The Bishop of Cottontown: A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills
candle falling on his silvery hair, whiter than the white sand of
Sand Mountain, a stern, strong face with lips which never ceased
moving in prayer, the eyes riveted on the little fluttering lips. And
watching the stern, solemn lips set, as Bud had often seen the white
stern face of Sunset Rock, when the clouds lowered around it,
suddenly he saw them relax and break silently, gently, almost
imperceptibly into a smile which made the slubber think the parting
sunset had fallen there; and Bud gripped the window-sill outside, and
swallowed and swallowed at the thing in his throat, and stood tersely
wiggling on his strained tendons, and then almost shouted when he saw
the smile break all over the old man's face and light up his eyes
till the candle's flickering light looked pale, and saw him bow his
head and heard him say:
"_Lord God Almighty ... My God ... My own God ... an' You ain't never
gone back on me yet.... 'Bless the Lord all my soul, an' all that is
within me; bless His Holy Name!'_"
Bud could not help it. He laughed out hysterically. And then the old
face, still smiling, looked surprised at the window and said: "Go
home, Bud. God is the Great Doctor, an' He has told me she shall
live."
Then, as he turned to go, his heart stood still, for he heard Shiloh
say in her little piping child voice, but, oh, so distinctly, and so
sweetly, like a bird in the forest:
"Pap, sech a sweet dream--an' I went right up to the gate of heaven
an' the angel smiled an' kissed me an' sed:
"'Go back, little Shiloh--not yet--not yet!'"
Then Bud slipped off in the dawn of the coming light.
CHAPTER XXIII
GOD WILL PROVIDE
In a few days Shiloh was up, but the mere shadow of a little waif,
following the old man around the place. She needed rest and good food
and clothes; and Bull Run and Seven Days and Appomattox and Atlanta
needed them, and where to get them was the problem which confronted
the grandfather.
Shiloh's narrow escape from death had forever settled the child-labor
question with him--he would starve, "by the Grace of God," as he
expressed it, before one of them should ever go into the mill again.
He had a bitter quarrel about it with Mrs. Watts; but the good old
man's fighting blood was up at last--that hatred of child-slavery,
which had been so long choked by the smoke of want, now burst into a
blaze when the shock of it came in Shiloh's collapse--a blaze which
was indeed destined "to light the valley with a torch of fire."
On the third day Jud Carpenter came out to see about it; but at sight
of him the old man took down from the rack over the hall door the
rifle he had carried through the war, and with a determined gesture
he stopped the employment agent at the gate: "I am a man of God, Jud
Carpenter," he said in a strange voice, rounded with a deadly
determination, "but in the name of God an' humanity, if you come
into that gate after my little 'uns, I'll kill you in yo' tracks,
jes' as a bis'n bull 'ud stamp the life out of a prowlin' coyote."
And Jud Carpenter went back to town and spread the report that the
old man was a maniac, that he had lost his mind since Shiloh came so
near dying.
The problem which confronted the old man was serious.
"O Jack, Jack," he said one night, "if I jes' had some of that gold
you had!"
Jack replied by laying ten silver dollars in the old man's hand.
"I earned it,"--he said simply--"this week--shoeing horses--it's the
sweetest money I ever got."
"Why, Jack," said the Bishop--"this will feed us for a week. Come
here, Tabitha," he called cheerily--"come an' see what happens to
them that cast their bread upon the waters. We tuck in this outcast
an' now behold our bread come back ag'in."
The old woman came up and took it gingerly. She bit each dollar to
test it, remarking finally: "Why, hit's genuwine!"--
Jack laughed.
"Why, hit's mo' money'n I've seed fur years," she said--"I won't
hafter hunt fur 'sang roots to-morrow."
"Jack," said the Bishop, after the others had retired, and the two
men sat in Captain Tom's cabin--"Jack, I've been thinkin' an'
thinkin'--I must make some money."
"How much?" asked Jack.
"A thousand or two."
"That's a lot of money," said the outlaw quickly. "A heap fur you to
need."
"It's not fur me," he said--"I don't need it--I wouldn't have it for
myself. It's for him--see!" he pointed to the sleeping man on the low
cot. "Jack, I've been talkin' to the Doctor--he examined Cap'n Tom's
head, and he says it'd be an easy job--that it's a shame it ain't
been done befo'--that in a city to the North,--he gave me the name of
a surgeon there who could take that pressure from his head and make
him the man he was befo'--the _man_, mind you, the _man_ he was
befo'."
Jack sat up excited. His eyes glittered.
"Then there's Shiloh," went on the old man--"it'll mean life to her
too--life to git away from the mill.
"Cap'n Tom and Shiloh--I must have it, Jack--I must have it. God will
provide a way. I'd give my home--I'd give everything--just to save
them two--Cap'n Tom and little Shiloh."
He felt a touch on his shoulder and looked up.
Jack Bracken stood before him, clutching the handle of his big Colt's
revolver, and his hat was pulled low over his eyes. He was flushed
and panting. A glitter was in his eyes, the glitter of the old
desperado spirit returned.
"Bishop," he said, "ever' now and then it comes over me ag'in, comes
over me--the old dare-devil feelin'." He held up his pistol: "All
week I've missed somethin'. Last night I fingered it in my sleep."
He pressed it tenderly. "Jes' you say the word," he whispered, "an'
in a few hours I'll be back here with the coin. Shipton's bank is
dead easy an' he is a money devil with a cold heart." The old man
laughed and took the revolver from him.
"It's hard, I know, Jack, to give up old ways. I must have made po'
Cap'n Tom's and Shiloh's case out terrible to tempt you like that.
But not even for them--no--no--not even for them. Set down."
