University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.
TREEING A PREACHER.

HAD I but bethought myself in time to call this
history by one of those gentle titles now in vogue,
as “The Wild Hunters of the Far West,” or even by one
of the labels with which juvenile and Sunday-school
literature—milk for babes—is now made attractive, as,
for instance, “Kike, the Young Bear Hunter.” I might
here have entertained the reader with a vigorous description
of the death of Bruin, fierce and fat, at the hands
of the triumphant Kike, and of the exciting chase after
deer under the direction of Morton.

After two weeks of such varying success as hunters
have, they found that it would be necessary to forego the
discomforts of camp-life for a day, and visit the nearest
settlement in order to replenish their stock of ammunition.
Wilkins' store, which was the center of a settlement,
was a double log-building. In one end the proprietor
kept for sale powder and lead, a few bonnets,
cheap ribbons, and artificial flowers, a small stock of
earthenware, and cheap crockery, a little homespun cotton
cloth, some bolts of jeans and linsey, hanks of yarn
and skeins of thread, tobacco for smoking and tobacco
for “chawing,” a little “store-tea”—so called in contradistinction
to the sage, sassafras and crop-vine teas in
general use—with a plentiful stock of whisky, and
some apple-brandy. The other end of this building

was a large room, festooned with strings of drying
pumpkin, cheered by an enormous fireplace, and lighted
by one small window with four lights of glass. In this
room, which contained three beds, and in the loft
above, Wilkins and his family lived and kept a first-class
hotel.

In the early West, Sunday was a day sacred to
Diana and Bacchus. Our young friends visited the
settlement at Wilkins' on that day, not because they
wished to rest, but because they had begun to get
lonely, and they knew that Sunday would not fail to
find some frolic in progress, and in making new
acquaintances, fifty miles from home, they would be
able to relieve the tedium of the wilderness with games
at cards, and other social enjoyments.

Morton and Kike arrived at Wilkins' combined
store and tavern at ten o'clock in the morning, and
found the expected crowd of loafers. The new-comers
“took a hand” in all the sports, the jumping, the
foot-racing, the quoit-pitching, the “wras'lin',” the
target-shooting, the poker-playing, and the rest, and
were soon accepted as clever fellows. A frontierman
could bestow no higher praise—to be a clever fellow
in his sense was to know how to lose at cards, without
grumbling, the peltries hard-earned in hunting, to
be always ready to change your coon-skins into “drinks
for the crowd,” and to be able to hit a three-inch
“mark” at two hundred paces without bragging.

Just as the sports had begun to lose their zest a
little, there walked up to the tavern door a man in
homespun dress, carrying one of his shoes in his hand,

[ILLUSTRATION]

ELECTIONEERING.

[Description: 554EAF. Page 070. In-line engraving of several standing men, three of whom are standing; one is leaning on a barrel.] and yet not seeming to be a plain backwoodsman.
He looked a trifle over thirty years of age, and an
acute observer might have guessed from his face that
his life had been one of daring adventure, and many
vicissitudes. There were traces also of conflicting purposes,
of a certain strength, and a certain weakness of
character; the melancholy history of good intentions
overslaughed by bad passions and evil associations
was written in his countenance.

“Some feller 'lectioneerin', I'll bet,” said one of
Morton's companions.

The crowd gathered about the stranger, who spoke

to each one as though he had known him always. He
proposed “the drinks” as the surest road to an acquaintance,
and when all had drunk, the stranger paid
the score, not in skins but in silver coin.

“See here, stranger,” said Morton, mischievously,
“you're mighty clever, by hokey. What are you running
fer?”

Well, gentlemen, you guessed me out that time. I
'low to run for sheriff next heat,” said the stranger,
who affected dialect for the sake of popularity.

“What mout your name be?'` asked one of the
company.

“Marcus Burchard's my name when I'm at home.
I live at Jenkinsville. I sot out in life a poor boy.
I'm so used to bein' bar'footed that my shoes hurts
my feet an' I have to pack one of 'em in my hand
most of the time.”

