"Come," he invited, "I want you to see for yourself where I've baptized
many a one that has come to me." He pointed to a pool in the creek
beyond the house where he had made a small dam. As we stood together it
was on the tip of my tongue to ask how many couples he had baptized, how
many he had married. Abruptly with the uncanny sense of the mountaineer
he lifted the questions out of my mind, though it could have been
because so many others had asked the same things. "I've never kept count
of the wedding ceremonies I have performed, nor of the baptisms," he
said thoughtfully. "I have always felt that if it was the Lord's work I
was doing, He would keep the count."
You didn't have to ask Uncle Dyke Garrett either which were the happiest
days of his long life. You'd know from the look he bestowed upon his
frail mate that his supreme happy hour was when he married Miss Sallie
Smith. "My wedding day," he was saying as if the question had been
asked, "that was the happiest day of my whole life. And next to that
comes the day when the Lord chose me to administer baptism to Captain
Anderson and his six boys. Such hours as these are a taste of heaven
upon earth." His voice was hushed with solemnity. His brimming eyes were
lifted to the hills. "Though it was a day of sorrow I am grateful that
it also fell to my lot to preach the funeral of my lifelong friend
Captain Anderson. Most of all though, my heart rejoiced because Captain
Anderson had become like a little child, meek and penitent, worthy to
enter the fold."
Uncle Dyke sat silent a long time. His wrinkled hands cupped bony knees.
"It brought peace to Levicy's troubled heart." His eyes grew misty with
unshed tears. "I see her now as she lay so peaceful in her shroud and on
her bosom the gold breast pin she prized so much that Captain Anderson
brought her the time he was stormbound, when he met that scalawag
brother of Jesse James. She loved posies did Levicy and every springtime
we take some to her grave, me and Miss Sallie."
At this, Miss Sallie, slipping her small hand through the bend of his
arm, led the way down the flower-bordered path. "Posies are the
brightness of a body's days," she said softly. "You can't just set them
out and they'll bloom big. You have to work with them. Posies and human
creatures are a heap alike. Sometimes they have to be pampered. Like
Dyke here," she smiled up at her aged mate. "I had to understand his
ways, else I'd never have tamed him," she persisted. "He's the last
surviving one of his company--the Logan Wildcats." Aunt Sallie's blue
eyes lighted with pride. "I like to think of him outlasting me too."
I'd remember them always as they stood there in the sunset with the
golden glow and scarlet sage and the snow-white pretty-by-night all
about them, the two smiling contentedly as I waved them good-by far down
at the bend of the road.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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