CHAPTER IX

"THOU SHALT NOT COVET"

The wrestling match, that proved the championship of Sangamon River, established Abe Lincoln with his love of peace and his unlimited reserve of physical power to enforce it, as the peace-maker of New Salem.

The following day John Rutledge called at the store.

John Rutledge, with his partner Cameron, was the founder of New Salem. Some few years before, he had come from Kentucky with his family, bought a farm a few miles to the west, built a mill at New Salem, and opened a store and a tavern.

Within a year, ten log houses had been added to the original two. A cobbler and a blacksmith had shops. Then a few more houses were built, and a cooper mill where crude barrels and kegs were made.

John Rutledge, a descendant of the famous Rutledge family of the Carolinas, possessed the manly qualities of his ancestors in full measure, and pioneer life had by no means obliterated those instincts which make generous friends and progressive citizens.

Mr. Rutledge was also a firm believer in education as the foundation for the future greatness of the new Western country as well as the success of the individual, and it was largely due to his efforts that the Scotch schoolmaster, Mentor Graham, was among the first settlers.

John Rutledge had been into the new store before to look around. Once he had tarried to hear a story. But he was a busy man and had as yet formed no special acquaintance with the much-discussed Abe Lincoln.

This visit was for the purpose of getting acquainted. After Rutledge had warmly congratulated the ungainly clerk, on his insistence on fair play, they sat down to talk, and the conversation turned to a discussion of the widely renowned circuit-rider, Peter Cartwright, who was expected to hold a wonderful meeting in the vicinity of Springfield during the month of September.

Abe Lincoln had heard of Peter Cartwright, the eccentric Methodist exhorter, who was born in a Kentucky cane-brake and rocked in a bee-gum cradle, and could tell many stories about him.

The outcome of this short visit was an invitation to the clerk to visit at Rutledge Inn and tell some of the Cartwright stories.

Rutledge Inn was the largest building in the town except the mill. None of the other homes had more than two rooms, some only one. Rutledge Inn had four rooms and a sort of porch made by an extension of roof over a hardly packed, cleanly swept, dirt floor. It was here Mentor Graham, Doctor Allen, John Rutledge, William Green and other of the intelligent citizens gathered to discuss news, matters of education, religion and politics.

Quite pleased with his invitation, Abe Lincoln went to the Inn and found in addition to the family, Mentor Graham and Doctor Allen.

It was a night in late August. The stars twinkled above the dark outlines of the trees that crested the bluff. The one road of New Salem, that wound its way down the hill, lay like a gray ribbon and log houses made the darker spots that at irregular intervals marked it. Occasionally the call of a night bird sent ripples of wave-melody onto the stillness, or sometimes the tinkle of a bell stirred the ocean of the night silence, while the fall of the dam water sent out its rhythm in never-ending cadences.

The discussion turned to religion, a most fruitful topic of argument, for Mentor Graham was a Hard Shell and Doctor Allen was a Predestinarian. This night there was the uncommon Abe Lincoln to be heard from. Stories of Peter Cartwright were first on the program, and from these the conversation turned to a discussion of religion in particular and its uses to mankind.

"One of the best uses of religion," Dr. Allen said, "is to cast out fear. Medicine won't work when fear is present and there's been many a man scared to death. I was called out once to see a child who had been bitten by a rattlesnake. She died and her father nearly lost his mind. Later he got bit in the night by something--a spider, I think. He was sure it was a rattlesnake. There was no need of the man dying, but he did die--actually _frightened to death_. It's an awful condition for a soul to be in that fears eternal punishment for sin. Religion takes away this fear."

"Just what is religion?" asked Abe Lincoln. "From what I've been able to gather, it's preachin' purgatory and damnation till you get up a panic, offerin' the mercy of God as a way of escape, and then takin' up a collection for the good advice you have given--is this religion?"

The men laughed.

"I may be off," Lincoln continued, "but looks to me like there wouldn't be so much need of gettin' the fear out of folks if the fear of hell wasn't first preached into them."

"Don't you believe in hell?" Mentor Graham asked.

"Can't say I do."

"But you believe in God, I am sure."

"Yes--only a fool has said in his heart there is no God."

"But the same authority that teaches God teaches hell," Doctor Allen said.

