The betting was all on Rad, of course. It was said he thought Billsky too good a joke to shoot; he’d just beat him up a bit if he was troublesome, and let him go.
Twenty miles out of Borromeo, Billsky had to stop at a preacher’s. And there he got religion.
Yes, it’s a fact; he got it overnight. What he told the preacher, or the preacher said to him, I don’t know. I don’t begin to know. But Billsky went off afoot into the desert, five miles maybe; and it is pretty much of a desert round there. He had nothing with him but the gun he was going to shoot Radway with, and a Bible. He laid them both under a sagebush, and all night he knelt in front of them, and waited for the Lord to begin on him. There isn’t much in the desert at night, you know, but stars; and a sky back of ’em that makes even the planets look cheap. The Lord must have had His way with Billsky, without fear or favor, for at dawn he came staggering back to the preacher, drenched with sweat and dew. He had only the Bible with him.
“I believe,” he said to the preacher, “and as I hope for forgiveness, so I forgive the man it was in my heart to kill. Tell him so from me,” he said; “but it’s laid on me,” said Billsky, “that I’ll never save my soul till I tell him so myself. So tell him, too, to wait for me, for I’m a-coming to forgive him.” Then he went down in a heap at the preacher’s feet.
That old man was a real Christian, and he put Billsky to bed and looked after him like a father. He’d never had an out-and-out hot-on-the-spot convert like that before, and he was so worked up and excited over it that he saddled his old horse and rode into Borromeo himself to give Radway the message of forgiveness.
I was in Duluth’s, with some of the other fellows, looking at some new saddles he had in; and Rad was there, too, and there was a good deal of talk going on of one kind and another. Some one must have told the old preacher where Rad was, for he pulled up his old white nag outside Duluth’s, and “Mr. Radway!” he called, in a high voice, “Mr. Radway! I have a message for you.”
“Hello!” said Rad, winking at his cronies,—I wasn’t one,—“Is Billsky coming with his gun? I must get ready to hide.” And there was laughing.
Sitting his old horse straight as an Indian, the old preacher raised his head and took his hat off. His white hair shone in the sun. There seemed to be more than sun shining on his face. “Mr. Radway,” says he, “the message I bring is one of forgiveness. You have nothing to fear from Billsky. He forgives you. And I was to tell you that he will never rest until he himself can assure you of that forgiveness. And may the Lord have mercy on you,” said the old man, and put on his hat and rode away. I give you my word, I never heard Duluth’s so quiet! There wasn’t a sound till Radway caught his breath and began to curse.
Funny what’ll get a man’s nerve, eh? It sent Rad quite wild to think Billsky wanted to forgive him!
Billsky was sick at the preacher’s some time. He came into Borromeo looking queerer and hairier than ever, and simply eaten alive with the longin’ to forgive Rad. “’Tisn’t him I’m thinking of,” he explained in his careful way, “he’ll get what’s coming to him, anyway; it’s me,” he said. “How’m I to save my soul if I don’t forgive him?”