"Speak a good word for Jim, Pilot," said a weeping poleman. "Tell the Lord he could ride a log as well as the best of us."
"Get him through if you can; he wasn't so bad," was the parenthesis of a French-Canadian.
"Good bye, Jim. Our turn's comin'."
The last words were said, the benediction pronounced, and the Sky Pilot turned to leave the cemetery.
"Hold on, there," cried the foreman to the minister. "This is no pauper you buried, but a man whose friends ain't broke."
Taking off his hat, he turned to the crew. "Shell out, you blank sons of the nameless. Jim's been planted O. K., now pay the Sky Pilot for the words he shed over his bones. This is no poor farm job."
The boys shelled out eight dollars and sixty cents for the preacher's services.
The lumberjacks, the homesteaders, the saloon men and the prostitutes claim the missionary as their spiritual friend. It is on him they call when sickness enters their places of abode, and his response is willing and natural. He, as the servant of Christ, is the messenger to the poor and outcast; conditions of life are not considered.
One night, when the Pilot was in a brothel praying with a woman who was passing through the dark waters, the girls of the house crowded around to listen to the prayers and see the end. One of the girls invited him to a private conversation and in it told him the story of her life and the nearness of her death. The physician had informed her that six months was all she could hope to live. "I'll make a short six months of it, for this life is hell, and hell can't be any worse than this," she said.
When the church service closed on the following Sunday evening a messenger was waiting at the Bemidji church to ask him to come at once to the brothel. There he found the girl with whom he had talked. She had taken blue vitrol and this was the end. She had been true to her statement and had made a short six months of it.