Higgins, a Man's Christian

Norman Duncan

Norman Duncan

Higgins, a Man's Christian

I

HELL BENT

Twenty thousand of the thirty thousand lumber-jacks and river-pigs of the Minnesota woods are hilariously in pursuit of their own ruin for lack of something better to do in town. They are not nice, enlightened men, of course; the debauch is the traditional diversion–the theme of all the brave tales to which the youngsters of the bunk-houses listen in the lantern-light and dwell upon after dark. The lumber-jacks proceed thus–being fellows of big strength in every physical way–to the uttermost of filth and savagery and fellowship with every abomination. It is done with shouting and laughter and that large good-humor which is bedfellow with the bloodiest brawling, and it has for a bit, no doubt, its amiable aspect; but the merry shouters are presently become like Jimmie the Beast, that low, notorious brute, who, emerging drunk and hungry from a Deer River saloon, robbed a bulldog of his bone and gnawed it himself–or like Damned Soul Jenkins, who goes moaning into the forest, after the spree in town, conceiving himself condemned to roast forever in hell, without hope, nor even the ease which his mother’s prayers might win from a compassionate God.

They can’t help themselves, it seems. Not all of them, of course; but most.

II

THE PILOT OF SOULS

A big, clean, rosy-cheeked man in a Mackinaw coat and rubber boots–hardly distinguishable from the lumber-jack crew except for his quick step and high glance and fine resolute way–went swiftly through a Deer River saloon toward the snake-room in search of a lad from Toronto who had in the camps besought to be preserved from the vicissitudes of the town.

“There goes the Pilot,” said a lumber-jack at the bar. “Hello, Pilot!”

“’Lo, Tom!”

“Ain’t ye goin’ t’ preach no more at Camp Six?”

“Sure, Tom!”

“Well–when the hell?”

“Week from Thursday, Tom,” the vanishing man called back; “tell the boys I’m coming.”

“Know the Pilot?” the lumber-jack asked.

I nodded.

“Higgins’s job,” said he, earnestly, “is keepin’ us boys out o’ hell; an’ he’s the only man on the job.”

Of this I had been informed.

“I want t’ tell ye, friend,” the lumber-jack added, with honest reverence, “that he’s a damned good Christian, if ever there was one. Ain’t that right, Billy?”

“Higgins,” the bartender agreed, “is a square man.”

The lumber-jack reverted to the previous interest. All at once he forgot about the Pilot.

“Hey, Billy!” he cried, severely, “where’d ye put that bottle?”

Higgins was then in the snake-room of the place–a foul compartment into which the stupefied and delirious are thrown when they are penniless–searching the pockets of the drunken boy from Toronto for some leavings of his wages. “Not a cent!” said he, bitterly. “They haven’t left him a cent! They’ve got every penny of three months’ wages! Don’t blame the boy,” he pursued, in pain and infinite sympathy, easing the lad’s head on the floor; “it isn’t all his fault. He came out of the camps without telling me–and some cursed tin-horn gambler met him, I suppose–and he’s only a boy–and they didn’t give him a show–and, oh, the pity of it! he’s been here only two days!”

The boy was in a stupor of intoxication, but presently revived a little, and turned very sick.

“That you, Pilot?” he said.

“Yes, Jimmie.”

“A’ right.”

“Feel a bit better now?”

“Uh-huh.”

The boy sighed and collapsed unconscious: Higgins remained in the weltering filth of the room to ease and care for him. “Don’t wait for me, old man,” said he, looking up from the task. “I’ll be busy for a while.”

III

IN THE SNAKE-ROOM

Frank necessity invented the snake-room of the lumber-town saloon. There are times of gigantic debauchery–the seasons of paying off. A logger then once counted one hundred and fifty men drunk in a single hotel of a town of twelve hundred inhabitants where fourteen ot