The Preacher of Cedar Mountain: A Tale of the Open Country

by Ernest Thompson Seton

Thus Jim Hartigan got a new knowledge of his own endowment and discovered unsuspected powers. He had held his peace and triumphed in a number of trying situations that two or three years before would have ended in an unprofitable brawl. He had controlled his temper, that was a step forward and he was learning to control those about him as well as manage an organization. He had begun to realize his prejudices and to learn to respect the beliefs of others even when he thought them wrong. The memory of Father Cyprian and the Sioux boy had helped him to deal kindly and respectfully with Skystein and Father O'Hara.

Strange to say, it was a travelling Hindu who supplied him with the biggest, broadest thought of all. This swarthy scholar was deeply imbued with the New Buddhism of Rammohan Roy and, when asked for his opinion of some Romanist practices, he remarked softly, but evasively, "My religion teaches me that if any man do anything sincerely, believing that thereby he is worshipping God, he is worshipping God and his action must be treated with respect, so long as he is not infringing the rights of others."

Jim took a long walk by the lake that day and turned over and over that saying of the Hindu in the library. The thing had surprised him—first, because of the perfect English in the mouth of a foreigner, and secondly, because of the breadth and tolerance of the thought. He wondered how he could ever have believed himself open-minded or fair when he had been so miserably narrow in all his ideas. Where was he headed? All his early days he had been taught to waste effort on scorning the ceremonials great and small of Jews, Catholics, yes, of Baptists even; and now the heathen—to whom he had once thought of going as a missionary—had come to Chicago and shown him the true faith.

Striding at top speed, he passed a great pile of lumber and sawdust. The fresh smell of the wet wood brought back Links—and his mother, and a sense of happiness, for he had given up "trying to reason it all out." He was no longer sure, as he once was, that he had omniscience for his guide. Indeed he was sure only of this, that the kindest way is the only way that is safe.

There was daylight dawning in his heart, and yet, across that dawn there was a cloud which grew momentarily more black, more threatening. Paradoxical as it seemed, Jim was intensely unhappy over the abandonment of the ministerial career. The enduring force of his word as a man was only another evidence of the authentic character of that deep emotional outburst which had pledged him openly to the service of Christ. The work at the Cedar Mountain House for a while satisfied the evangelical hunger of his ardent soul. It was good, it was successful, it was increasing in scope; but of its nature it could never be more than secular; it was social work in its best form—that was all. The work of which he dreamed, and to which he had consecrated his life was the preaching of the Gospel, and, as the months passed, an unrest—the like of which he had hardly known—took possession of him. These last weeks of Belle's absence had brought on one of his periodic soul-searchings and the gloom of it was as thick as a fog when the mail brought word of Belle's return. As he sat with her letter in his hand his mind went back to the hills and the free days and he longed to go back—to get away from the ponderous stolidity of this pavement world.

He met her at the station and her joyousness was as a shock to him. And yet, how hungry he was for every least word of that lost life.

"Oh, Jim, it was glorious to ride again, to smell the leather and the sagebrush. I just loved the alkali and the very ticks on the sagebrush. I didn't know how they could stir one's heart."

His eye glowed, his breath came fast, his nostrils dilated and, as Belle looked, it seemed to her that her simple words had struck far deeper than she meant.

"And the horses, which did you ride?" he queried. "How is Blazing Star? Are they going to race at Fort Ryan this year? And the Bylow boys, and the Mountain? Thank God, men may come and go, but Cedar Mountain will stand forever." He talked as one who has long kept still—as one whose thoughts long pent have dared at length to break forth.

And Belle, as she listened, saw a light. "He is far from forgetting the life of the Hills," she said to herself as she watched him. "He is keener than ever. All this steadfast devotion to club work is the devotion of duty. Now I know the meaning of those long vigils, those walks by the lake in the rain—of his preoccupation. His heart is in Cedar Mountain." And she honoured him all the more for that he had never spoken a word of the secret longing.