THE PREACHER OF CEDAR MOUNTAIN
A TALE OF THE OPEN COUNTRY
BY ERNEST THOMPSON SETON
FRONTISPIECE BY CLARENCE ROWE
Garden City New York DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1917
Copyright, 1917, by Ernest Thompson Seton
All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian
"'You must choose between us. Is it Belle or Blazing Star?'"
PREFACE
Most of the characters in this tale are from life, and some of the main events are historical, although the actual scenes and names are not given. Many men now living will remember Fighting Bill Kenna and the Horse Preacher, as well as the Fort Ryan races. These horse races are especially well known and have been described in print many times. I did not witness any of them myself, but listened on numerous occasions when they were described to me by eye-witnesses. My first knowledge of the secret try-out in Yellowbank Canyon was given to me years ago by Homer Davenport, the cartoonist, with permission to use the same.
But all of these more or less historic events are secondary to the intent of illustrating the growth of a character, whose many rare gifts were mere destructive force until curbed and harmonized into the big, strong machine that did such noble work in the West during my early days on the Plains.
Ernest Thompson Seton.
CONTENTS
BOOK ONE The Child of the Stable Yard
CHAPTER I. The Home Land of Little Jim Hartigan CHAPTER II. The Strains That Were Mingled in Jim CHAPTER III. How He Lost His Father CHAPTER IV. The Atmosphere of His Early Days CHAPTER V. Little Jim's Tutors CHAPTER VI. Jim Loses Everythin CHAPTER VII. He Gets a Much-needed Lesson
BOOK II The Conversion
CHAPTER VIII. The Conversion of Jim CHAPTER IX. Jim Hartigan Goes to College CHAPTER X. Escape to Cedar Mountain CHAPTER XI. A New Force Enters His Life CHAPTER XII. Belle Boyd CHAPTER XIII. Preacher Jim's First Sermon CHAPTER XIV. The Lure of the Saddle CHAPTER XV. Pat Bylow's Spree CHAPTER XVI. The New Insurance Agents CHAPTER XVII. Belle Makes a Decision and Jim Evades One CHAPTER XVIII. The Second Bylow Spree CHAPTER XIX. The Day of Reckoning CHAPTER XX. The Memorable Trip to Deadwood CHAPTER XXI. The Ordeal CHAPTER XXII. The Three Religions Confront Him
BOOK III The Horse Preacher
CHAPTER XXIII. Blazing Star CHAPTER XXIV. Red Rover CHAPTER XXV. The Secret of Yellowbank Canyon CHAPTER XXVI. Preparing for the Day CHAPTER XXVII. The Start CHAPTER XXVIII. The Finish CHAPTER XXIX. The Riders CHAPTER XXX. The Fire CHAPTER XXXI. Love in the Saddle
BOOK IV The Horse Preacher Afoot
CHAPTER XXXII. The Advent of Midnight CHAPTER XXXIII. The Sociable CHAPTER XXXIV. Springtime CHAPTER XXXV. When the Greasewood is in Bloom CHAPTER XXXVI. Shoeing the Buckskin CHAPTER XXXVII. The Boom CHAPTER XXXVIII. When the Craze Struck CHAPTER XXXIX. Jim's Bet CHAPTER XL. The Crow Band CHAPTER XLI. The Pinto CHAPTER XLII. The Aftertime CHAPTER XLIII. Finding the Lost One CHAPTER XLIV. A Fair Rider CHAPTER XLV. The Life Game CHAPTER XLVI. What Next? CHAPTER XLVII. Back to Deadwood CHAPTER XLVIII. The Fork in the Trail CHAPTER XLIX. The Power of Personality CHAPTER L. The Call to Chicago CHAPTER LI. These Little Ones CHAPTER LII. The Boss CHAPTER LIII. The First Meeting CHAPTER LIV. The Formation of the Club
BOOK V The Call of the Mountain
CHAPTER LV. In the Absence of Belle CHAPTER LVI. The Defection of Squeaks CHAPTER LVII. The Trial CHAPTER LVIII. In the Death House CHAPTER LIX. The Heart Hunger CHAPTER LX. The Gateway and the Mountain CHAPTER LXI. Clear Vision on the Mountain CHAPTER LXII. When He Walked with the King
BOOKS BY ERNEST THOMPSON SETON BY MRS. ERNEST THOMPSON SETON
BOOK ONE
THE CHILD OF THE STABLE YARD
CHAPTER I
The Home Land of Little Jim Hartigan
A burnt, bare, seared, and wounded spot in the great pine forest of Ontario, some sixty miles northeast of Toronto, was the little town of Links. It lay among the pine ridges, the rich, level bottomlands, and the newborn townships, in a region of blue lakes and black loam that was destined to be a thriving community of prosperous farmer folk. The broad, unrotted stumps of the trees that not so long ago possessed the ground, were thickly interstrewn among the houses of the town and in the little fields that began to show as angular invasions of the woodland, one by every settler's house of logs. Through the woods and through the town there ran the deep, brown flood of the little bog-born river, and streaking its current for the whole length were the huge, fragrant logs of the new-cut pines, in disorderly array, awaiting their turn to be shot through the mill and come forth as piles of lumber, broad waste slabs, and heaps of useless sawdust.
Two or three low sawmills were there, each booming, humming, busied all the day. And the purr of their saws, or the scream when they struck some harder place in the wood, was the dominant note, the day-long labour-song of Links. At first it seemed that these great, wasteful fragrant, tree-destroying mills were the only industries of the town; and one had to look again before discovering, on the other side of the river, the grist mill, sullenly claiming its share of the water power, and proclaiming itself just as good as any other mill; while radiating from the bridge below the dam, were the streets—or, rather, the rough roads, straight and ugly—along which wooden houses, half hidden by tall sunflowers, had been built for a quarter of a mile, very close together near the bridge, but ever with less of house and sunflower and more of pumpkin field as one travelled on, till the last house with the last pumpkin field was shut in by straggling, much-culled woods, alternating with swamps that were densely grown with odorous cedar and fragrant tamarac, as yet untouched by the inexorable axe of the changing day.
