“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.