The Saint of the Wilderness - Jess Carr

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 3
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Page 52-54 –Robert’s first encounter with Methodism
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“He gets plumb ornery when he’s had a few,” Clefus explained.

“Next time I get a round I’ll get the tavemkeeper to lace his run with some egg whites. I understand them spirits hide in little balls of egg whites and won’t bust till daylight,” Muley said.

Clefus disagreed. “That won’t do. There won’t be any road between here and Lexington wide enough to keep the wagon in. He sure don’t need no bubbles full of rum abustin’ in his stomach.”

Robert watched Shem sip his rum faster than he should, and instinctively he pushed his own mug away.

“Say, what’s all the people leaving fer?” Clefus asked.

“I ain’t sure,” Muley said, looking toward the door. “Most times they stay till the doors is locked, and the night ain’t hardIy started. I’ll find out for you. Something is goin’ on.” He came back on the run. “They’s a revival happenin’ up over Greenway’s store! Some of the fellers is goin’ and make it hot for the dd sin-socker.”

Clefus shook the arm of Shem and brought his sleepy head from his forearms.

‘’Wrap yourself tight. We’re goin’ to sober you up ill that January weather out there or we’re goin’ to let that-therE evangelist do it fer us. You may be just about right to get saved! How’d you like to wake up in the mornin’ and know you was plumb, teetotally saved!”

Muley laughed as heartily as Clefus, and between them Shem staggered first against one and then the other. The three of them reached the door before Muley relinquished his hold on Shem so that he could pass through the entrance. Robert had not moved.

”You go ahead and tell them I hope they don’t get snowed in before they get back to Baltimore.”

“I ain’t goin’ to do it. Nearly everybody’s left here now. See – there ain’t a dozen people. You know they all saw you here and they’ll be awonderin’ why you didn’t have nerve enough to come and pelt that old sin-socker with corncobs.”


‘He hasn’t done me any harm,” Robert said.

“I been thinkin’ lately – you getting’ too good for us fellers what sweats a little for our livin’?”

“No, that isn’t it.”

Clefus called impatiently from the doorway. He was minus his partner, Shem. “I knowed you wasn’t man enough to be in the volunteers! If we was in battle we couldn’t count on you to reach us the gunpowder. You’d be as scared as a sucklin’ kid. You’re scared of a big-mouthed old preacher!” Muley said.

“I am scared of nothing!”

“Then don’t stand here talkin’ about it. We ain’t goin’ to get seats, and all the corncobs will be gone. Let’s get goin’!”

Muley pulled the bench out of Robert’s path and the way was clear to the door. Robert looked at Muley and the blacksmith grinned wide, until his yellow teeth showed. Robert crossed the distance hurriedly and they were out in the street. Muley called to Clefus, “Let’s get goin’! Make Shem take deep breath of this cold air. If that don’t sober him up it’ll give him a coughin’ fit and shake loose his liver and he can let it all out.”

When the four of them reached the top of the stairs over Greenway’s store, the third-floor room still had vacant seats. Robert could tell the serious worshipers from most of the faces he had seen in the tavern. There was little need to draw a line of division, for many of the tavern patrons sat enmasse to the rear of the large room. There could not have been more than twenty-five or thirty people in attendance before the men from the tavern arrived. Now the congregation numbered sixty or seventy. Having come last, Robert could not be certain, but the old man who stood before them, thin but ‘ball, with his bony knees and elbows outlined against his worn clothes, had an inquiring look on his face. It was not hard to see the brightness in the aged man’s eyes when he first began to notice the empty benches starting to fill. Although the revival must have been half finished, the countenance of this old evangelist strongly suggested to Robert his willingness to start the meeting all over again if there were those who would benefit and if their attendance was sincere.


Bony hands caressed each other as the old man tried to smile and welcome the newcomers. The skin of his face was wrinkled and loose, and he stooped slightly, though he tried to stand erect. He walked across the front of the room to pick up something, and the arch of his back became much more apparent. It seemed to start at the base of the spine and continue to the base of the neck – the type of arch a man would develop when he had ridden a horse for many more years than his strength had been sufficient to hold himself erect.

The object the old man fetched was a pitch pipe.

