“See here, Dalton,” said Tussock. “I’m an older man than you. I’ve seen fifty years of life. I never had a friend that didn’t help me down. I’m not saying it wasn’t my own fault, but every friend I have had has helped me down. Dalton, what about you?”
Dalton sat thinking, smoking savagely.
“A friend?” he said slowly. “There was my mother. But she died. And—” he paused a moment “—there was one other. But I threw her down. Oh, hell and blazes!” he broke forth with a fierceness that startled both his hearers. “What are you talking to me about? Friends? Yes. They were all going the same way, and they all helped me down. No—I helped them down. We went down together. Oh, hell and damnation! Damn all friends! Damn life! Take your damn partnership! It’s all a piece of cursed foolery. I’m through. I’m sick, I’m done with it. I’m going to hell alone.” He rose, kicked back his chair and made for the door.
“Hold on, Dalton,” shouted Tussock. “Come back here. Give me one chance more. Don’t be so darned selfish. Give me a chance. I want you. We want the same things—something to work at, something worth working for, and, yes, more than anything else, a friend to climb up with. We both want a keeper, Dalton. And here’s Paul, young, clean, fit, and a fighter, and, by the eternal jumpin’ cats! I believe a friend to tie to.”
“Sit down, Dalton,” said Paul quietly. “I need your help in something. I want to ask you something.” His quiet words brought Dalton back again to his chair.
“Spit it out!” he said.
Paul pulled out his Bible, turned the leaves over and handed Dalton the book. “Read that to us,” he said, his finger upon one of the great psalms of Hebrew literature.
“‘He will not suffer thy foot to be moved. He that keepeth thee will not slumber. The Lord is thy keeper. The Lord shall keep thee from all evil. He shall keep thy soul. The Lord shall keep thy going out and thy coming in, from this time forth and forever more.’”
“Tell me, Dalton,” said Paul, leaning forward, his hands on his knees, his face set in eager and intense anxiety. “You have studied this. Is the Bible true, Dalton? Do you believe it is true? Wait a minute! I was sure till yesterday morning, till I heard a preacher in this city say it might not be.”
With deadly earnestness he told of his yesterday morning’s experience. He was like a man pleading for his very life, indeed something more than life was at stake. In simple, almost childlike words, he told the story of his boyhood’s faith, of how he had come to feel about God, to see Him in the clouds, and to feel that He was near and that He was good. He told the men listening to him with very grave and solemn faces of his mother’s faith and how it had brought her comfort and strength and peace. He told of his father’s failure, and then of his return to faith. He gave a vivid account of his six years in the Chippewayan country, and how the thought of God had always been with him and how the conviction that God was caring for him and showing him the way had kept his heart up and his courage from failing.