Friar Tuck
Page 7
CHAPTER FIVE
THE HOLD-UP
This was the way the Friar started out with us; and year after year,this was the way he kept up. He was friendly with every one, and mostevery one was friendly with him. Some o' the boys got the idea that hepacked his guns along as a bluff; so they put up a joke on him.
They lay in wait for him one night as he was comin' up the goose neck.I, myself, didn't rightly savvy just how he did stand with regard tothe takin' of human life in self-defence; but I knew mighty well 'athe wasn't no bluffer, so I didn't join in with the boys, nor I didn'twarn him; I just scouted along on the watch and got up the hill out o'range to see what would happen.
He came up the hill in the twilight, singin' one of his favoritemarchin' songs. I've heard it hundreds of times since then, and I'veoften found myself singin' it softly to myself when I had a long,lonely ride to make. That was a curious thing about the Friar: hedidn't seem to be tampin' any of his idees into a feller, but firstthing the feller knew, he had picked up some o' the Friar's ways; and,as the Friar confided to me once, a good habit is as easy learned as abad, and twice as comfortin'.
Well, he came up the pass shufflin' along at a steady Spanish trot aswas usual with him when not overly rushed, and singin':
"Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah! Pilgrim through this barren land; I am weak, but Thou art mighty; Hold me with Thy powerful hand."
He came up out of the pass with his head thrown back, and his boy'sface shinin' with that radiatin' joy I haven't ever seen in anotherface, exceptin' it first caught the reflection from the Friar's; andthe notion about died out o' the boys' minds. They were all friends ofhis and wouldn't have hurt his feelin's for a lot; but they had itchedabout his weapons for such a spell that they finally had to have itout; so when he rounded a point o' rock, they stepped out and told himto put his hands up.
They were masked and had him covered, and his hands shot up with ajerk; but he didn't stop his singin', and his voice didn't take on asingle waver. Fact was, it seemed if possible a shade more jubilant.He had reached the verse which sez:
"Feed me with the heavenly manna In this barren wilderness; Be my sword and shield and banner, Be the Lord my Righteousness";
and as he sang with his hands held high above his head, he waved 'emback and forth, playin' notes in the air with his fingers, the way hedid frequent; and it was one o' the most divertin' sights I ever saw.
Those blame scamps had all they could do to keep from hummin' time tohis song; for I swear to you in earnest that the Friar could play on aman's heart the same as if it was a fiddle. He kept on an' finishedthe last verse while I crouched above 'em behind a big rock, andfairly hugged myself with the joy of it. Ol' Tank Williams was a bigman and had been chosen out to be the leader an' do the talkin', buthe hadn't the heart to jab into the Friar's singin'; so he waiteduntil it was all over. Then he cleared his throat as though settin'off a blast of dynamite, and growls out: "Here, you, give us yourmoney."
Ten six-shooters were pointin' at the Friar, but I reckon if he hadknown it would of exploded all of 'em, he'd have had to laugh. Hethrew back his head and his big free laugh rolled out into the hills,until I had to gnaw at a corner o' the stone to keep from joinin' in."My money!" sez he as soon as he could catch his breath. "Well, boys,boys, whatever put such a notion as that into your heads. Take it,take it, you're welcome to it; and if you are able to find more thantwo bits, why, I congratulate you most hearty; because two bits wasall I could find this morning, and that will only be a nickle apiece,and five cents is small pay for robbin' a volunteer missionary."
Ol' Tank Williams was a serious-minded old relic, and he was feelin'so sheepish just then that it seemed to him as though the Friar hadimposed on him by lurin' him into such a fix; so he roars out inearnest: "If you ain't got no money, why the deuce do ya tote thoseguns about with ya all the time?"
"Would you just as soon tie me to a tree, or take some other measuresof defence?" asked the Friar politely. "My arms are gettin' weary andI could talk more comfortable with 'em hanging' down."
"Aw put 'em down, and talk on," sez George Hendricks.
"Thank you," sez the Friar. "Well, now, boys, the man who doesn't takethe time to put a value on his own life, isn't likely to make thatlife very much worth while. He mustn't overvalue it to such an extentthat he becomes a coward, nor he mustn't undervalue it to such anextent that he becomes reckless--he must take full time to estimatehimself as near as he is able.
"I don't know that I can allus keep from judgin' my fellow men; but Iam sure that I would not judge one to the extent of sayin' that mylife was worth more than his, so I should never use a gun merely tosave my own life by takin' away the life of another man--much lesswould I use a gun in defence of money; but I am a purty good shot, andsometimes I can get a man interested by shootin' at a mark with him.This is why I carry firearms. Do you want the two bits?"
"Aw, go on," yells ol' Tank, madder at himself 'n ever. "We didn'tintend to rob ya. All we wanted was to hear ya sing and preach a bit";and he pulled off his mask and shook the Friar's hand. All the rest o'the boys did the same; and I clumb up on my rock, flapped my wings,and crowed like a rooster.
Well, we sat on the ground, and he sang for us; and then he soberedand began to talk about cussin'. It used to hurt the Friar to hearsome o' the double-jointed swear words we used when excited. He triednot to show it, because he didn't want anything to shut us away fromhim at any time; but whiles his face would wrinkle into lines ofactual pain.