“The Lord has blessed us with many who have come late. Since they have not joined us in fellowship by the singing of a hymn, we will sing together that old hymn you all know, ‘Blessed Be the name of the Lord.’ Sister Louise will pass out the songbooks, but we don’t have many. Please share them with a Christian brother by your side.”

The preacher blew the “C” note on the pitch pipe, and led the singing. Those near the front sang vigorously, but only a few in the back joined in, and then only until they were stared down by their fellow tavern patrons.

By the middle of the second verse the copper kettle sitting to the side of the single Ben Franklin stove began to yield what few corncobs yet remained of the kindling. In the absence of more corncobs, someone reached for wood chips, but an older man nearby squeezed the taker’s wrist until the chips were dropped. “Don’t use chips on him,” the older man whispered. .. We don’t want to kill him – or blind him – we just want to slow him down.”

A corncob was passed to Robert. He held it in his hands for a moment, and passed it on. Not a corncob was in sight when the hymn was concluded; each man concealed his weapon with the same skill with which he concealed his intentions.

Robert knew about when to expect the onslaught. He had heard the men at the tavern talk about how they had carried out this devilment before. They would let the visiting itinerant work himself into a sweat, and when the invitation I penitence was issued the corncobs would begin to fly through the air until the helpless preacher looked like an awkward schoolboy fighting off a swarm of bees.

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 3
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Page 55-58 – The revival meeting and Robert’s conversion
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The crowd all listened, and Robert sensed that this man who stood before them was not of the common variety of itinerants Greenway’s meeting room was rented to. Not only did he sense it, but some of the men sitting close to him were looking on with a degree of concentration that was not just good acting.

The white-thatched preacher pushed a strand of hair from his forehead after his opening remarks were made and announced his text.

Our Scripture tonight will be taken from Second Kings, chapter two. To those of you who do not have Your Bibles, our Scripture deals with the last days of Elijah and his companion, Elisha. In this chapter we see by the hand of God, Elijah taken into heaven in a fiery chariot, drawn by fiery horses. Elijah, as he rises toward heaven in a whirlwind, drops his mantle, or cloak, and Elisha catches it and receives the divine powers God had given Elijah.”

A grunt and then a snicker originated from someone near the stove. Robert saw Shem sit up straight and slap his knee “You reckon my mules will catch fire on the way back to Baltimore, Preacher?”

Although Shem laughed heartily and Muley and Clefus chuckled, few others made any sound. The old preacher ignored the outburst and continued.

“When Elisha received the powers originally bestowed on Elijah, he went and stood by the river Jordan and smote it with the cloak of Elijah, and it parted so that he walked across the river on dry land. Elisha tarried in Jericho and used his God-given power to purify the water and enrich the land so the people might prosper. But, my friends, I must tell you tonight that everyone did not receive God’s servant Elisha without mockery. Be not deceived, God will not be mocked. . . But let us not leave Elisha. We must examine what happened to God’s servant Elisha in the closing verses of the chapter. Follow me in the Scriptures if you will:

‘And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou baldhead; go up, thou baldhead. ‘And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the woods, and tare forty forth two children of them. ‘And he went from thence to Mount Carmel, and from thence he returned to Samaria’.”


Suddenly Shem stood in front of his bench and hurled a cob, which missed its mark.

“My brothers and sisters, it is not God’s will that any should perish but that all should have everlasting life. Are there those among us tonight who search for something without knowing for what they search? Or those who forsake God to seek their own selfish desires? What would you give in exchange for your soul? Is God your loving father, who walks with you each day, holding your hand as a little child? Your enemy to be feared? Does He give you the wind and the sun and the rain and the flowers and the trees and smile down at you with His blessing to enjoy them and use them?”

Shell and Muley were both on their feet now, letting a barrage of corncobs fly with all their might. Clefus kept the two others supplied, and occasional cobs flew from further behind him. At the beginning the preacher tried to dodge the raspy and cutting objects, but as they kept coming he stood immobile. His strategy stopped the cob throwers only for a moment; then they were incited to throw harder and faster.

Muley connected with a hit directly on the nose and Clefus, after two tries, knocked the preacher’s glasses to the floor.

When Robert saw blood dripping from the face of the old man, he could stand it no longer. Leaping over three other men, he picked up the copper kettle by the stove and brought it down hard on the heads of Shem and Clefus. When they appeared dazed, he turned it over, brought it down on the head of Muley and left it there.

