“Trippin’ a thousand miles shows some intrust!” somebody said.
“I lived all my life up theh in the mountangs, an’ hit’s God’s country, gem’men! This yeah—” he glanced around him till his glance fell upon the card cabinet on the wall between two windows, full of decks of cards and packets of dice and shaker boxes—“this yeah, sho! Hit ain’t God’s country, gem’men! Hit’s shore the Devil’s, an’ he’s shore ketched a right smart haul to-night! But I live yeah now!”
Buck, who had been coming and going, had stopped at the parson’s voice. He did not laugh, he did not even smile. The point was not missed, however. Far from it! He went out, bowed by the truth of it, and in the kitchen he looked at Slip, who was sitting in black and silent consideration of that cry, carried far in the echoes.
“You’re one of us, Parson!” a voice exclaimed in disbelief.
“Yas, suh,” Rasba smiled as he looked into the man’s eyes, “I’m one of you. I ’low we uns’ll git thar together, 126 ’cordin’ as we die. Look! This gem’men gives me bread an’ meat; he quenches my thirst, too. An’ I take hit out’n his hands. ’Peahs like he owns this boat!”
“Yas, suh,” someone affirmed.
“Then I shall not shake hit’s dust off my feet when I go,” Rasba declared, sharply. Buck stared; Rasba did not look at even his shoes; Buck caught his breath. Whatever Rasba meant, whatever the other listeners understood, Buck felt and broke beneath those statements which brought to him things that he never had known before.
“He’ll not shake the dust of this gambling dive from his feet!” Buck choked under his breath. “And this is how far down I’ve got!”
Rasba, conscious only of his own shortcomings, had no idea that he had fired shot after shot, let alone landed shell after shell. He knew only that the men sat in respectful, drawn-faced silence. He wondered if they were not sorry for him, a preacher, who had fallen so far from his circuit riding and feastings and meetings in churches. It did not occur to him that these men knew they were wicked, and that they were suffering from his unintentional but overwhelming rebuke.
They turned away impatiently, and went in their boats to the village landing across the river; a night’s sport spoiled for them by the coming of a luck-breaking parson. Others waited to hear more of what they knew they needed, partly in amusement, partly in curiosity, and partly because they liked the whiskery fellow who was so interesting. At the same time, what he said was stinging however inoffensive.