belligerent advance--"and to _you_, Gin Thompson, sneaking back there in your bunk!"

"Oh, hell!" said Gin Thompson.

The Pilot was instantly confronting the lazy-lying man. "Gin," said he, "you'll take that back!"

Gin laughed.

"Understand me?" the wrathful preacher shouted.

Gin Thompson understood. Very wisely--however unwillingly--he apologized. "That's all right, Pilot," said he; "you know I didn't mean nothin'."

"Anyhow," the preacher muttered, returning to his pulpit and his sermon, "I'd rather preach than fight."

* * * * *

Not by any means all Higgins's sermons are of this nature; most are conventional enough, perhaps--but always vigorous and serviceable--and present the ancient Christian philosophy in an appealing and deeply reverent way. I recall, however, another downright and courageous display of dealing with the facts without gloves. It was especially fearless because the Pilot must have the permission of the proprietors before he may preach in the camps. It is related that a drunken logger--the proprietor of the camp--staggered into Higgins's service and sat down on the barrel which served for the pulpit. The preacher was discoursing on the duties of the employed to the employer. It tickled the drunken logger.

"Hit 'em again, Pilot!" he applauded. "It'll do 'em good."

Higgins pointed out the wrong worked the owners by the lumber-jacks' common custom of "jumping camp."

"Give 'em hell!" shouted the logger. "It'll do 'em good."

Higgins proceeded calmly to discuss the several evils of which the lumber-jacks may be accused in relation to their employers.

"You're all right, Pilot," the logger agreed, clapping the preacher on the back. "Hit the ---- rascals again! It'll do 'em good."

"And now, boys," Higgins continued, gently, "we come to the other side of the subject. You owe a lot to your employers, and I've told you frankly what your minister thinks about it. But what can be expected of you, anyhow? Who sets you a good example of fair dealing and decent living? Your employers? Look about you and see! What kind of an example do your employers set? Is it any wonder," he went on, in a breathless silence, "that you go wrong? Is it any wonder that you fail to consider those who fail to consider you? Is it any wonder that you are just exactly what you are, when the men to whom you ought to be able to look for better things are themselves filthy and drunken loafers?"

The logger was thunderstruck.

"And how d'ye like _that_, Mister Woods?" the preacher shouted, turning on the man, and shaking his fist in his face. "How d'ye like _that_? Does it do _you_ any good?"

The logger wouldn't tell.

"Let us pray!" said the indignant preacher.

Next morning the Pilot was summoned to the office. "You think it was rough on you, do you, Mr. Woods?" said he. "But I didn't tell the boys a thing that they didn't know already. And what's more," he continued, "I didn't tell them a thing that your own son doesn't know. You know just as well as I do what road _he's_ travelling; and you know just as well as I do what you are doing to help that boy along."

Higgins continued to preach in those camps.

* * * * *

One inevitably wonders what would happen if some minister of the cities denounced from his pulpit in these frank and indignantly righteous terms the flagrant sinners and hypocrites of his congregation. What polite catastrophe would befall him?--suppose he were convinced of the wisdom and necessity of the denunciation and had no family dependent upon him. The outburst leaves Higgins established in the hearts of his hearers; and it leaves him utterly exhausted. He mingles with the boys afterward; he encourages and scolds them, he hears confession, he prays in some quiet place in the snow with those whose hearts he has touched, he confers with men who have been seeking to overcome themselves, he writes letters for the illiterate, he visits the sick, he renews old acquaintanceship, he makes new friends, he yarns of the "cut" and the "big timber" and the "homesteading" of other places, and he distributes the "readin' matter," consisting of old magazines and tracts which he has carried into camp.

At last he quits the bunk-house, worn out and discouraged and downcast.

