The Preacher of Cedar Mountain: A Tale of the Open CountrySeton, Ernest Thompson
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The Preacher of Cedar Mountain: A Tale of the Open Country
Seton, Ernest Thompson
Clergy -- Fiction; Great Plains -- Fiction; Western stories
"I'll not forget the morning of our journey. It was raining by the
bucketfuls. 'Well,' says I, 'for a semi-arid country this is going
some'; and I felt so homesick and sore, I said, 'Hannah, let's not go
any farther'; and Hannah she just looked at me and said, 'See here,
John, I've come out so far to go to the Black Hills and I'm going.'
Then, when the weather let up a little, we started out; and, after a
couple of hours we stuck in a muddy creek and were all day getting
across. Next day a couple more gullies just as bad, and the rain came
down till ever hole in the prairie was a pond; and I tell you I wished
I'd bought a boat instead of the buckboard. And the mosquitoes, oh, my!
Well, we floundered around about three days and got all our stuff wet
and half spoiled. Then we found we'd missed the way and had to flounder
three days back again. I tell you, I felt pretty much discouraged. Then
we saw something a-coming. It turned out to be a settler going back. He
said there was nothing but pond holes and bogs, the mosquitoes were
awful, the boom was bust, and the Sioux on the war path. I felt pretty
sick. That was a finisher; and when that man says, 'You better come back
with us,' I was for going. But Hannah, she just boiled up and she says,
'John Higginbotham, if you want to go back with that bunch of
chicken-hearts, you can go. I'm going to the Black Hills, if I have to
go alone.' I tried to make her see it my way, but she got into the
buckboard, gathered up the reins, and headed for the West. I had to get
in behind as best I could. We didn't talk much. We weren't on speaking
terms that day; and, at night, as we sat eating supper, it started to
raining worse'n ever, and I says, 'I wish we'd gone back.'
"'I don't,' she snapped, an' we never spoke till the morning.
"Then she called me to breakfast. I tell you, I never saw such a change.
The sun was up and the sky was clear. In a little while, we were out of
the sloughs and had no mosquitoes. Then we got a bad shake. A band of
horsemen came riding right at us. But they turned out to be U. S.
cavalrymen. They put us right on the road, and told us the Indian scare
was just fool talk, and had nothing back of it. After that, all went
fine and in two days we were in the Hills.
"I tell you, I felt different as we stood there at our last campfire,
and I says, 'Hannah, you're a wonder. You are the best of the outfit. It
was your money we started on. It was your grit kept me going on when I
was for quitting, and you are in every deal I make. You bet I'll let the
world know we are partners.' So that's why that signboard went up. Not a
bad ad I reckon, for no one sees it without taking notice; so, if
there's anything in our line you need, let me know."
As Carson and Hartigan walked down the street, the doctor said: "Well,
what do you think of Woman Suffrage now?"
Hartigan shrugged his big shoulders, gave a comical glance back at the
signboard, and replied:
"You've got me!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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