II
It was the captain who interrupted his reverie. “We were talking just now about that camp sky-pilot, the Rev. Nathan Stubbs,” he reminded Hammond. “I was saying that Smith lets Ogima Bush the Medicine Man have the run of the camps because he can use him for his own purposes. Now it’s different with that preacher fellow; it’s always been known that the Big Boss won’t order any kind of a Christian preacher out of camp so long as the preacher sticks to the gospel and his own particular line of trade.”
“Is that a fact?” This to Hammond was an entirely new side light on the character of the pulp camp superintendent.
“True as your standing there,” emphasised the skipper. “Why, all of us boat captains have standing orders that any of them chaps with their collars buttoned behind is to travel free back and forth to the camps whether they have a pass or not. It’s the same in the camp; they ain’t charged anything for grub and bunk and everybody has orders to use them polite and decent. At the same time, the Big Boss lets the preachers see they’re to steer wide of him. He has a way of doing that, you know, and the wise ones know enough not to try any of their holy groaning on a hard-boiled egg like him.
“There’s been every known kind of soul-saving genius knocking around our camps in my time; Catholic priests, highfaluting English churchers, Methodist missionaries, Salvation Army drum-beaters and the like,” continued the captain. “But I only know of one preacher who tried mixing it with Acey Smith. He was a bush-camp evangelist they called Holy Henry that used to rant to the lumber-jacks and lead them in psalm-singing all the way from the Soo up to the Rainy and the Lake of the Woods. Holy Henry was a wizened up bit of a man with big, thick glasses and mild-looking blue eyes back of them. But, Lord, man, hadn’t he a temper when he got blazing away at the devil and all his works! He’d chew up half a dozen dictionaries getting high-brow words to lambast sin and back-sliding, and he’d mix ’em up with camp slang in a way that would get the boys whether they wanted to listen to him or not. He’d ’ve been a popular guy, that preacher, if he hadn’t been so death on all the little games of chance the lumber-jack has a weakness for. That kind of gave him a black eye all over the North.
“We were taking out timber in the Dog Bay country when Holy Henry paid us his visit. The North Star camps were wide open in them days; nothing was barred but wild women and promiscuous booze-running. There was every known manner of winning or losing a wad from big wheels-of-fortune, chuck-a-luck, paddle-wheels and stud poker down to nigger craps. Nobody ever interfered so long as the men were on their jobs on time and there was no knife-sticking or gun-play. Why, the whole bunch used to gulp dinner like a lot of brush-wolves just so they’d have the biggest part of their noon-hour trying their chances for easy money. Some of the lucky ones cleaned up a pile of money and some that weren’t got cleaned out even to their whole season’s wages and their packsacks. Them was roaring days!
“When this here Holy Henry hits the camps everybody got to speculating just what end of the horn he’d come out at, and of course there were some long stakes put up right on that there question, but all the big odds was on Holy Henry breaking down on the job for quits inside of two weeks. I was in charge of a river gang in them days, and I remember having a nifty side-bet that he’d get so sick of trying to break up things he’d just slip away faking a bad cold or something of that sort.
“But what happened wasn’t what any of us had figured on. The first thing that fool preacher did was to go to the super’s. office and appeal to him to put the lid on. Acey Smith looks down at the little fellow with the thick glasses and the weak eyes with that sort of good-natured curiosity you see on a big St. Bernard dog when a poodle gets in his way. ‘This ain’t any Sunday school we’re running out here, Holy Henry,’ he says, ‘and saving souls isn’t exactly in my line; but if you can throw a scare of hell-fire into this outfit of blacklegs so that they’ll thumb hymn-books instead of poker decks, go to it. That’s your particular business and I won’t put any sticks in your way.’ Then he turns away with that little demon-grin of his and goes back to his work.
“Some of us that had big bets on the preacher quitting early thought to hurry him up by getting him peeved. So when he came out all sort of wilted-like we says to him to get his goat: ‘What you going to do about it now, Holy Henry?’
“‘I am going to pray for Brother Smith,’ he surprises us by replying. ‘I know he’s going to be on the side of the Lord.’
“That made us roar so that half of the camp heard us. ‘Brother Smith,’ mind you, he called him. We never quite got over that, but none dared to twit the super. about it. He’s mighty touchy on some things, is Acey Smith.
“All went along pretty much as per usual till Sunday came. Sunday was the red-letter gambling day at the North Star camps because the boys had full time at it with no other worries. Some of ’em used to piece the bull cooks to bring their meals to them so they wouldn’t miss a deal.
“Holy Henry had announced a morning service in a shack that had been turned over to him for that purpose, but not a man-jack turned up to it but an old Injun halfwit who’d been roped in by the Salvation Army and a one-eyed Hunkie who’d got religion at one of the weekday meetings. Holy Henry kneels down with his two-men congregation and prays silently for a few minutes. Then he went forth ‘clothed in the wrath of the Lord’ as he called it.
“And believe me, boy, that was some wrath. Somewhere outside he gathered up a piece of a broken handspike, and brandishing it around his head, he lands into first one camp shack and then another. He couldn’t make any mistake picking them random that way; they were all going full tilt. He’d burst through a door and land in like a little package of greased hurricane. Out would go his foot and over would go a table, chips, cards, money and all. Then he’d swing his club within an inch of the faces of the crowd. ‘Out of here, you bleary-eyed, low-lived, pigeon-toed, white-livered disciples of Baal!’ he’d yell. ‘Out, you sin-corroded, knock-kneed, flannel-mouthed desecrators of the Lord’s Day! Out, I say, for the wrath of God Almighty is upon you!’