The preacher wiped the blood from his face and proceeded to speak. His sermon consumed the better part of an hour but even before he had ended his pleas, a line had formed. His invitation to more penitents was all that remained.

Robert sat on his bench with head bowed and his eyes wet with tears. He did not enter the line of converts; in fact, he was ready to leave the building. He resisted raising his head for fear the pleading eyes of the older man would be there searching out his own.

Presently an unsteady arm rested on his shoulder.

“Let’s get out of here, Robert. I didn’t know we was makin’ you mad. We just wanted to do a little hell-raisin’. You plumb near knocked me senseless. Clefus and Shem still can’t hardly get on their feet.”

“Go away,” Robert whispered.

“I ain’t goin’ to leave you.”

Women and children near the front of the room started to sing as he pushed Muley away from him.

“Come on. Robert.”

“I’ve got to go down there.”

“You outa’ your head? Why that old sin-socker is just runnin’ this business for the money,” Muley argued.

“Not this one. He didn’t even take up ‘a collection, and it wouldn’t matter anyway. I’ve got to go down there. Get out If my way.”

Muley stood aside until Robert made his way down the aisle and fell upon the wrinkled neck of his deliverer.

When the building was cleared of all the other people, Robert faced the elderly preacher, who now stood shivering from the cold. Suddenly the boy felt drained of words. And. He too was shivering. He picked up two of the corncobs at the Preacher’s feet and gripped his fist tightly around each until he could feel the sharp edges of the outer cob collapse.

“Maybe if I put a few of these in the stove we could get some heat back in this place,” Robert said.

The older man stopped blotting the shallow cuts on his face and put his red bandanna handkerchief in his hip pocket. “I can’t think of any better use for them.” He chuckled and assisted Robert.

“I want to apologize for the way the men from the tavern acted,” Robert began. “They’re not such bad people – not so bad at all.”

“Most of the smoke and anguish of hell will surely come from people who don’t think themselves bad.”

Robert swallowed hard and made his confession complete. “I was with them. I came from the tavern. So were three other men who were in the line and made their professions of faith in Christ.”

“God bless each of you” – the older man smiled again “and we’ll keep working on all the rest of them. They will probably look upon you and the three others with contempt. The four of you will be a reminder to them – a painful reminder they would just as soon forget but cannot.”

“I will certainly do my best to see that no rowdy crowd comes up here again and bothers you – even if I have to knock them down the stairs with this poker.”

“That is not the way of the Savior, my young brother. You do want to be more like Him?”

“Yes.”

“Then he who would be more like the Christ must study the Bible and learn of His life and works. Imitate Him in all your thoughts and deeds. You are not so foolish as to think that that will come easy?”

“No,” Robert said.

The short life of the burning corncobs left the room chilled again, and the older man stood with great effort. “My aging joints do not work well in the cold,” he said apologetically. “One day you will be old, and understand.”

“Will I see you again?” Robert asked.

“Oh yes. Our business is not complete. We cannot baptize in the cold months of winter, but I shall be back in the spring – about May – with a host of others, God willing, and we shall cause the waters of the Holston to froth as they carry away the sins of His new sheep.”

He told no one in his household about his conversion, but within the month his Aunt Elizabeth had heard of it. Robert learned later that she had found about it from Muley while patronizing his blacksmith shop.

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 3
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Page 59 – 60 – The confrontation with Aunt Elizabeth...

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One day in early February his aunt confronted him with her knowledge of his attendance at the revival meeting. “Robert, your friend Muley tells me you two attended the revival together. Does our family church not suit your liking?”

“We didn’t go there to ‘go to church,’ exactly,” Robert confessed humbly.
“Then it was all the more wrong.”
“Yes, I know it was,”
‘’What denomination was the minister who held the meeting?” his aunt asked.
“I don’t know.”
“But I thought Muley said you had been converted.”
“Yes, I was.”
“You made a profession in a ramshackle store building and didn’t even find out the denomination of the minister?”
“It didn’t seem to matter.”