"I failed to-night," he said, once, at the superintendent's fire. "It was awfully kind of the boys to listen to me so patiently. Did you notice how attentive they were? I tell you, the boys are _good_ to me! Maybe I was a little rough on them to-night. But somehow all this unnecessary and terrible wickedness enrages me. And nobody else much seems to care about it. And I'm their minister. And I yearn to have the souls of these boys awakened. I've just _got_ to stand up and tell them the truth about themselves and give them the same old Message that I heard when I was a boy. I don't know, but it's kind of queer about ministers of the gospel," he went on. "We've got two Creations now, and three Genesises. But take a minister. It wouldn't matter to me if a brother minister fell from grace. I'd pick him out of the mud and never think of it again. It wouldn't cost _me_ much to forgive him. I know that we're all human and liable to sin. But when an ordained minister gets up in his pulpit and dodges his duty--when he gets up and dodges the truth--why, bah! _I've got no time for him!_"

XV

CAUSE AND EFFECT

This sort of preaching--this genuine and practical ministry consistently and unremittingly carried on for love of the men, and without prospect of gain--wins respect and loyal affection. The dogged and courageous method will be sufficiently illustrated in the tale of the Big Scotchman of White Pine--to Higgins almost a forgotten incident of fourteen years' service. The Big Scotchman was discovered drunk and shivering with apprehension--he was in the first stage of _delirium tremens_--in a low saloon of White Pine, some remote and God-forsaken settlement off the railroad, into which the Pilot had chanced on his rounds. The man was a homesteader, living alone in a log-cabin on his grant of land, some miles from the village.

"Well," thought the Pilot, quite familiar with the situation, "first of all I've got to get him home."

There was only one way of accomplishing this, and the Pilot employed it; he carried the Big Scotchman.

"Well," thought the Pilot, "what next?"

The next thing was to wrestle with the Big Scotchman, upon whom the "whiskey sickness" had by that time fallen--to wrestle with him in the lonely little cabin in the woods, and to get him down, and to hold him down. There was no congregation to listen to the eloquent sermon which the Pilot was engaged in preaching; there was no choir, there was no report in the newspapers. But the sermon went on just the same. The Pilot got the Big Scotchman down, and kept him down, and at last got him into his bunk. For two days and nights he sat there ministering--hearing, all the time, the ravings of a horrible delirium. There was an interval of relief then, and during this the Pilot gathered up every shred of the Big Scotchman's clothing and safely hid it. There was not a garment left in the cabin to cover his nakedness.

The Big Scotchman presently wanted whiskey.

"No," said the Pilot; "you stay right here."

The Big Scotchman got up to dress.

"Nothing to wear," said the Pilot.

Then the fight was on again. It was a long fight--merely a physical thing in the beginning, but a fight of another kind before the day was done. And the Pilot won. When the Big Scotchman got up from his knees he took the Pilot's hand and said that, by God's help, he would live better than he had lived. Moreover, he was as good as his word. Presently White Pine knew him no more; but news of his continuance in virtue not long ago came down to the Pilot from the north. It was what the Pilot calls a real reformation _and_ conversion. It seems that there is a difference.

* * * * *

We had gone the rounds of the saloons in Deer River, and had returned late at night to the hotel. The Pilot was very busy--he is always busy, from early morning until the last sot drops unconscious to the bar-room floor, when, often, the real day's work begins; he is one of the hardest workers in any field of endeavor. And he was now heart-sick because of what he had seen that night; but he was not idle--he was still shaking hands with his parishioners in the bar-room, still advising, still inspiring, still scolding and beseeching, still holding private conversations in the corners, for all the world like a popular and energetic politician on primary day.

A curious individual approached me.

"Friend of the Pilot's?" said he.

I nodded.

"He's a good man."

I observed that the stranger was timid and slow--a singular fellow, with a lean face and nervous hands and clear but most unsteady eyes. He was like an old hulk repainted.

"He done me a lot of good," he added, in a slow, soft drawl, hardly above a whisper, at the same time slowly smoothing his chin.

It was a pleasant thing to hear.

"They used to call me Brandy Bill," he continued. He pointed to a group of drunkards lying on the floor. "I used to be like that," said he, looking up like a child who perceives that he is interesting. After a pause, he went on: "But once when the snakes broke out on me I made up my mind to quit. And then I went to the Pilot and he stayed with me for a while, and told me I had to hang on. I thought I could do it if the boys would leave me alone. So the Pilot told me what to do. 'Whenever you come into town,' says he, 'you go on to your sister's and borrow her little girl.' Her little girl was just four years old then. 'And,' says the Pilot, 'don't you never come down street without her.' Well, I done what the Pilot said. I never come down street without that little girl hanging on to my hand; and when she was with me not one of the boys ever asked me to take a drink. Yes," he drawled, glancing at the drunkards again, "I used to be like that. Pretty near time," he added, like a man displaying an experienced knowledge, "to put them fellows in the snake-room."

