Higgins, a Man's Christian

The Sky Pilot rose astounded. Ol’ Man Johnson, in the beginnings of his spree in town–half a dozen potations–was frantically emptying his pockets of gold (some hundreds of dollars) on the preacher’s bed in the room above the saloon; and he blubbered like a baby while he threw the coins from him.

“Keep it away from me!” Ol’ Man Johnson wept, drawing back from the money with a gesture of terror. “For Christ’s sake, Pilot!–keep it away from me!”

The Pilot understood.

“If you don’t,” cried Ol’ Man Johnson, “it’ll kill me!”

Higgins sent a draft for the money to Ol’ Man Johnson when Ol’ Man Johnson got safely home to his wife in Wisconsin. Another spree in town would surely have killed Ol’ Man Johnson.

V

JACK IN CAMP

The lumber-jack in camp can, in his walk and conversation, easily be distinguished from the angels; but at least he is industrious and no wild brawler. He is up and heartily breakfasted and off to the woods, with a saw or an axe, at break of day; and when he returns in the frosty dusk he is worn out with a man’s labor, and presently ready to turn in for sound sleep. They are all in the pink of condition then–big and healthy and clear-eyed, and wholly able for the day’s work. A stout, hearty, kindly, generous crew, of almost every race under the sun–in behavior like a pack of boys. It is the Saturday in town–and the occasional spree–and the final debauch (which is all the town will give them for their money) that litters the bar-room floor with the wrecks of these masterful bodies.

Walking in from Deer River of a still, cold afternoon–with the sun low and the frost crackling under foot and all round about–we encountered a strapping young fellow bound out to town afoot.

“Look here, boy!” said Higgins; “where you going?”

“Deer River, sir.”

“What for?”

There was some reply to this. It was a childish evasion; the boy had no honest business out of camp, with the weather good and the work pressing, and he knew that Higgins understood. Meanwhile, he kicked at the snow, with a sheepish grin, and would not look the Pilot in the eye.

“You’re from Three, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I thought I saw you there in the fall,” said the Pilot. “Well, boy,” he continued, putting a strong hand on the other’s shoulder, “look me in the eye.”

The boy looked up.

“God help you!” said the Pilot, from his heart; “nobody else ’ll give you a show in Deer River.”

We walked on, Higgins in advance, downcast. I turned, presently, and discovered that the young lumber-jack was running.

“Can’t get there fast enough,” said Higgins. “I saw that his tongue was hanging out.”

“He seeks his pleasure,” I observed.

“True,” Higgins replied; “and the only pleasure the men of Deer River will let him have is what he’ll buy and pay for over a bar, until his last red cent is gone. It isn’t right, I tell you,” he exploded; “the boy hasn’t a show, and it isn’t right!”

It was twelve miles from Camp Three to Deer River. We met other men on the road to town–men with wages in their pockets, trudging blithely toward the lights and liquor and drunken hilarity of the place. It was Saturday; and on Monday, ejected from the saloons, they would inevitably stagger back to the camps. I have heard of one kindly logger who dispatches a team to the nearest town every Monday morning to gather up his stupefied lumber-jacks from the bar-room floors and snake-rooms and haul them into the woods.

VI

“TO THE TALL TIMBER!”

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.