“Robert, I have tried to give you, as well as all my children, the foundation of a faith to be built on. In the case of you and your brothers, I have not tried to dictate your religious life, knowing that someday you would prefer to make these decisions yourselves. It is hard to believe that you have chosen conversion at the hands of an itinerant whose denomination you do not know and who chooses to hold his ‘meetings’ on the second floor of a rundown store. Do you even know his name?”

“No, I didn’t ask him and I didn’t hear – but I liked him.”

“It doesn’t matter now. I can find out later if it becomes of any importance.”

Somehow she was shaming him, and he hadn’t expected that, nor the need to explain his actions. But he re-examined his thoughts on both points and knew that he had lied to himself. Why hadn’t he told her if he didn’t feel subconsciously that the act had been clandestine?

“Robert, the religious affiliation of one’s life is very personal, and I will not intrude on the meaning this has for you. I am disappointed that you have not chosen to make this commitment in a different way. By your failure to give allegiance to your family church and the dignity befitting it you lay further grief on my shoulders.”

“I don’t feel good about hurting you. Aunt Elizabeth, but I’m not sorry for what I did. It was the right thing, and I hope you will share my new joy.”

“If there is any joy for me, it will not be in this world. All that I have known of earthly happiness seems to have ebbed away. The foundations of the floor on which I kneel to pray seem to be cracking and falling.”

“I wish I could share more of your grief – now more than ever, I wish I could,” Robert said.

“You would not want any of the load I carry, you can be sure of that. Death and more death and the sicknesses of greed, avarice, and family dishonor do not make joyful music in my daily life.”

“Have I, too, brought family dishonor?”

She looked at him searchingly for a moment, and her eyes were harder than he ever remembered seeing them. He knew her answer would not be one issued in anger but only after due deliberation.

“Yes, Robert. Not one of us has the right to tear down the name and dignity of your uncle and all that he’s built and stood for. We are not the sheep of itinerants. The acts of each one of us adds to or takes from the whole of his name and honor. The hope for each one of us must lie in the heritage of our forebears added to our own, that multiplied esteem and integrity may be ours.”

Robert raised his head finally and saw his aunt trembling with the intensity of her troubled emotions. “I am neither sorry,” he said, “for my act of faith nor for discovering, after all these years, the misplaced values of the White household.”

That night he packed a carpetbag with all the winter clothes it would hold. On retiring he wrote a letter to Lawrence at Emory and Henry College and left it on his dresser. The next morning, before any of the household had stirred, he packed up the carpetbag and all the gold coins he had saved, and wrapped himself warmly in his greatcoat. At dawn he stood by the Great Road at Black’s Fort.

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 4
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Page 61-63 – Robert heads West – Unfortunately his saintly calling would take time to materialize! He would spend the next six months far from the study of sainthood! It is the beholding of the life of sin in these travels that will eventually motivate him back to study and the calling of God.
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Had the month been April rather than February, the Great Road (or, as it was now being called by the younger citizens and westward travelers, the Wilderness Road) would have been laden with travelers of all varieties. Part of Robert’s fascination with Black’s Fort during the many hours he had spent there was the observance of diverse humanity on the move; that, and the aura of history surrounding the once-active pioneer outpost.

On this bitter cold morning there was no one to observe. No one. He stood by the road, feeling that not even the breathing pores of his body could dispel the faintest whisper of his loneliness. The smallest sound would have been welcome as he stood there, but there was none. Winter dawn ushered in the day with a deathlike stillness. The very atmosphere of it caused Robert to pull his greatcoat tighter and twist his heel in the roadside stone for the creation of a sound – any kind of sound.

He looked to the east for the first flicker of the sun, but it had not yet appeared. He then looked north. The servants would be up now at Elizabeth White’s house, scurrying about and fixing the fires. Ann would be putting wood chips, corncobs, and pine knots in the fire under the big iron skillets where the side meat would be sizzling as soon as the flames rose. She would be crying too, for her days in the White household would come to an end within another six weeks.

There was still time to change his mind. Wasn’t even a house growing slowly ill with depression and betrayal, and living on memories and creeds of earlier and happier days, preferable to the ugly, freezing gray dawn that surrounded him? But there was the matter of dishonor. He blew on his hands and held them to his ears. The warmth felt good, but it was short-lived.

