It was almost as Crump had said. There was no church in Hazlan, and, as
in Breathitt, the people had to follow Raines outside the town, and he
preached from the roadside. The rider's Master never had a tabernacle
more simple: overhead the stars and a low moon; close about, the trees
still and heavy with summer; a pine torch over his head like a yellow
plume; two tallow dips hung to a beech on one side, and flicking to the
other the shadows of the people who sat under them. A few Marcums and
Braytons were there, one faction shadowed on Raines's right, one on
his left. Between them the rider stood straight, and prayed as though
talking with some one among the stars. Behind him the voice of the woman
at her tiny organ rose among the leaves. And then he spoke as he had
prayed; and from the first they listened like children, while in their
own homely speech he went on to tell them, just as he would have told
children, a story that some of them had never heard before. "Forgive
your enemies as He had forgiven his," that was his plea. Marcums and
Braytons began to press in from the darkness on each side, forgetting
each other as the rest of the people forgot them. And when the story
was quite done, Raines stood a full minute without a word. No one was
prepared for what followed. Abruptly his voice rose sternly--"Thou
shalt not kill"; and then Satan took shape under the torch. The man was
transformed, swaying half crouched before them. The long black hair fell
across the white scar, and picture after picture leaped from his tongue
with such vividness that a low wail started through the audience, and
women sobbed in their bonnets. It was penalty for bloodshed--not in this
world: penalty eternal in the next; and one slight figure under the dips
staggered suddenly aside into the darkness.
It was Isom; and no soul possessed of devils was ever more torn than
his, when he splashed through Troubled Fork and rode away that night.
Half a mile on he tried to keep his eyes on his horse's neck, anywhere
except on one high gray rock to which they were raised against his
will--the peak under which he had killed young Jasper. There it was
staring into the moon, but watching him as he fled through the woods,
shuddering at shadows, dodging branches that caught at him as he passed,
and on in a run, until he drew rein and slipped from his saddle at the
friendly old mill. There was no terror for him there. There every bush
was a friend; every beech trunk a sentinel on guard for him in shining
armor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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