Circuit-riding over the "Buffalo Trace"
ON the flat top of the stump by the log-cabin door was a trencher of soft soap. By its side stood a big gourd dipper of spring water. A wash-trough, made from a five-foot section of oak-tree trunk which had been burnt and scraped through the center to hollow it out like a tub, was closer to the door, almost on its threshold.
This home-made tub was steaming with ten gallons or so of hot water. A hand-woven towel hung over its edge.
Obadiah Holman sat on the rail fence and viewed these articles with disfavor. He did not like the look of things.
It was not his cabin nor his stump. His family were visitors here. They had floated down the Ohio River from Pittsburg to the settlements where the Big Falls stretched acrossthe stream. The rainbow mist above the tumbled beauty of the rapids marked the end of the water road.
Boats could go no farther. So all were being unloaded, and a strong party of emigrants were making up a wagon-train to take the trail across Indiana to the fort at Vincennes.
Settlers in and around the Big Falls were eager to open their cabins to these travelers.
New Albany was built below the Falls on the rich alluvial bottom-land, and, alas! also within reach of the river freshets.
"She reminds me," Doby had thought at first sight of her, "of a pretty girl shaking in her shoes for fear the water will come up and wet her feet. About every other year she gets a soaking. When the river goes down she keeps on shaking with chills 'n' fever from the ague vapors that the floods leave behind. It is the price she has to pay for the big crops the bottom-land gives her."
If Doby ever came to be seized with the dreaded chills 'n' fever—the great scourge of all new countries—the one malady the pioneers were sure to catch from the miasma of newly opened ground, he would never again speak lightly of it.
When two settlers met, the most importantgreeting was, "Ketched the agur yit?" The dismal head-shaking which the one who had had it gave, struck such apprehension into the heart of the one who had not had it, that he really could not enjoy the perfect health of the moment for the dread of that future hour when "the shakes would git 'im sure."
The circuit-riding preachers who ministered to the souls of these river people carried ample saddle-bags. In those saddle-bags was an endless collection of "yarbs" and powders and bottles, which the preachers carried to comfort the bodies of their hearers.
The pioneer doctor of divinity was "called" to preach, not by the financial head of his congregation, but by the voice of the Lord. He would not accept worldly money for spiritual service. But for the herbs he gathered and brewed and the bitter concoctions he made, he expected to be paid. On the sale of them he lived.
Some emigrants avoided the river. In the beautiful hills above the falls, higher still than Jeffersonville, were tiny hamlets of Old World folk, Irish, Swiss, German, and French, still wearing their native peasant costumes.
All these places gave shelter and staple foods to the emigrants. In return they accepted salt,tobacco, sugar, steel tools, and the small luxuries of the river like packets of mail and newspapers and almanacs.
Doby liked the people. "But whenever we come to a town, then ma begins to wash me," he sighed. "I don't see why. My hands are hardly dirty at all. Brooks are good enough tubs for me. I do not need so much soap. That towel is ma's. I know that towel whatever town I see it in. 'Tis so scratchy that it skins the curlicues in my ears." He eyed the instruments of torture askance.
He had to draw on his stock of courage to prepare himself for the ordeal by thinking, "I do want to go to meeting and I can't go unless I'm washed according to ma's ideas."
So when the call came, "Dob-ee! Dob-ee! Time for a scrub!" he went meekly to the operation.
Red and shining, his hair slicked down stylishly with bear's grease, his best homespun suit on, Doby mounted a borrowed horse to sit behind his mother, and formed one of a company who fared away to the grove where the meeting was held.
His shoes were tied round his waist by a thong. They were ready to put on when he came in sight of the meeting-place. Cobbledshoes of leather were the most expensive luxury a pioneer boy could own. Neither Doby nor any other backwoods fellow would think of wearing them if he could possibly go barefoot or use his moccasins.
He and his mother were following a little procession of neighbors over the very best thoroughfare in all that region, the "Buffalo Trace."
In the spring when the buffalo came up from the South to graze through the summer on Northern plains, the great herds crossed the Ohio River below the Big Falls. There were thousands and thousands of buffalo. It took days and days for the long parade of them to pass the settlements. Their countless hoofs beat out a path wide enough for the largest wagons and hard enough to make a perfect road.
Riding the "Buffalo Trace" was the best of going.
