“That is not the talk of a fool, as most priests are,” growled the other.
“Sure. But it wants a real wind-warbler to make them see it in Lebanon. They’ve got the needle. They’ll pray to-day with the taste of blood in their mouths. It’s gone too far. Only a miracle can keep things right. The Mayor has wired for the mounted police—our own battalion of militia wouldn’t serve, and there’d be no use ordering them out—but the Riders can’t get here in time. The train’s due the very time the funeral’s to start, but that train’s always late, though they say the ingine-driver is an Orangeman! And the funeral will start at the time fixed, or I don’t know the boys that belong to the lodge. So it’s up to We, Us & Co. to see the thing through, or go bust. It don’t suit me. It wouldn’t have been like this, if it hadn’t been for what happened to the Chief last night. There’s no holding the boys in. One thing’s sure, the Gipsy that give Ingolby away has got to lie low if he hasn’t got away, or there’ll be one less of his tribe to eat the juicy hedgehog. Yes, sir-ee!”
To the last words of Jowett the Ry seemed to pay no attention, though his lips shut tight and a menacing look came into his eyes. They were now upon the bridge, and could see what was forward on both sides of the Sagalac. There was unusual bustle and activity in the streets and on the river-bank of both towns. It was noticeable also that though the mills were running in Manitou, there were fewer chimneys smoking, and far more men in the streets than usual. Tied up to the Manitou shore were a half-dozen cribs or rafts of timber which should be floating eastward down the Sagalac.
“If the Monseenoor can’t, or don’t, step in, we’re bound for a shindy over a corpse,” continued Jowett after a moment.
“Can the Monseigneur cast a spell over them all?” remarked the Ry ironically, for he had little faith in priests, though he had for this particular one great respect.
“He’s a big man, that preelate,” answered Jowett quickly and forcibly. “He kept the Crees quiet when they was going to rise. If they’d got up, there’d have been hundreds of settlers massacreed. He risked his life to do that—went right into the camp in face of levelled rifles, and sat down and begun to talk. A minute afterwards all the chiefs was squatting, too. Then the tussle begun between a man with a soul and a heathen gang that eat dog, kill their old folks, their cripples and their deformed children, and run sticks of wood through their bleeding chests, just to show that they’re heathens. But he won out, this Jesueete friend o’ man. That’s why I’m putting my horses and my land and my pants and my shirt and the buff that’s underneath on the little preelate.”
Gabriel Druse’s face did not indicate the same confidence. “It is not an age of miracles; the priest is not enough,” he said sceptically.
By twos, by threes, by tens, men from Manitou came sauntering across the bridge into Lebanon, until a goodly number were scattered at different points through the town. They seemed to distribute themselves by a preconceived plan, and they were all habitants. There were no Russians, Finns, Swedes, Norwegians, or Germans among them. They were low-browed, sturdy men, dressed in red or blue serge shirts, some with sashes around their waists, some with ear-rings in their ears, some in knee-boots, and some with the heavy spiked boots of the river-driver. None appeared to carry any weapon that would shoot, yet in their belts was the sheath-knife, the invariable equipment of their class. It would have seemed more suspicious if they had not carried them. The railwaymen, miners, carters, mill-hands, however, appeared to carry nothing save their strong arms and hairy hands, and some were as hairy as animals. These backwoodsmen also could, without weapons, turn a town into a general hospital. In battle they fought not only with hands but also with teeth and hoofs like wild stallions. Teeth tore off an ear or sliced away a nose, hands smote like hammers or gouged out eyes, and their nailed boots were weapons of as savage a kind as could be invented. They could spring and strike an opponent with one foot in the chest or in the face, and spoil the face for many a day, or for ever. It was a gift of the backwoods and the lumber-camps, practised in hours of stark monotony when the devils which haunt places of isolation devoid of family life, where men herd together like dogs in a kennel, break loose. There the man that dips his fingers “friendly-like” in the dish of his neighbour one minute wants the eye of that neighbour the next not so much in innate or momentary hatred, as in innate savagery and the primeval sense of combat, the war which was in the blood of the first man.
The unarmed appearance of these men did not deceive the pioneer folk of Lebanon. To them the time had come when the reactionary forces of Manitou must receive a check. Even those who thought the funeral fanatical and provocative were ready to defend it.
The person who liked the whole business least was Rockwell. He was subject to the same weariness of the flesh and fatigue of the spirit as all men; yet it was expected of him that at any hour he should be at the disposal of suffering humanity—of criminal or idiotic humanity—patient, devoted, calm, nervestrung, complete. He was the one person in the community who was the universal necessity, and yet for whom the community had no mercy in its troubles or out of them. There were three doctors in Lebanon, but none was an institution, none had prestige save Rockwell, and he often wished that he had less prestige, since he cared nothing for popularity.