The Leatherwood God Part 21

Sighs and groans of ecstasy went up from the Flock at each of the studied pauses which Dylks made in recounting the wonders of the heavenly city, fancied one after another at the impulse of their expectation. At the end they swarmed forward to the altar place and flung themselves on the ground, and heaped the pulpit steps with their bodies. "Take us with you, Lord!" they entreated. "Take us all with you in the fles.h.!.+" "Don't leave us here to perish among the heathen and the unG.o.dly when you go." Then some began to ask, as if he had already consented, "But what shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed on that far journey?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: They swarmed forward to the altar-place and flung themselves on the ground, and heaped the pulpit-steps with their bodies]

Dylks leaned forward against the pulpit desk and showed a few coins drawn from the pocket of Hingston's pantaloons which he was wearing. "These shall be enough, for out of these three rusty old coppers I can make millions of gold and silver dollars."

The frenzy mounted, and the Herd of the Lost who began to tire of the sight, left the temple. Redfield followed out behind Matthew Braile and his wife. "That settles it," he said. "I'll see to Mr. Dylks in the morning."

"Now, I look at it differently. He's going, like he said he would, and we've got to let him go in his own way, and bring down the New Jerusalem Over-the-Mountains, or anywhere else he pleases, so he don't bring it down in Leatherwood."

"I say so, too, Matthew. He's keeping his word the best he can, poor lying soul. They wouldn't let him back out now."

"I don't want you to trouble him, Jim Redfield, till you have a warrant from me," Braile resumed, braced by his wife's support. "And I want you to keep the Hounds away, and give Dylks a fair start. You know the law won't let you touch him. Now do you hear?"

"I hear," Redfield said sullenly, with the consent which Braile read in his words. "But if there's any more such goings on as we've had here to-night, I won't answer for the rest of his scalp."

He hurried forward from the elderly couple and overtook the Gillespies walking rapidly. Hughey Blake had just fallen away from them and stood disconsolately looking after them.

"Is that you, James Redfield?" David Gillespie asked, peering at him in the night's dimness. "This is the man that helped me to get you a lock of that scoundrel's hair," he said to his daughter.

She answered nothing in acknowledgment of the introduction, but Redfield said, coming round to her side and suiting his step to hers, "I would like to go home with you till my road pa.s.ses yours."

"Well," she said, "if you ain't ashamed to be seen with such a fool.

n.o.body _can_ see you to-night," she added, bitterly, including him in her self-scorn.

"You needn't imply that I like it to be in the dark. I would like to walk with you in broad day past all the houses in Leatherwood. But I don't suppose you'd let me." She did not say anything, and he added, "I'm going to ask you to the first chance." Still she did not say anything, though her father had fallen behind and left the talk wholly to them.

XIX

Nancy sat at her door in the warm September evening when the twilight was beginning to come earlier than in the August days, and her boy rushed round the corner of the cabin in a boy's habitual breathlessness from running.

"Oh, mother, mother!" he called to her, as if he were a great way off.

"Guess what!" He did not wait for her to guess. "The Good Old Man is goin'

to leave Leatherwood and go Over the Mountains with the Little Flock, and he says he's goin' to bring down the New Jerusalem at Philadelphy, and all that wants to go up with him kin go. Mr. Hingston's goin' with him, and he's goin' to let Benny. Benny don't know whether he can get to go up in the New Jerusalem or not, but he's goin' to coax his father the hardest kind."

He stopped panting at his mother's knees where she sat on the cabin threshold nearly as high as he stood. She put up her hand and pushed the wet hair from his forehead. "How you _do_ sweat, Joey! Go round and wash your face at the bench. Maybe Jane will give you a drink of the milk, while it's warm yet, before she lets it down in the well. She's just through milkin'."

The boy tore himself away with a shout of "Oh, goody!" and his mother heard him at the well. "Wait a minute, Jane! Mother said I could have a drink before you let it down," and then she heard him, between gulps, recounting to the girl's silence the rumors she had already heard from him. He came running back, with a white circle of milk round his lips.

"Mother," he began, "have you ever been Over-the-Mountains?"

"No, I've never been anywhere but just here in the country, and where you was born, back where we moved from."

"Well, mother, how old am I now?"

"You're goin' on twelve, Joey dear."

"Yes, that's what I thought. Benny ain't on'y ten. And he ain't as big for his age as what I am. He's been to the circus, though; his father took him to it at Wheeling that time when he went on the steamboat. I wisht I could go to a circus."

"Well, maybe you kin when you grow up. Circuses ain't everything."

"No," the boy relucted. "Benny says the New Jerusalem will be a good deal like the circus. That's the reason he coaxed his father to let him go. Is Philadelphy as far as Wheeling?"

"A good deal further, from what I've heard tell," his mother said; she smiled at his innocently sinuous approach to his desire.

He broke out with it. "Mother, what's the reason I can't go with Benny, and Mr. Hingston, and the Little Flock? They'd take good care of me, and I wouldn't make Mr. Hingston any trouble. Me 'n' Benny could sleep together.

And the Good Old Man he's always been very pleasant to me. Patted my head oncet, and ast me what my name was."

"Did you tell him it was Billings?" his mother asked uneasily.

"No, just Joseph; and he said, well, that was his name, too. Don't you think the Good Old Man is good?"

"We're none of us as good as we ought to be, Joey. No, he ain't a good man, I'm afraid."

"My!" the boy said, and then after a moment: "I don't want to go, Mother, unless you want to let me go."

His mother did not speak for a while, and it seemed as if she were not going to speak at all, so that the boy said, with a little sigh of renunciation, "I didn't expect you would. But I'd be as careful! And even if the Good Old Man ain't so very good, Mr. Hingston is, and he wouldn't let anything happen to me."

The woman put her hand under the boy's chin, and looked into his eager eyes which had not ceased their pleading. At last she said, "You can go, Joey!"

"Mother!" He jumped to his feet from his crouching at hers. "Oh, glory to G.o.d!"

"Hush, Joey, you mustn't say things like that. It's like swearing, dear."

"I know it is, and I didn't mean to. Of course it's right, in meetin', and it kind of slipped out when I wasn't thinkin'. But I won't say any bad things, you needn't be afraid. Oh, I'll be as good! But look a'here, mother! Why can't you come, too?"

"And leave your little sister?" She smiled sadly.

"I didn't think of that. But couldn't Jane take care of her? She's always carryin' her around. And Uncle David could come here, and live with them.

He wouldn't want to stay there without me, or no one."

"It wouldn't do, Joey dear."

"No," the boy a.s.sented.

"You can go and tell Benny I said you might go, if his father will have you."

"Oh, he _will_; he said so; Benny's ast him! And he said he'd take good care of us both."

"I'm not afraid. You know how to take care of yourself. And, Joey--"

She stopped, and the boy prompted her, "What, mom?"

"When I said the Good Old Man wasn't a good man, I didn't want to set you against him. I want you to be good to him."

"Yes, mother," the boy a.s.sented in a puzzle. "But if he ain't good--"