"Although it is a new country and a strange horse, I feel safe on the road to-day," said his mother, "for there is plenty of company. The preacher rides around such a big circle of settlements that he cannot get to any one place very often."
"When he does come," Doby observed, "it is the big event. Everybody goes to hear him.ButIdon't think there are many folks near us just now. Some have dropped out of sight around the bend and there isn't any one ahead of us."
For a moment the mother was uneasy. The "Trace" between the grim lines of dark forests seemed suddenly a dreary lane. The distant murmur of the Big Falls always trembling in the air was very like a growling beast. She gave the nag a hasty whack and jounced along at livelier gait.
"Now I can see horses ahead of us," began Doby in a loud tone. "But"—and his voice sank to a whisper—"the men are not on them. How odd their motions are! Whatarethey doing?"
The mother stopped their horse as suddenly as she had started it. She backed into some elders and, peeping through the blossoms, she studied the scene so far before them. She decided: "Those four men are up to mischief. I know it—I am perfectly sure of it by the way they act. They are sneaking away from something."
"They haven't seen us, but they are ready to make tracks. See 'em go!" cried Doby, as the men sprang to saddle and fled at a gallop along the "Trace" to the meeting-grounds.
The mother considered a moment. "Such young rowdies like to play pranks on the preacher. They must have been doing something of that kind when we first saw them at the forest edge of bushes. Perhaps they have hidden his Bible. That is one of the things such jokers do. We will follow their tracks into the undergrowth and get his Book back for him."
Doby did not fancy entering that unknown forest where more miscreants might be lurking. But as his mother expected him to hold the flintlock ready for any danger they might meet, there was nothing for him to do but to swallow his doubts and to turn the horse in when they came to the trampled spot.
More boldly than he felt, he peered about as they followed the line of disturbed branches into the heart of the forest.
After a few rods, "O-o-oh!" murmured his mother, "o-o-oh!" with pity and indignation in her tone.
Here was a jest! The best of all frontier tricks! The funniest thing a practical joker could imagine!
In front of them, tied to a tree, was not the preacher's Bible, but the preacher himself, bound and gagged and left alone.
The hour for his sermon was close at hand,yet here he was, silent and helpless, a mile from the meeting. Young huskies of the border considered it a fair game to bait the circuit-riders and to make it as difficult as possible for them to reach their hearers. If one baffled them and arrived at the appointed place on his circuit, they tried to keep him from preaching by all sorts of traps.
Why not? they argued. He was a grown man. Let him take his chances in work and play, just as they did themselves.
Doby leaped from the horse, whipped out his knife, and cut the thongs.
The preacher, as he found himself released, rolled his eyes in a frenzy of excitement and exclaimed: "Behold! I prayed for help, and, lo! an angel of the Lord with his shining sword hath freed me from the bondage of sinners."
The boy blushed awkwardly at the idea of acting the part of an angel. But privately he thought it not too much praise for his cherished knife. "No big, long sword could have done as good a job of snipping loose as this sharp stone knife did," he bragged to himself.
To the mother's words of sympathy and further offers of help the preacher gave no heed. He cared nothing for his bodily hurts, nothing for his humiliation, nothing for himself. "I am a shepherd in the service of my Master. I must go to feed my lambs."
DOBY WHIPPED OUT HIS KNIFE AND CUT THE THONGS
DOBY WHIPPED OUT HIS KNIFE AND CUT THE THONGS
With immense nervous energy, even while they stood staring, he retrieved his horse, which had been stampeded farther into the wood. Then he fixed his rummaged saddle-bags, mounted, and galloped off, singing a hymn so loudly and triumphantly that it echoed in their ears like a battle-call.
"His name is Lorenzo Dow. He is not afraid of man or devil," said the mother, half in praise, half in criticism of this great Methodist preacher. "His manner is strange beyond belief; yet he sways all hearts toward righteousness."
"He is a lively one. They must have sneaked up on him, four to one, to get him," Doby guessed.
Mother and son hurried after him and came to the top of the next hill in time to see him, at a mad run and yelling lustily, charge down upon his late captors as they crossed the valley.
The huskies were taken all aback. There was something of witchcraft in the way their prisoner appeared before them. Their minds were too slow to form a plan to stop him. He whirled past them like a storm, went over the next hill, and straightway was in the grove.
Doby and his mother were among the manyto see the spare figure of the circuit-riding preacher mount a stump in the grove and in ringing tones proclaim the Church militant.