Now, the first hint of sunlight appeared to the east, but on the farthermost horizons, there was no sign of travel from either direction. He would go the way a ride was offered. It didn’t matter. If no traveler appeared on the road within the hour, he could always take the eastbound stage. But that would tempt him to stop in Marion, and right now he did not relish the house or company of his brother. Nor did he want to spend his gold for the stagecoach fare. Westward it would be, if he had to stand in the cold until his boots froze solid to the soil.

When a larger crescent of sun appeared over the mountains to the east one lone wagon could be seen in the distance. It made a solitary picture emerging through the haze, with the entire world seemingly behind it. Two horses snorted and sent chilled vapors of hot breath skyward as they labored under their burden. The wagon seemed born from the womb of the sun as it approached, and so welcome was the sight that Robert kept his eyes affixed to it until a solemn-faced man pulled abreast of him and stopped.

“You look like you’re waitin’ for a hitch, but you can see I ain’t got much room.”

Robert looked around the bed of the wagon and saw that every square foot appeared to have people, from infancy to dotage, wrapped in heavy clothing or quilts. “I’ll get a ride before long,” he said.

“I knowed I couldn’t haul you,” the man said, “but I didn’t want to be unneighborly and pass on by.”

“I’m much obliged,” Robert said. “Somebody else will be along shortly.”

The wagon driver snapped the whip over the back of the lead horse and Robert watched the grating wagon wheels chew into the stone again. The family wagon moved farther away, and so did the eyes peering at him from over the tailgate. All soon passed into the distance.

The sun was half high when two buggies approached from the east. The first stopped; the second kept going.

“I never offer transportation until I determine the character of the man,” the stranger said. He got out and walked around Robert, standing above him only slightly in height but ell making two of him in girth, and looked him over as if contemplating the purchase of a first-class racehorse. When he had made the full circle around Robert, he faced him squarely.

“You are either running away from home or you are an adventurous position seeker. I won’t ask you which you are just yet. In either case, you are welcome to the space beside me. I might add, that seat has held the buttocks of both the finest of ladies and the most notorious of rascals.”

Robert cast a startled glance at the man and said, “Hope they left the seat warm.”

The older man’s grin, abundant with perfect teeth, spread to the top of his forehead and into the same shade of strawberry-blond hair Robert possessed. Before Robert could say, “Thank you,” or, “No, thank you,” a large but uncalloused hand jutted in his direction.

“Name’s Yancy Womack. I’m headed through the gap of the Cumberlands and maybe points beyond. You’re welcome to go as far as you want.”

Robert introduced himself and climbed into the buggy. While depositing his carpetbag behind the seat he noticed a satchel not unlike those the doctors of Abingdon carried.

“You sized me up pretty well back there,” Robert said. “I had you sized up as a gambler or a drummer. Now I see I was wrong. You’re a doctor.”

“You’re right; I am a doctor – among other things. My hands always give me away. In fact, you’re right on all three counts. A doctor does have to gamble and be a good salesman , on occasion. What do you do, Robert?”

“I was supposed to go to college this year but things didn’t work out and I took a job as a scribe at the county courthouse.”

“Do you draw or paint?”

“Yes. My teacher said I was pretty good at it.” Robert beamed.

“Ah. I knew you had it, standing there in the morning sunlight – the soul of an artist … that kind of man for whom fate has reserved a special kind of spite. You plan to follow the trade of a scribe wherever you go?”

“I don’t know.”

“You did bring a letter of recommendation? It will be impossible for you without it – there are so many fugitives who seem on the square.”

“No, there was not time to get one. Perhaps I should seek another trade anyway.” He shivered, partially from the cold, but more so for the tardy realization of what he was doing and what might face him.

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 4
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Page 64-68 – Introducing Yancy ‘Doc’ Womack
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The doctor reached for his inside coat pocket and withdrew a flask. “Here, have a drink of brandy. That’ll send the blood down to your toes.”

Robert paused, then declined, and the older man took a long drink. “Don’t do any imbibing, huh’? Well, every man must steer his own course. If you’re not having any liquid heat you can use that horse blanket under my satchel. Put it across your legs and you’ll ride comfortably.”

By the time they arrived at the intersection of the stage road and the public road due east of Walnut Grove, Robert’s traveling companion had requested that he be called "Yancy-doc.” Robert felt that either name would have sufficed by itself, but he did not challenge the usage.