Such a ministry as the Pilot's springs from a heart of kindness--from a pure and understanding love of all mankind. "Boys," said he, once, in the superintendent's office, after the sermon in the bunk-house, "I'll never forget a porterhouse steak I saw once. It was in Duluth. I'd been too busy to have my breakfast, and I was hungry. I'm a big man, you know, and when I get hungry I'm _hungry_. Anyhow, I wasn't thinking about that when I saw the steak. It didn't occur to me that I was hungry until I happened to glance into a restaurant window as I walked along. And there I saw the steak. You know how they fix those windows up: a chunk of ice and some lettuce and a steak or two and some chops. Well, boys, all at once I got so hungry that I ached. I could hardly wait to get in there.

"But I stopped.

"'Look here, Higgins,' thought I, 'what if you didn't have a cent in your pocket?'

"Well, that was a puzzler. 'What if you were a dead-broke lumber-jack, and hungry like this?'

"Boys, it frightened me. I understood just what those poor fellows suffer. And I couldn't go in the restaurant until I had got square with them.

"'Look here, Higgins,' I thought, 'the best thing you can do is to go and find a hungry lumber-jack somewhere and feed him.'

"And I did, too; and I tell you, boys, I enjoyed my dinner."

It is a ministry that wins good friends, and often in unexpected places: friends like the lumber-jack (once an enemy) who would clear a way for the Pilot in town, shouting, "I'm road-monkeying for the Pilot!" and friends like the Blacksmith.

Higgins came one night to a new camp where an irascible boss was in complete command.

"You won't mind, will you," said he, "if I hold a little service for the boys in the bunk-house to-night?"

The boss ordered him to clear out.

"All I want to do," Higgins protested, mildly, "is just to hold a little service for the boys."

Again the boss ordered him to clear out: but Higgins had come prepared with the authority of the proprietor of the camp.

"I've a pass in my pocket," he suggested.

"Don't matter," said the boss; "you couldn't preach in this camp if you had a pass from God Almighty!"

To thrash or not to thrash? that was the Pilot's problem; and he determined not to thrash, for he knew very well that if he thrashed the boss the lumber-jacks would lose respect for the boss and jump the camp. The Blacksmith, however, had heard--and had heard much more than is here written. Next morning he involved himself in a quarrel with the boss; and having thrashed him soundly, and having thrown him into a snowbank, he departed, but returned, and, addressing himself to that portion of the foreman which protruded from the snow, kicked it heartily, saying: "There's one for the Pilot. And there's another--and another. I'll learn you to talk to the Pilot like a drunken lumber-jack. There's another for _him_. Take that--and that--for the Pilot."

Subsequently Higgins preached in those camps.

XVI

THE WAGES OF SACRIFICE

One asks, Why does Higgins do these things? The answer is simple: Because he loves his neighbor as himself--because he actually _does_, without self-seeking or any pious pretence. One asks, What does he get out of it? I do not know what Higgins gets. If you were to ask him, he would say, innocently, that once, when he preached at Camp Seven of the Green River Works, the boys fell in love with the singing. _Jesus, Lover of My Soul_, was the hymn that engaged them. They sang it again and again; and when they got up in the morning, they said: "Say, Pilot, let's sing her once more!" They sang it once more--in the bunk-house at dawn--and the boss opened the door and was much too amazed to interrupt. They sang it again. "All out!" cried the boss; and the boys went slowly off to labor in the woods, singing, _Let me to Thy bosom fly!_ and, _Oh, receive my soul at last!_--diverging here and there, axes and saws over shoulder, some to the deeper forest, some making out upon the frozen lake, some pursuing the white roads--all passing into the snow and green and great trees and silence of the undefiled forest which the Pilot loves--all singing as they went, _Other refuge have I none; hangs my helpless soul on Thee_--until the voices were like sweet and soft-coming echoes from the wilderness.

Poor Higgins put his face to the bunk-house door and wept.

"I tell you, boys," he told us, on the road from Six to Four, "it was _pay_ for what I've tried to do for the boys."

Later--when the Sky Pilot sat with his stockinged feet extended to a red fire in the superintendent's log-cabin of that bitterly cold night--he betrayed himself to the uttermost. "Do you know, boys," said he, addressing us, the talk having been of the wide world and travel therein, "I believe you fellows would spend a dollar for a dinner and never think twice about it!"

We laughed.