“Say, you’d be surprised to see how quick he cleaned up the whole works. In about two minutes he’d smashed up about a thousand dollars’ worth of slot-machines and fortune-wheels with that hand-spike club of his. The crowd at first just stood around sort of paralysed and didn’t lift a finger to stop him. There was low growls, lots of curses, and threats of ganging him, but being that he was a preacher nobody seemed ready to start things.
“Some of the lads with level heads decided to go down and get the super. to interfere and decide what was to be done with the wild-eyed preacher. Smith was reading one of them high-brow books in his office when the delegation bursts in. He didn’t say a word, just got up, slips on his mackinaw and goes out to locate the cause of the disturbance.
“Holy Henry was smashing things about in the sixth shack on his list when the Big Boss poked his head in the door with the gang crowding up at his rear.
“‘What in hell does this mean?’ the super. raps out, spearing the preacher with them wicked, snapping black eyes of his. His face was like chalk from the cold anger he was holding back.
“Holy Henry was in the act of dumping a lot of poker chips and cards into the stove. The sweat was running down his face in little creeks and his thick glasses had got all steamed up, which didn’t matter because he was seeing all red up to that time. But the Big Boss’s words hit him like cold chunks of ice that had been shot into his system and the pep seemed to go out of him all at once. I’d seen bigger and stronger men than Holy Henry break down like that in front of Acey Smith, and I almost began to feel sorry for this trembling little bit of whiff of a fellow with that black devil of a man towering over him.
“‘It’s the Lord’s Day,’ he stammers. ‘I was just cleaning up these—these hell parlours.’
“‘Hell parlours—hell parlours,’ echoes the super. ‘Who in blue blazes gave you a license to wreck the camp? Tell me that!’
“The little fellow looked more sorrowful than ever and he says sort of quietlike: ‘I thought you were on our side, Brother Smith; I was doing this in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ.’
“If you ever saw a change come over the face of a man it was that that came over the super’s. He drew back like as if something had hit him, and the palms of his hands went up to his face as though he was choking. Maybe you’ve seen him do that sometimes? It’s like as if a devil inside him was trying to jump out and was strangling him.
“But next minute he walks over to the preacher and takes him by the arm. ‘Finish your job, Holy Henry,’ he says, ‘and if any one so much as lifts a finger at you, well—’
“He didn’t finish, but turns and glowers at the gawping crowd like a lion. ‘Men,’ he orders, ‘the lid’s down tight on Sunday gambling in these camps. You get that straight!’
“He said it, and that meant it was law. And it’s been law in the North Star camps ever since.
“What became of Holy Henry? Now, I don’t know. Anyway, he was only a few days in the camp after that incident. At one of his meetings he made some fool remark about the Big Boss seeing a great light suddenly like the Bible says St. Paul did. That settled him for keeps.
“The next morning Acey Smith meets the preacher and stops him. ‘Holy Henry,’ he says, ‘you’ve shot your bolt—you’re through here.’
“‘But, Brother Smith,’ expostulates the little fellow, ‘I’ve just barely started my work in the Lord’s vineyard.’
“‘You beat it out on the next tug to some other vineyard—and don’t come back!’ cuts in the Big Boss, cold as ice. ‘And listen: I’m not brother to you nor to any other man. Furthermore, I ain’t any St. Paul seeing lights; I’m just a fighting he-man who doesn’t pray to God nor the Devil either. All I ask both of them to do is to give me a sporting chance to make good at my job.
“‘You’ve got me wrong about stopping that Sunday gambling stunt,’ he continues. ‘I did that partly because I can’t help being on the side of the man who’s got the guts to back up his convictions when the whole crowd is against him. But I put the lid down mostly because it struck me it would be good policy for the North Star to make its men take a rest on Sunday. You go and pack your turkey—the next tug leaves at noon.’”
The skipper paused when he had concluded his story. After a silent moment he turned to Hammond. “Now what do you think of that for a hard-hearted speech?” he asked.
“Just sounds like Acey Smith,” responded Hammond, “and I take it that what he told Holy Henry was just about the truth about himself.”
“Probably—probably,” reiterated the captain in an absent sort of a way as he fixed his gaze on the city wharves they were nearing. “But at the same time, I dunno. There’s a strange streak in that same Acey Smith. There’s things he’s done and does, on the quiet, that makes us older heads with the company admire him in spite of ourselves. But you can never get to know the Big Boss, no matter how long you’re around where he is. Just when you think you know him is the time he’s liable to do or say something so sudden and unexpected it will make your blood run cold. It strikes me while he’s talking to you with his tongue his mind is always busy thinking and plotting something else—thinking up plans maybe a year ahead.”
“This coming strike will likely give him lots of scope for thinking,” observed Hammond dryly.
“Oh, he won’t have so much to do with settling or breaking the strike,” declared the captain. “Them orders will come to Slack and him from their higher-ups.”
The skipper pressed a signal to the engine-room to slow down. They were swinging in to the city wharf.