The doctor looked at both roads and questioned Robert. “The stage road goes through Blountsville, Tennessee, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. The public road goes through Estellsville – that’s the Virginia route, pretty near due west. We can get to Cumberland Gap by either route.”

“Well, now. Point of decision. Do we go south or west? It should not really be hard to decide. Where is the nearest tavern with ale spilling over the fingers of fair lasses before it is drunk?”

“I haven’t been any farther west than Wallen’s Ridge, but I know there is one tavern called the Old Block House twenty or thirty miles from here.”

“Let us hope your estimate of distance is on the short side, for if it isn’t, you will have a very late dinner indeed.”

When the fireside of Old Block Tavern had been reached, Yancy-doc delayed no longer in getting to know Robert more intimately. Although the older man sat almost wordless, eating his salty meat, baked potatoes, and muffins, Robert found it easy to talk about even the more private things in his life. Yancy-doc commented sparingly about things Robert said and the conversation was punctuated by an occasional grunt, or a belch from an oversized gulp of ale. Between bites, he encouraged Robert to keep on talking even though Robert’s platter was noticeably untouched. Only when Yancy-doc had run out of ale, and while he squeezed the hand of the tavern maid and ordered another, did Robert begin the consumption of his own food.

He ate while Yancy-doc wandered about the tavern, speaking here and there to an interesting-looking stranger and always to a tavern maid if she gave him half a chance.

When Robert had finished he found that Yancy-doc had already paid for both of them. He was bothered by this gesture. “I’m obliged for the ride, but I don’t expect to have my vittles paid for,” he said.

“Never frown on good fortune,” Yancy-doc admonished, “and we are headed for more good fortune. The one-legged roon by the window says that much good plantation land is to be had in the north-central interior of Kentucky. We shall go through the gap of the Cumberlands with all due haste and see for ourselves.”

“Is that your hope – to own much land?”

“Only part of it,” Yancy-doc said. “The other requirements must include a populated and well-to-do community where I can practice my profession, and last, but most important of all, an abundance of beautiful women.”

Yancy-doc paid the liveryman for the horse feed and Robert again wrapped the blanket about his knees. His companion seemed as comfortable in the chill air of the buggy as he had by the fireside of the tavern. Robert could not help wondering about him: for a man who appeared to be in his late forties, he possessed an enviable amount of stamina.

Yancy-doc lit his pipe and gave his horse a flick of the whip. “I told you pretty near everything about me in there,” Robert said. “And I don’t know anything about you.”

“Well, it’s a long story,” the physician said, and stopped.

He remained silent and Robert commented, “We ought to have plenty of time if we’re going all the way to Kentucky.”
Yancy-doc grinned at Robert’s persistence and beat out the ashes of his Pipe on the side of the buggy. Robert could sense that information would be given with reluctance, but he was entitled to a fair exchange.

“Not much to tell until I got to be a man. I studied medicine in Baltimore and finished up in eighteen-eleven. My father was a physician in Norfolk, Virginia, and the original plan was for me to join him in a family practice.”

“Sounds like a good future to me,” Robert said.

“Maybe, but I liked Baltimore so much I wasn’t in any hurry to get home or to begin practice either. My father was at Norfolk stewing because I wasn’t putting my training into practice. I was in Baltimore stewing from a seven-day-a-week dose of alcohol and too many parties. I went for a week sometimes without three hours’ sleep. I spent over a year on that treadmill.”

“Don’t see how you stood it, but it doesn’t seem to have hurt you any,” Robert said.

“Don’t make that judgment until you hear the full story. I was on one of those week-long alcohol dreams when I woke up in Norfolk at a medical station near the coast. I never did know how I got there but my father had enlisted me in the army as a doctor. I hadn’t really been sober for three months, but I knew pretty quickly we were engaged in war with the British. Wasn’t that a heck of a way to find out about the War of 1812?”

”My uncle James served at Norfolk during the war. Did your father ever speak of Colonel James White?”

“He spoke of nothing. I didn’t see him for over two years after that.”

“You didn’t stay in Norfolk?”

