Ernest Seton - The Preacher of Cedar Mountain

Belle, as the manager of the affair, was needed everywhere and all the time, but made no contribution to the programme. Lou-Jane scored such a success with "Home, Sweet Home" that she was afterward surrounded by a group of admirers, among them Jim Hartigan.

"Sure," he said, she "was liable to break up the meeting making every one so homesick," and she replied that "it would never break up as long as he was there to attract them all together."

John Higginbotham, with his unfailing insurance eye, pointed out that the stove-pipe wire had sagged, bringing the pipe perilously near the woodwork, and then gossiped about the robberies his company had suffered. A game of rhymes was proposed. In this one person gives a word and the next to him must at once match it with an appropriate rhyme. This diversion met with little enthusiasm and the party lagged until some one suggested that Jim recite. He chose a poem from Browning, "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix." He put his very soul in those galloping horses and wondered why the poet said so much about the men and so little about the steeds. Dr. Jebb could not quite "see the lesson," but the fire and power of the rendering gripped the audience. Dr. Carson said, "Now you're doing real stuff! If you'd cut out all your piffling goody talk and give us life like that, you'd have all the town with you."

Lou-Jane was actually moved, and Belle glowed with pride to see her hero really touching the nobler strings of human emotion—strings that such a community is apt to lose sight of under cobwebs of long disuse but they are there and ready to resound to the strong, true soul that can touch them with music.

But what was it in the trampling horses that stirred some undiscovered depth in his own heart? How came it that those lines drove fogbanks back and showed another height in his soul, a high place never seen before, even by himself? And, as those simple townfolk, stirred they knew not how, all clamoured for another song, he felt the thrill that once was his in the far-off stable yard of Links, when Denny Denard, brandishing a dung-fork, chanted "The Raiding of Aymal." Now it all came back and Hartigan shouted out the rede:

"Haakon is dead! Haakon is dead! Haakon of the bronze-hilt sword is dead. His son's in his stead; Aymal, tall son of Haakon, Swings now the bronze-hilt sword of his father. He is gone to the High-fielden To the high pasture to possess the twelve mares of his father; Black and bay and yellow, as the herdsman drave them past him; Black and yellow, their manes on the wind; And galloped a colt by the side of each."

So he sang in a chant the saga-singer's tale of the king killing all the colts save one that it might have the nursing of the twelve. His eye sparkled and glowed; his colour mounted; his soul was so stirred with the story that his spirit could fill the gaps where his memory failed. The sense of power was on him; he told the swinging tale as though it were in verity his own; and the hearers gazed intensely, feeling that he sang of himself. It was no acting, but a king proclaiming himself a king, when he told of the world won by the bronze sword bearer mounted on the twelve-times-nourished stallion colt; and he finished with a royal gesture and injunction:

"Ho! ye, ye seven tall sons of Aymal, Comes there a time when face you many trails; Hear this for wisdom now; Twelve colts had I and all save one I slew. The twelve-times-nourished charger grew And round the world he bore me And never failed; so all the world was mine And all the world I ruled. Ho, children of the bronze-hilt sword, Take this for guiding creed: Pick out your one great steed And slay the rest and ride."

And when he smote the table with his fist the folk in that poor, simple hall were hushed with awe. They had no words to clothe the thoughts that came, no experience of their own to match them. There was a pauses—a silence; a slow, uncertain sounding of applause. Carson glared half hypnotized; then said to himself: "This is not Jim Hartigan; this is the royal saga who sang."

What he clearly expressed, the others vaguely but deeply felt. As for Belle, the passion and the power of it possessed her. She was deeply moved—and puzzled, too. It was a side of Jim she had not known before. Later, as they went home together hand on arm, she held on to him very tightly and said softly: "Now I know that you are marked for big things in the world."

Have you seen the springtime dawn on the Black Hills? No? Then you have never seen a real spring.

For long, dark, silent months the land has lain under a broad white robe, the plains are levelled, hidden, and the whiteness of the high spaces sweeps down to meet, on the lower hills, the sudden blackness of the forest pine. And now you know why these are named Black Hills. Full four white moons have waned; the blizzard wind has hissed and stung, till the house-bound wonder if the days of spring will ever come. In March, when the northward-heading crows appear, the sting-wind weakens, halts; the sweet south wind springs up, the snow-robe of the plains turns yellow here and there as the grass comes through, then lo! comes forth a world of crocus bloom. The white robe shrivels fast now, the brown pursues it up the mountain side till at the last there is nothing left but a high-up snow-cap hiding beneath the pines, slowly dissolving in a million crystal rills to swell the rolling Cheyenne far below. The spring birds fill the air, the little ones that twitter as they pass, and the great gold-breasted prairie lark that sings and sings: "The Spring, the Spring, the glory of the Spring!" Then all the world is glad, and stronger than the soft new wind, deeper than the impulse of awakening flower bulbs, broader than the brightening tinge of green—is the thrill of a world-wide, sky-wide joy and power, the exquisite tenderness and yearning which if you know, you know; and if you do not know it none can make you understand.

"O God of the blue and the green and the wind, oh, send me what my spirit craves." That is the prayer, the unspoken prayer, of every sun-wise creature in these days; and the wild things race and seek, and search and race, not knowing what draws them ever on; but they surely know when they find it, and then they are at rest.

And they rode, Belle and Jim, the big square man, and the maid with the age-old light in her eyes, and they rejoiced in the golden plains. They rode with the wild things of the plain, and though they talked of the past and the future there was for them but one thing worth a thought, the golden present in their golden youth.

"Oh, Belle, what fools we are! We talk of the past and of far-off days, of the blessings that are ahead of us, and I know there is no better joy than this, to ride and shout and be alive right now with you!"

Midnight had burgeoned out into a big strong horse; not swift, but staunch and better fitted than the other for a rider of such weight. The wound of losing Blazing Star had healed, and the scar it left was a precious thing to Jim much as the Indian holds his Sun Dance scars as proofs of fortitude unflinching.

Fort Ryan and all the plains were in a rosy light this spring. It was a threefold joy to ride on Midnight, with Belle, and to visit Blazing Star in his stall at the Fort. Hartigan felt a little guilty as the gentle creature would come and nose about for sugar lumps while Midnight would lay back his ears at the approach. Midnight had a temper, as was well known; but it was never let forth, for the master that had so little skill in handling men was adept with the horse.

These were very full days for Jim and Belle, though they took their happiness in very different moods. There never was a grown man more incapable of thought for the morrow than Hartigan; he was alive right now, he would right now enjoy his life and Belle should be the crown. But in her eyes even his imperception discovered a cloud.