"Oh, I've been there a-plenty."
"When?"
"Twenty years ago."
"Oh, pshaw! It's all changed since then."
"Is it? That's a good one. I thought God's religion was unchangeable for ever and ever. I tell you, young fellow, if you keep on working and thinking you will wind up with a religion of common sense and kindness which, as near as I can make out, is what the man Jesus did preach."
"Then why don't you come to hear it?" retorted Hartigan.
"Because ye don't preach it."
"That's not a fair way to put it," reiterated Hartigan.
"See here," said Shives, "I will go to church next Sunday and right along, if whenever you get off some fool statement that every one knows is nonsense, you let me or some one get up and say, 'Now prove that, or take it back before you go further.'"
Hartigan was worsted. He did not retreat, but he was glad of the interruption furnished by a wild horse brought in to be shod. Here he took the lead and showed such consummate horse sense in the handling of the animal that the blacksmith growled, "If you'd put some of that into your pulpit, I'd go to hear you."
As Jim mounted Blazing Star and rode away at an easy swing, all eyes followed him, and the blacksmith growled: "'Homely in the cradle, handsome on the horse,' they say. He must 'a' been a clock-stopper when he was a kid. Pity to waste all that on a pulpiteer."
Later, the Preacher had a full discussion with Belle. The blacksmith had dented Hartigan's armour in several places. Where was the justice in punishing one being for another's sins? Even if the sufferer was willing, it was still wicked injustice. How could repentance wipe out the self-brought injury? These were among the puzzles. Dr. Jebb was his natural helper, but the Preacher brought them first to Belle. She had gone deeper and further than he had. She dreaded doctrinal discussion, but at length said:
"Did you never hear of the transfusion of blood whereby a man may give of his strength and, by suffering, save a friend from death? Did you never hear of a man tottering and almost down who was found by a friend at the right moment, helped to greater strength by mutual suffering, and so restored to his balance before he went down to ruin?"
And the fervent answer was, "Yes, I have."
New vistas were opened to them by this open-hearted talk—truly communion—and as they rode through the gray-bloomed sage they followed still the thought. Then he waved a hand and raised his face toward Cedar Mountain with its column seeming small against the sky.
"I want you to see it, Belle. I want you to stand there with me and know how much it means when your spirit is just right."
She swung her horse with his and they headed for the trail. He had talked to her about it before, but he had felt a little disappointed that her imagination was not stirred as his had been—that the mystery and charm, the emotional awe, so easy for his Celtic blood, had not been conjured up in her by his words. But he still had hopes that the feeling of the far-up shrine would weave enchantment of its own; and he told her of the second sight that the fay of his mother's land could give if one sang a song of the one right pitch in the glen of the "very stone."
So they rode through the sage to the trailing cedar robe and followed upward till the upper edge of the fragrant woods was reached. There they tied the horses and climbed on foot to the upland. The grass among the rocks was yellow now, and high gentians seized on the rare moment to flaunt their wondrous blue against that perfect background. A flock of autumn birds rose up and flew on, as the climbers, reaching the Spirit Rock, paused and turned to look out over the golden plains to the east, over the blue hills to the north, and into the purple glow that the waning sunlight left on all the west.
Belle rejoiced in it for its material beauty and its wealth of colour; and Jim, shyly watching her, said:
"Sometimes as I stand by this rock pinnacle and look over the plain, I feel as if I were an ocean rover, high up in the lookout, peering over the rough and tumbling sea. It possesses me with more than the power of a dream." Then, after a pause: "See, here is where the Indian boy was sitting as he kept his fast and vigil. I wonder what he saw. Some day, Belle, I want to take that vigil. Do you remember that the prophets of old always did so when they sought light? I am learning that the Indian had some light, and to-day I have done as he would do, I have brought my sacred medicine with me." He produced a little cedar box that his father had made. He opened it and deeply inhaled its fragrance. "That is cedar, Belle; it carries me back to other days when, under the cedar shingles, my mother put her arm about me and prayed that I might find the Eternal Guide."
He took out his mother's Bible, her photograph and the daguerreotype of his father. These were his sacred relics, and with them was a bundle of cedar twigs to keep the fragrance ever there—to keep continually with them the power, through smell, to conjure up those days and thoughts of her love. Belle took them reverently and gazed at the prim old pictures; then she looked him squarely in the eyes, intensely for a moment, like one who looks through a veil for the first time and sees a hidden chamber unguessed before.
"Belle," he said, and his voice was a little husky; "if I had gone on to the Big Cheyenne that time, I would have built a fire as soon as I had the chance and burnt all these to ashes; and then what—God only knows, for these were the vessels of my sanctuary; this was the ark of my covenant, with the rod that budded, the tables of the law, and the precious incense." She laid her hand on his in silent comprehension and he went on. "All my life I have had two natures struggling within me; and the destroyer would have won, and had won, when you turned the rout. If you had not come to me in Deadwood I would surely have burnt these relics. Now you understand. I couldn't speak about it down there; but up here it is easy. Some time I may be missing for a couple of days. Do not worry then; it will only mean I have gone up into my mountain. I am seeking the light that comes from prayer and fasting and vigil in a high place."
"I know those things as words," she said. "Just as we all learned them in Sunday-school; but you make them as real as this mountain, a part of my very life."
He replaced the relics in their cedar box and she realized that for the first time she had had a glimpse of the deep and spiritual quality of his soul.
BOOK III
THE HORSE PREACHER
CHAPTER XXIII
Blazing Star
The Angel of Destiny who had special charge of Jim had listed and measured his failings and had numbered them for drastic treatment. The brawling spirit of his early days, the proneness to drink, the bigoted intolerance of any other mode of thought than his own, the strange mistake of thinking physical courage the only courage, a curious disregard for the things of the understanding—each was the cause of bitter suffering. Each in its kind was alloy, dross, and for each the metal had to pass through the fires and, purified, come forth.
Hartigan's love of sport was rooted deep in his nature and Fate gave it a long fling. It took no cruel or destructive form, nor did it possess him as a hate; but certain things held him in passionate allegiance, so deep and so reckless that when their fever was upon him nothing else seemed worth a thought. And the chiefest of these was his love of horses. A noble thing in itself, a necessary vent, perhaps, for the untamed spirit's love of untrammelled motion but it was inwrought with dangers. Most men in the West in Hartigan's day—as now—were by nature horse-lovers; but never, so far as Cedar Mountain knew, had there been a man so horse-crazy as the Rev. James Hartigan. Already, he was known as the "Horse Preacher."