“No. There were attempted invasions of Norfolk a couple of times – once while I was there – but I was sent to New Orleans, where the real trouble was expected. Father finally did write me, but he didn’t apologize. I deserved what I got. I knew it and he knew it and I have to admit the experience made a man out of me. Of course, I would have benefited little with my head blown off from the naval bombardment that was soon in coming.”

“We talked about the war at Abingdon Academy, but it’s hard for me to remember about New Orleans.”

“Well, I can tell you from memory,” Yancy-doc began.

“The British thought they had us at New Orleans, but we stomped the fire out of them. They had Sir Edward Pakenham pouring everything they had at us. All of we doctors worked from sunup until sunup for days on end, and the casualties kept coming.”

“Are you a surgeon?” Robert asked.

“No, I’m not a surgeon but I did surgery – we all did everything there was to do. The most tragic thing about the war was that a settlement had been negotiated long before anybody at New Orleans knew anything about it. Some of the worst battles we had were going on until the middle of January of 1815 – long after the war was officially over.”

“You really mean it about not being angry with your father?” Robert asked.

“I really mean it. To some extent my experience accomplished what my father hoped it would. I was jarred out of my childish vision of life. And I was forced to practice my profession.”

“Did you go back to Norfolk after the war?”

“Yes, and we had a family practice until Father died about five years later. My father lived for his work. He believed a man should aim himself like a rifle at a worthy target and never take his eye from that target. He practiced what he preached, I’ll give him that.”

“My uncle I told you about was a lot like that – except he wasn’t quite so – well, cold.”

“Father’s manner might seem cold in description or observation too, for that matter – but he was anything but cold. I know he cared deeply for me and my brothers, though I believe he always knew I’d never make the grade as the kind of doctor he wanted me to become. He went at his profession with the zeal of a martyred Christian. He believed as a servant of mankind that to do the job right he had to be totally immersed in humanity.”

“I think I can get a picture of him,” Robert said.

“No, I doubt that you can. I’m not sure even I ever fully grasped the depth of my father’s character. I heard him say once that if he’d had his life to live over again he’d be four people for awhile before settling down to being one. He said he would have been a teacher, a farmer, a preacher, and a doctor, in that order.”

“I don’t understand his reasons,” Robert said.

“They were fundamental. First, he would teach humanity to discover how weighted down in ignorance they were. He would have been a farmer, he said, to learn that all men live best and find their greatest humility from the soil. He would have preached, he said, to convey the message of hope and love that ought to bind men together and help them endure. But as wise and compassionate as my father was, he wanted most to be a doctor, for he knew that however worthy the other three occupations, the bulk of humanity would need a doctor as they succumbed to sickness of mind or body or spirit. It was among these he wanted to walk.”

“You make me feel that I would have liked to know him,” Robert said.

“Father escaped one thing, and that was the practice of military medicine. I wished more than once that he had been with us at New Orleans. I wonder how much better he could have stood the screaming and the dying – how much easier he might have sawed a leg or an arm off when there was neither enough medicine nor time.”

“He’d have done it the same as you.”

“No, Robert. Somehow he’d have done it better. Really, he would have. I remember a Creole boy who called me to him one night and said, ‘Tell me, Yancy-doc, why I must give my legs? If you cannot tell me that, I will shoot in my mouth with a pistol.’ I couldn’t give him even one reason why he had to lose his legs. He did as he said he would do. My father would have given him some profound answer that he could live with and think upon, and be the richer for having heard it.”

“All that was a long time ago,” Robert said.

“You’re right. I’ve drowned those cries in hundreds of self-prescribed drunks and overnight stays in houses of pleasure. I suppose you’re wondering if I’m ashamed of the life I’ve led?”

“No, I wasn’t going to ask you that.”

“Well, the answer is I’m not ashamed of it. I lost the respect of my father and the love of my wife but I’m not ashamed of it. There are people who just weren’t made to fit in a certain mold and stay there. I want to soar free like a silver hawk. I have served my time and earned my freedom. If a man immerses himself in humanity like my father did, he can bet on one thing: he’ll drown himself just as certain as that buggy wheel is turning.”

“Did your father drown like that?”