Jack sat down, subdued. Then the Bishop pulled out a paper from his
pocket and chuckled.
"Now, Jack, you're gwinter have the laugh on me, for the old mood is
on me an' I'm yearnin' to do this jes' like you yearn to hold up the
bank ag'in. It's the old instinct gettin' to wurk. But, Jack, you
see--this--mine--ain't so bad. God sometimes provides in an
onexpected way."
"What is it?" asked Jack.
The old man chuckled again. Then Jack saw his face turn red--as if
half ashamed: "Why should I blame you, Jack, fur I'm doin' the same
thing mighty nigh--I'm longin' for the flesh pots of Egypt. As I rode
along to-day thinkin'--thinkin'--thinkin'--how can I save the
children an' Cap'n Tom, _how can I get a little money to send Cap'n
Tom off to the Doctor_--an' also repeatin' to myself--'_The Lord will
provide--He will provide--_' I ran up to this, posted on a tree, an'
kinder starin' me an' darin' me in the face."
He laughed again: "Jes' scolded you, Jack, but see here. See how the
old feelin' has come over me at sight of this bragging, blow-hard
challenge. It makes my blood bile.
"Race horse?--Why, Richard Travis wouldn't know a real race horse if
he had one by the tail. It's disgustin'--these silk-hat fellers
gettin' up a three-cornered race, an' then openin' it up to the
valley--knowin' they've put the entrance fee of fifty dollars so high
that no po' devil in the County can get in, even if he had a horse
equal to theirs.
"Three thousan' dollars!--think of it! An' then Richard Travis rubs
it in. He's havin' fun over it--he always would do that. Read the
last line ag'in--in them big letters:
"'_Open to anything raised in the Tennessee Valley._'
"Fine fun an' kinder sarcastic, but, Jack, Ben Butler cu'd make them
blooded trotters look like steers led to slaughter."
Jack sat looking silently in the fire.
"If I had the entrance fee I'd do it once--jes' once mo' befo' I die?
Once mo' to feel the old thrill of victory! An' for Cap'n Tom an'
Shiloh. God'll provide, Jack--God'll provide!"
CHAPTER XXIV
BONAPARTE'S WATERLOO
Bonaparte lay on the little front porch--the loafing place which
opened into Billy Buch's bar-room. Apparently, he was asleep and
basking in the warm Autumn sunshine. In reality he was doing his star
trick and one which could have originated only in the brains of a
born genius. Feigning sleep, he thus enticed within striking distance
all the timid country dogs visiting Cottontown for the first time,
and viewing its wonders with a palpitating heart. Then, like a bolt
from the sky, he would fall on them, appalled and paralyzed--a demon
with flashing teeth and abbreviated tail.
When finally released, with lacerated hides and wounded feelings,
they went rapidly homeward, and they told it in dog language, from
Dan to Beersheba, that Cottontown was full of the terrible and the
unexpected.
And a great morning he had had of it--for already three humble and
unsuspecting curs, following three humble and unsuspecting countrymen
who had walked in to get their morning's dram, had fallen victims to
his guile.
Each successful raid of Bonaparte brought forth shouts of laughter
from within, in which Billy Buch, the Dutch proprietor, joined. It
always ended in Bonaparte being invited in and treated to a cuspidor
of beer--the drinking, with the cuspidor as his drinking horn, being
part of his repertoire. After each one Billy Buch would proudly
exclaim:
"Mine Gott, but dat Ponyparte ees one greet dog!"
Then Bonaparte would reel around in a half drunken swagger and go
back to watch for other dogs.
"I tell you, Billy," said Jud Carpenter--"Jes' watch that dog. They
ain't no dog on earth his e'kal when it comes to brains. Them country
dogs aflyin' up the road reminds me of old Uncle Billy Alexander who
paid for his shoes in bacon, and paid every spring in advance for the
shoes he was to get in the fall. But one fall when he rid over after
his shoes, the neighbors said the shoemaker had gone--gone for
good--to Texas to live--gone an' left his creditors behin'. Uncle
Billy looked long an' earnestly t'wards the settin' sun, raised his
han's to heaven an' said: 'Good-bye, my bacon!'"
Billy Buch laughed loudly.
"Dat ees goot--goot--goot-bye, mine bac'n! I dus remember dat."
Bonaparte had partaken of his fourth cuspidor of beer and was in a
delightful state of swagger and fight when he saw an unusual
commotion up the street. What was it, thought Bonaparte--a crowd of
boys and men surrounding another man with an organ and leading a
little devil of a hairy thing, dressed up like a man.
His hair bristled with indignation. That little thing dividing honors
with him in Cottontown? It was not to be endured for a moment!
Bonaparte stood gazing in indignant wonder. He slowly arose and
shambled along half drunkenly to see what it all meant. A crowd had
gathered around the thing--the insignificant thing which was
attracting more attention in Cottontown than himself, the champion
dog. Among them were some school boys, and one of them, a red-headed
lad, was telling his brother all about it.
"Now, Ozzie B., this is a monkey--the furst you've ever seed. He
looks jes' like I told you--sorter like a man an' sorter like a
nigger an' sorter like a groun' hog."
"The pretties' thing I ever seed," said Ozzie B., walking around and
staring delightedly.
The crowd grew larger. It was a show Cottontown had never seen
before.
Then two men came out of the bar-room--one, the bar-keeper, fat and
jolly, and the other lank and with malicious eyes.
This gave Bonaparte his cue and he bristled and growled.
"Look out, mister," said the tender-hearted Ozzie B. to the Italian,
"watch this here dog, Bonaparte; he's terrible 'bout fightin'. He'll
eat yo' monkey if he gets a chance."