Morton here set down his glass, and looking at the
stranger with perfect seriousness said, dryly: “Well,
Mr. Burchard, I never heard that speech so well done
before. We're all goin' to vote for you, without t'other
man happens to do it up slicker'n you do. I don't
believe he can, though. That was got off very nice.”

Burchard was acute enough to join in the laugh
which this sally produced, and to make friends with
Morton, who was clearly the leader of the party, and
whose influence was worth securing.

Nothing grows wearisome so soon as idleness and
play, and as evening drew on, the crowd tired even
of Mr. Burchard's choice collection of funny anecdotes—little
stories that had been aired in the same

order at every other tavern and store in the county.
From sheer ennui it was proposed that they should
attend Methodist preaching at a house two miles away.
They could at least get some fun out of it. Burchard,
foreseeing a disturbance, excused himself. He wished
he might enjoy the sport, but he must push on. And
“push on” he did. In a closely contested election
even Methodist votes were not to be thrown away.

Morton and Kike relished the expedition. They
had heard that the Methodists were a rude, canting,
illiterate race, cloaking the worst practices under an
appearance of piety. Mr. Donaldson had often fulminated
against them from the pulpit, and they felt
almost sure that they could count on his apostolic
approval in their laudable enterprise of disturbing a
Methodist meeting.

The preacher whom they heard was of the roughest
type. His speech was full of dialectic forms and
ungrammatical phrases. His illustrations were exceedingly
uncouth. It by no means followed that he was
not an effective preacher. All these defects were rather
to his advantage,—the backwoods rhetoric was suited
to move the backwoods audience. But the party from
the tavern were in no mood to be moved by anything.
They came for amusement, and set themselves
diligently to seek it. Morton was ambitious to lead
among his new friends, as he did at home, and on
this occasion he made use of his rarest gift. The
preacher, Mr. Mellen, was just getting “warmed up”
with his theme; he was beginning to sling his rude
metaphors to the right and left, and the audience was

fast coming under his influence, when Morton Goodwin,
who had cultivated a ventriloquial gift for the
diversion of country parties, and the disturbance of
Mr. Brady's school, now began to squeak like a rat
in a trap, looking all the while straight at the preacher,
as if profoundly interested in the discourse. The
women were startled and the grave brethren turned
their austere faces round to look stern reproofs at the
young men. In a moment the squeaking ceased, and
there began the shrill yelping of a little dog, which
seemed to be on the women's side of the room. Brother
Mellen, the preacher, paused, and was about to request
that the dog should be removed, when he began to
suspect from the sensation among the young men that
the disturbance was from them.

“You needn't be afeard, sisters,” he said, “puppies
will bark, even when they walk on two legs instid of
four.”

This rude joke produced a laugh, but gained no
permanent advantage to the preacher, for Morton, being
a stranger, did not care for the good opinion of the
audience, but for the applause of the young revelers
with whom he had come. He kept silence now, until
the preacher again approached a climax, swinging his
stalwart arms and raising his voice to a tremendous
pitch in the endeavor to make the day of doom seem
sufficiently terrible to his hearers. At last, when he
got to the terror of the wicked, he cried out dramatically,
“What are these awful sounds I hear?” At
this point he made a pause, which would have been
very effective, had it not been for young Goodwin.

“Caw! caw! caw-aw! cah!” he said, mimicking a
crow.

“Young man,” roared the preacher, “you are hair-hung
and breeze-shaken over that pit that has no
bottom.”

“Oh, golly!” piped the voice of Morton, seeming
to come from nowhere in particular. Mr. Mellen now
ceased preaching, and started toward the part of the
room in which the young men sat, evidently intending
to deal out summary justice to some one. He was
a man of immense strength, and his face indicated
that he meant to eject the whole party. But they all
left in haste except Morton, who staid and met the
preacher's gaze with a look of offended innocence.
Mr. Mellen was perplexed. A disembodied voice
wandering about the room would have been too much
for Hercules himself. When the baffled orator turned
back to begin to preach again, Morton squeaked in
an aggravating falsetto, but with a good imitation of Mr.
Mellen's inflections, “Hair-hung and breeze-shaken!”

And when the angry preacher turned fiercely upon
him, the scoffer was already fleeing through the door.