"Now, boys," he began, "I know, 'at you don't mean what you say in aprofane way. You call each other terrible names, and condemn eachother to eternal punishment; and if a man said these things inearnest, his life would be forfeit; but you take it merely as a joke.Now, I do not know just how wicked this is. I know that it isforbidden to take the name o' the Lord thy God in vain; so it is adangerous thing to be profane even in thoughtlessness; but I haveheard the Lord's name used by the perfectly respectable in a way whichmust have hurt his tender nature more.
"Once in the crowded slum district of a large eastern city, I saw afreight car back down on a child and kill it. The mother was frantic;she was a foreigner and extra emotional, and she screamed, and cursedthe railroad. A man had come to comfort her, and he put his hand onher arm and said, 'My dear woman, you must not carry on this way. Wemust always bow our heads in submission to the Lord's will.'
"For years the poor people o' that neighborhood had begged protectionfor their children; and I cannot believe that it was the Lord's willthat even one o' the least of 'em should have been slain in order todrive the lesson a little deeper home; so, as I said before, I am notgoing to talk to you of the wickedness of swearing--but I am goin' totalk about its foolishness, its vulgarity, and its brutality."
He went on showin' that swearin' was foolish because it wasn't givin'a man's thought on things in a man's way; but merely howlin' it outthe way wolves and wild-cats had to, on account o' their not havin' acivilized language with which to express the devilment which was in'em. He showed how it made a feller lazy; because instead of tryin' tosort out words which would tell exactly what he meant, he made a lotof noises which had no more real meanin' than a bunch o'fire-crackers.
Then his voice got low and serious, and he said 'at the worst thingabout cussin' was, that it led a feller into speakin' lightly aboutthe sacred things of life. "When you speak the word 'son,'" he said,"you are bound to also call up the thought of 'mother'; and I want tosay to you right now that any one who can be coarse and nasty inthinkin' or speakin' about maternity, is not a man at all--or even adecent brute--but has some sort of soul-sickness which is morehorrible than insanity. Always be square with women--all women, goodand bad. I know your temptations, and I know theirs. Woman has a heavycross to carry, and the least we can do, is to play fair."
Then he sprang some of his curious theories on us: told us how thebody was full of poisons and remedies; and it depended on our plan oflivin', whe
ther we used the one or the other. He said he allus cut outfood and tobacco on Fridays, and if he didn't feel bright and clearand bubblin' over with vitality, he fasted until he felt able to eat arubber boot, and then he knew he had cleaned all the waste productsout of him, and could live at top speed again. He finished up bytellin' of a cross old doctor he once knew, who used to say 'at cattleand kings didn't have to control themselves; but all ordinary men hadto use self-denial, even in matters of pleasure.
It was more the way the Friar said things than what he said; his voiceand his eyes helped a lot; but the thing 'at counted for most was thefact 'at you knew it wasn't none of it put on. He loved to joke whenit was a jokin' matter; but he was stiff as stone with what he calledthe foundations of life. A man, you know, as a rule, is mighty timidabout the things which lie close to his heart, no matter how bold andfree he'll talk about other things; but the Friar was like a littlechild, an' he'd speak out as bold and frank as one, about the thingshe loved and hated, until he finally put a few drops o' this queerbrand o' courage into our own hearts.
Of course we didn't get to be troubled with wing-growth or anythinglike that; but a short time after this fake hold-up, ol' Tank Williamswent in to fill up with picklin'-fluid, and he started in on Mondayand kept fightin' it all that week until Friday. Then he said that hewouldn't neither eat, drink, nor smoke on that day; and they couldn'tmake him do it. He started in on Saturday to continue what had startedout to be one o' the best benders he had ever took; but the firstquart made him sick as a dog, and he came out to the ranch and said'at the Friar had made him a temperate man, and for the rest of hislife he intended to set aside one day a week in the Friar's favor.
After the boys had started for the ranch, the Friar invited me tospend the night with him; so we unpacked his bed from the lead-hossand we built a little fire and had a right sociable time of it. Me andhim was good pals by this time. He had said to me once: "Happy, you domore general thinkin' than some varsity men I've known."
"I reckon," sez I, modest as I could, "that a man who has bossed adozen men and ten thousand cattle through a three days' blizzard, hasto be able to think some like a general."
Then he explained to me that general thinkin' meant to think aboutstars an' flowers an' the human race an' the past an' the future, an'such things, and not to be all the time lookin' at life just from theway it touched a feller himself. This was another thing I liked abouthim. Most Easteners is so polite that they haven't the heart to set afeller right when he has the wrong notion; but the Friar would divvyup on his knowledge as free as he would on his bacon or tobacco; so Iopened myself up to him until he knew as much about me as I didmyself.
He didn't have much use for the shut-eye this night, nor he wasn't astalky as common; so we sat smokin' and lookin' into the fire for along time. Once in a while he'd speak a verse about some big deed aman had done years ago, or else one describin' the mountains orsomething like that; until finally I asked him how it came that a manwho loved adventure an' fightin' an' feats of skill, the way he did,had selected to be a preacher.
"We don't select our lives, Happy," sez he. "You're surely philosopherenough to see that. As far as we can see, it is like that gamblin'game; we roll down through a lot o' little pegs bobbin' off from oneto another until finally we pop into a little hole at the bottom; butwe didn't pick out that hole. No, we didn't pick out that hole."
So I up and asked him to tell me somethin' about his start.