"Not to my way of thinking it don't," Lincoln answered. "'The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork,' the Book tells me. But I can't see how the heavens declare the glory of hell nor its necessity either."

"But how can God punish the unrighteous without a hell? Can't you see that by taking hell out of the Bible you destroy its value as an inspired book, and where else can one learn of God?"

"Have you forgotten the heavens and the stars? And then there are other things, too, that tell of God besides the Bible. Did you ever watch a dirt-dauber? Know how they work, do you? Builds his nest and puts in his egg. The young one is not goin' to get out until it can fly, so it must have food. The parent goes in search. Here comes a worm. Good food and enough to last until the young dauber is ready to wing its way. But there is a difficulty. If the dauber kills the worm and puts it in, it will be rotten as Heck before the young is ready to get out. What happens? The dauber sticks its stinger into a certain spot where it paralyzes the worm--knocks him out, so to speak, without killin' him. Then he puts him in the cell with the young, seals him and leaves. What I say is--where does the mud-dauber get his knowledge? Who told him to deaden that food without killin' it? Who shows him, or her, just the right point to stick in that sting? To me it has always seemed that any Creator that can plan this way has more than horse-sense. But to make folks like the Book says, in his own likeness and image, and then get mad at them and roast them alive a million or so years cause they can't swallow Hard Shell religion or gulp down Predestinarianism, looks like God hain't planned things as well as a mud-dauber. Maybe I'm lackin' myself, but I got to turn loose of God or hell one, and for my purpose I'm choosin' to hang on to God, and I somehow got a feelin' He's not goin' back on me. Twouldn't be fair--and God plays fair, gentlemen--God plays fair."

There was a moment of silence. Then John Rutledge said, "Davy, get a jug from the cellar. Sis, bring the water pitcher, glasses and sugar."

As the boy and girl arose Lincoln turned slightly. He had not noticed before that the daughter of the house had joined the group.

As he saw her now in the semi-darkness she looked like some fair creature of another world. He had heard that Ann Rutledge was the prettiest girl in town. She had passed his store and been pointed out to him. He had been told she was engaged to marry John McNeil who was the most settled young fellow in town and already worth ten thousand dollars. But neither of these news items had interested him sufficiently to take his attention from the story he had happened to be telling or hearing when she had passed.

As his eyes turned toward her, he saw she was leaning forward as if not to lose a word, and gazing at him intently.

He changed the glance of his eye to give her a chance to look another way. Then he turned his glance on her again. As he did so there came to him a revelation. Here was the pilgrim. How did he know it? He could not tell, yet, as surely as she sat there in the dim light, as surely as his eyes were resting on her golden head and fair face, he knew it.

Mentor Graham and Doctor Allen had launched a spirited discussion on baptism. Abe Lincoln did not join them. He turned his eyes again toward the girl. In the half-light he could not see the expression of her face, but her face was turned toward him and he was conscious she was thinking of him. She turned away as if embarrassed, but no sooner had he shifted than the dark eyes again turned toward the heroic figure, a figure like a bronze, the profile of his face half-Roman and half-Indian. His head rested on a neck of cords and muscle which stood straight out from a turn-down collar.

As irrestible as the pole draws the magnet, the glances of the two were drawn toward each other again, and in the dark each felt the meeting of this glance. Then Ann Rutledge got up and went away.

Abe Lincoln thought of the bird he had heard the night he sat on the ladder--the night the voice had called to him from the heights. He smiled.

* * * * *

The next morning Abe Lincoln was at the store early, waiting to see McNeil pass. When he had heard half a dozen times before that Ann Rutledge was engaged to marry McNeil, the words had been as idle gossip. Nor had he given McNeil any special attention. Now all was different. With keen eye and feverish desire he waited to pass judgment.

As the young man passed, the watching Lincoln felt himself moved by some tremendous impulse of destruction, a destruction that would annihilate this man from the face of the earth as completely as though he had never existed.

As he stood in the doorway of the rude frontier store, no Sinaitic thunder roared its disapproval of this primitive animal impulse. But he heard, instead, the gentle voice of a woman who had long lain sleeping under the tangle of a forsaken wildwood--a voice that had read to him from an open book by the light of a pine torch fire, "Thou shalt not covet."