There ensued the hottest kind of an argument. It turned out that the man was a Socialist–a propagandist who had come to Deer River to sow the seed (he said). I have forgotten what the Pilot’s contention was; but, at any rate, it dodged the general issue and concerned itself with the specific question of whether or not conditions at Deer River made saloon-keepers and gamblers and worse and bartenders–the affirmative of which he held to be an abominable opinion. They carried the argument to the bar-room, where, one on each side of the dripping bar, they disputed until daylight, Higgins at times loudly taunting his opponent with the assertion that a bartender could do nothing but shame Socialism in the community. It ended in this amicable agreement: that the bartender was privileged to attempt the persuasion of Higgins to Socialism, and that Higgins was permitted to practise upon the bartender without let or hindrance with a view to his conversion.
“Have a drink?” said the bartender.
“Wh–what!” exclaimed the Pilot.
“Have a little something soft?”
“I wouldn’t take a glass of water over your dirty bar,” Higgins is said to have roared, “if I died of thirst!”
The man will not compromise.
To all these men, as well as to the lumber-jacks, the Pilot gives his help and carries his message: to all the loggers and lumber-jacks and road-monkeys and cookees and punk-hunters and wood-butchers and swamp-men and teamsters and bull-cooks and the what-nots of the woods, and the gamblers and saloon-keepers and panderers and bartenders (and a host of filthy little runners and pullers-in and small thieves) of the towns. He has no abode near by, no church; he preaches in bunk-houses, and sleeps above saloons and in the little back rooms of hotels and in stables and wherever a blanket may be had in the woods. He ministers to nobody else: just to men like these. To women, too: not to many, perhaps, but still to those whom the pale men of the towns find necessary to their gain. To women like Nellie, in swiftly failing health, who could not escape (she said) because she had lost the knack of dressing in any other way. She beckoned him, aboard train, well aware of his profession; and when Higgins had listened to her ordinary little story, her threadbare, pathetic little plea to be helped, he carried her off to some saving Refuge for such as she. To women like little Liz, too, whose consumptive hand Higgins held while she lay dying alone in her tousled bed in the shuttered Fifth Red House.
“Am I dyin’, Pilot?” she asked.
“Yes, my girl,” he answered.