It was that perfect thing which comes in the easy times after corn-planting, a May day of sunshine and balmy airs.
Boards for seats had been carried from a barn close by and people sat under the new leaves within scent of the wild honeysuckle. Later in the dry summer season these outdoor meetings would become camp-meetings of a sort which lasted for a week at a time. Whole families would bring enough household gear and food and shelter to enable them to live on the spot for that length of time.
Church and prayer meetings would be going day and night under pressure of religious revival. To-day was to be a foretaste of the form of worship the summer-time was sure to bring.
Madcap young pioneers had ridden miles for the sake of a little excitement. They meant to make the preacher furnish them with a wrestling-match as well as a sermon.
Older citizens tried to prevent what seemed to them a sacrilegious brawl. They were outnumbered by the mischief-makers.
Women hid in the barn and peeped throughthe cracks. "No place for females 'til the tussle is over," quoth the men.
Doby hastily put on his almost forgotten shoes. If there was a fight he wanted to see it. Nobody knew better than he did what a poor place for bare toes a crowd of booted men can be.
The rowdy leader pulled off his 'coonskin cap and grinned at the Methodist. "I learned one lesson from ye in the woods and on the road to-day; in wits ye are smarter than I be. In muscle I kin down ye. Right here on the buffaler waller I kin force ye to a fall."
Lorenzo Dow threw off his shad-bellied coat and his stock, girded up his breeches, stepped into the smooth, hard ring of earth made by wallowing buffaloes, and stood grimly ready for the attack.
Perhaps he was glad to fight. If he won, the news would fly as though the bees had carried it. His cause would then win honor from a successful bout and men would flock to the standard of a Church unafraid. If he lost, he became a sufferer with the martyrs. And for whom do more friends rise up than for the persecuted?
So he welcomed action. He would do anything and bear anything which brought himand his message before the stripling who so much needed the life of the Spirit. He seemed a gallant figure struggling against huge odds.
But he was not so much to be pitied as Doby thought. For he was only forty—not nearly so old as his adventurous life on two continents had made him look. And from constant hard riding over bad roads every muscle in him had taken on the spring of oak.
To wrestle in prayer for his people, to wrestle in set-to for his Church, both were part of his day's work. He went at both with all his might.
Amid wild cheers and wilder cries from the folks about them the wrestler and the preacher clinched. They strained—slipped—pulled—stamped—puffed—tore—in a cruel embrace.
Once the preacher's shoulders touched the dusty mat of the wallow. How the huskies yelled! How the hidden women wailed!
Another struggle followed, more terrific and of longer duration. Doby clapped for the preacher and shrieked and jumped about and enjoyed himself disgracefully. Then before the gaping crowd the sweating, desperate preacher tried a new grapple which he had learned in England. Under the strain of this unexpected hold the confident youth could not use all of his brawn to save himself. He went down—once—twice—three times. There he was; so pinned that he could not rise.
"'Nough?" shouted the onlookers.
"'Nough," groaned the rowdy.
Then the victor, all tousled, stood again upon the stump, his hand on the shoulder of the vanquished. In the silence which followed their discovery of his prowess he began a funny story. At its quips the audience burst into gales of laughter. He told another funny one, and then another, with uproarious results.
Doby listened to every word, yet he could not tell how it happened that presently the voice of Dow, rich and magnetic, held them all entranced. He went from merriment to pathos. The men drew nearer. The women stole out from the barn and joined his audience. Soon under his kind and searching words the throng grew still. These simple folks were touched to the heart. The preacher, now sure of their attention, rose to inspired heights of oratory. He called and held them at his will.
He denounced their sins. They wept over their misdoings. They gave way to hysterical wailings. They cowered on the ground in their remorse and shook with the excitement in spasms called "jerks."
He promised forgiveness to those who trulyrepented. Over his pictures of a better life they shouted aloud with joy. He gathered them into his Father's fold like hungry lambs and fed them with His Word.
This was Doby's first plunge into the great wave of religious frenzy which was sweeping over the whole country, leaving some extravagances, but much lasting good behind it.
As the borrowed horse plodded on the homeward "Trace" and the Big Falls resounded like a blessing in their ears, Doby, whose face now shone with something brighter than soft soap and water, said to his mother in a tone of high resolve: "I'm a-goin' to mind that preacher. I'm a-goin' to keep the soul inside of me just as clean as clean can be!"