University of Virginia Library

13. CHAPTER XIII.
TWO TO ONE.

MAGRUDER had been so pleased with his success
in organizing a class in the Hissawachee settlement
that he resolved to favor them with a Sunday
sermon on his next round. He was accustomed to
preach twice every week-day and three times on every
Sunday, after the laborious manner of the circuit-rider
of his time. And since he expected to leave
Hissawachee as soon as meeting should be over, for
his next appointment, he determined to reach the settlement
before breakfast that he might have time to
confirm the brethren and set things in order.

When the Sunday set apart for the second sermon
drew near, Morton, with the enthusiastic approval of
Captain Lumsden, made ready his tin horns to interrupt
the preacher with a serenade. But Lumsden had
other plans of which Morton had no knowledge.

John Wesley's rule was, that a preacher should
rise at four o'clock and spend the hour until five in
reading, meditation and prayer. Five o'clock found
Magruder in the saddle on his way to Hissawachee,
reflecting upon the sermon he intended to preach.
When he had ridden more than an hour, keeping himself
company by a lusty singing of hymns, he came
suddenly out upon the brow of a hill overlooking the
Hissawachee valley. The gray dawn was streaking

the clouds, the preacher checked his horse and looked
forth on the valley just disclosing its salient features
in the twilight, as a General looks over a battle-field
before the engagement begins. Then he dismounted,
and, kneeling upon the leaves, prayed with apostolic
fervor for victory over “the hosts of sin and the
devil.” When at last he got into the saddle again
the winter sun was sending its first horizontal beams
into his eyes, and all the eastern sky was ablaze.
Magruder had the habit of turning the whole universe
to spiritual account, and now, as he descended the
hill, he made the woods ring with John Wesley's
hymn, which might have been composed in the presence
of such a scene:

By the time he had finished the second stanza, the
bridle-path that he was following brought him into a
dense forest of beech and maple, and he saw walking
toward him two stout men, none other than our old
acquaintances, Bill McConkey and Jake Sniger.

“Looky yer,” said Bill, catching the preacher's
horse by the bridle: “you git down!”

“What for?” said Magruder.

“We're goin' to lick you tell you promise to go

[ILLUSTRATION]

TWO TO ONE.

[Description: 554EAF. Page 118. In-line engraving of three men; one is seated on a horse, another holds the horse's bridle.] back and never stick your head into the Hissawachee
Bottom agin.”

“But I won't promise.”

“Then we'll put a finishment to ye.”

“You are two to one. Will you give me time to
draw my coat?”

“Wal, yes, I 'low we will.”

The preacher dismounted with quiet deliberation,

tied his bridle to a beech limb, offering a mental
prayer to the God of Samson, and then laid his coat
across the saddle.

“My friends,” he said, “I don't want to whip you.
I advise you now to let me alone. As an American
citizen, I have a right to go where I please. My
father was a revolutionary soldier, and I mean to
fight for my rights.”

“Shet up your jaw!” said Jake, swearing, and approaching
the preacher from one side, while Bill came
up on the other. Magruder was one of those short,
stocky men who have no end of muscular force and
endurance. In his unregenerate days he had been
celebrated for his victories in several rude encounters.
Never seeking a fight even then, he had, nevertheless,
when any ambitious champion came from afar for the
purpose of testing his strength, felt himself bound to
“give him what he came after.” He had now greatly
the advantage of the two bullies in his knowledge of
the art of boxing.

Before Jake had fairly finished his preliminary
swearing the preacher had surprised him by delivering
a blow that knocked him down. But Bill had taken
advantage of this to strike Magruder heavily on the
cheek. Jake, having felt the awful weight of Magruder's
fist, was a little slow in coming to time, and the
preacher had a chance to give Bill a most polemical
blow on his nose; then turning suddenly, he rushed
like a mad bull upon Sniger, and dealt him one tremendous
blow that fractured two of his ribs and felled
him to the earth. But Bill struck Magruder behind,

knocked him over, and threw himself upon him after
the fashion of the Western free fight. Nothing saved
Magruder but his immense strength. He rose right up
with Bill upon him, and then, by a deft use of his
legs, tripped his antagonist and hurled him to the
ground. He did not dare take advantage of his fall,
however, for Jake had regained his feet and was coming
up on him cautiously. But when Sniger saw Magruder
rushing at him again, he made a speedy retreat
into the bushes, leaving Magruder to fight it out with
Bill, who, despite his sorry-looking nose, was again
ready. But he now “fought shy,” and kept retreating
slowly backward and calling out, “Come up on him behind,
Jake! Come up behind!” But the demoralized
Jake had somehow got a superstitious notion that the
preacher bristled with fists before and behind, having
as many arms as a Hindoo deity. Bill kept backing
until he tripped and fell over a bit of brush, and then
picked himself up and made off, muttering:

“I aint a-goin' to try to handle him alone! He
must have the very devil into him!”

About nine o'clock on that same Sunday morning,
the Irish school-master, who was now boarding at
Goodwin's, and who had just made an early visit to the
Forks for news, accosted Morton with: “An' did ye
hear the nooze, Moirton? Bill Conkey and Jake Sniger
hev had a bit of Sunday morning ricreation. They
throid to thrash the praycher as he was a-comin'
through North's Holler, this mornin'; but they didn't
make no allowance for the Oirish blood Magruder's
got in him. He larruped 'em both single-handed,

and Jake's ribs are cracked, and ye'd lawf to see Bill's
nose! Captain must 'a' had some proivate intherest
in that muss; hey, Moirton?”

“It's thunderin' mean!' said Morton; “two men
on one, and him a preacher; and all I've got to say
is, I wish he'd killed 'em both.”

“And yer futer father-in-law into the bargain?
Hey, Moirton? But fwat did I tell ye about Koike?
The praycher's jaw is lamed by a lick Bill gave him,
and Koike's to exhort in his place. I tould ye he
had the botherin' sperit of prophecy in him.”

The manliness in a character like Morton's must
react, if depressed too far; and he now notified those
who were to help him interrupt the meeting that if
any disturbance were made, he should take it on himself
to punish the offender. He would not fight alongside
Bill McConkey and Jake Sniger, and he felt like
seeking a quarrel with Lumsden, for the sake of justitifying
himself to himself.