“I’m not mad, Jones,” said he. “All I’m saying,” he repeated, earnestly, fetching the cook’s flour-board a thwack with his fist, “is that what you need is the grace of God in your heart.”
Again Jones laughed.
“That’s all right, Jones!” cried the indignant preacher. “But I tell you that what you need is the grace of God in your heart. And you know it! And when I get you in the snake-room of Jake Boore’s saloon in Deer River next spring,” he continued, in righteous anger, “I’ll rub it into you! Understand me, Jones? When I haul you out of the snake-room, and wash you, and get you sobered up, I’ll rub it into you that what you need is the grace of God in your heart to give you the first splinter of a man’s backbone.”
“I’ll be humble–then,” said Jones.
“You’ll have to be a good deal more than humble, friend,” Higgins retorted, “before there’ll be a man in the skin that you wear.”
“I don’t doubt it, Pilot.”
“Huh!” the preacher sniffed, in fine scorn.
The story fortunately has an outcome. I doubt that the cook took the Pilot’s prescription; but, at any rate, he had wisdom sufficient to warn the Pilot when his time was out, and his money was in his pocket, and he was bound out of the woods in another attempt to get through Deer River. It was midwinter when the Pilot prescribed the grace of God; it was late in the spring when the cook secretly warned him to stand by the forlorn essay; and it was later still–the drive was on–when, one night, as we watched the sluicing, I inquired.
“Jones?” the Pilot replied, puzzled. “What Jones?”