“He drown right in the middle of his office floor. He never had two days’ pleasure in his whole life. I buried him, stored my belongings, and here I am. I will find some good land and raise fine horses and work when I feel like it and loaf when I feel like it. If the patients don’t want to pay my fees they can go to the nearest Indian herb doctor or the devil. Let it be their choice. At least I won’t be seeing the wharf women and seafaring scum who used to crowd my father’s office.”

 

[rockytopva]

The Cumberland Gap is located where the Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia borders meet. The 25E highway at the Gap is a tunnel that passes underneath the mountain and is called the Cumberland Gap tunnel. It is through this country that Robert and Yancy-Doc are passing.

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 4
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Page 69-73 – Over the Cumberland Gap into Heidrick, KY. This is a beautiful part of the country!
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As they crossed through and entered Kentucky, the gap of the Cumberlands was a sight to behold. Yancy-doc drove only a mile into the new state before he stopped the buggy and looked back. Along the crests and down into the gap, ice covered every foot of the high ground, or so it seemed. It was morning, and the sun danced rays of rainbow colors from the gap, in a prism effect, making the gap look like a giant door decorated for a holiday welcome, and a most merry one at that.

“I’ll drink to that,” Yancy-doc said, and pulled out his flask again. When he had viewed the sight as long as he wanted, he turned to Robert with a grin. “You think you could draw a picture of that, Robert?”

“Yes. If I had anything to draw with, I could.”

“You really did leave in a hurry, didn’t you! When you get settled are you going to send for your things?”

“I have all of my things with me,” Robert said. .

“I kind of got the idea from your clothes and bearing that you might have a good deal to send for. In fact, from some of the things you’ve said along the way, if your material and family financial position is as strong as your pride, we might have to send a wagon train back to Abingdon.”

The ice they encountered in the gap of the Cumberlands was mild compared to that which they began to battle as they drove northwesterly onto steep wagon roads near the village of Heidrick. Almost a half day of travel from the gap had taken them only twelve or fifteen miles - and precarious miles ‘at that. More than once the buggy seemed about to slide from the road entirely and land in some awesome gully below. Several times the horse fell to her knees, and Robert looked toward Yancy-doc with a glance of uneasiness.

“It’s getting too bad out there to travel much farther,” the doctor agreed. “We’re going to need a blacksmith soon or we’ll have a horse with a broken leg.”

“Ice nails in her shoes may help for awhile,” Robert said. “But look at that sky. If we don’t soon get to shelter it may not matter a bit about ice nails.”

Snow was coming in blinding waves by the time they reached Heidrick. The wayfarer, who, during a water-stop, had told them about the village, had described it accurately. There was a very large blacksmith shop operated in conjunction with a wheelwright’s shop and a large adjoining building for wagon-making. A boot shop and a mercantile establishment were on the same side of the road. On the other side stood an inn, a carpenter shop, and, almost out of sight and farther on down by a stream, a water-driven gristmill. Although snow covered the ground heavily and made the small village appear dwarfed in the hewn-out wilderness, every building seemed to fit in its place with no room left over.

The innkeeper was unusually congenial, for the winter season evidently allowed him to slacken his pace and possibly, even enjoy his guests. The stable boy took the horse and buggy after first being told to see that the animal was taken to the blacksmith shop in the morning for re-shoeing with ice nails.

After thawing themselves loose from snow-swept clothing by the heat of the fireplace, Robert and Yancy-doc hung their wet outer clothing on wall pegs near the fire and made their way to a table. The inn was nearly empty, except for six men and themselves. The six would probably be drummers or couriers, or perhaps a businessman or two whose affairs were sufficiently pressing to necessitate travel in any weather. The tavern maids seemed to like the drummers best, and if that belief held true in Kentucky as well as Virginia, Robert picked three of the men to be drummers. He relayed his guesses to table and confirm it. Yancy-doc took the girl’s hand when she waited on their table. She blushed the color of her red hair, but it made her slightly freckled face even prettier.

“My friend here says that three of the men there are drummers. Is he right?”

“Yes,” she said in astonishment. “How did you know?”

“I just watched the men you and the other tavern maids paid the most attention to,” Robert said.

“I’m going to have to do something about this, Robert,” Yancy-doc said and ordered himself a rye whiskey while his food was being served.

When they had finished their supper Yancy-doc said that he did not want to go to his room just yet, but he asked Robert to retire and offered him money for another room.

“I’m likely to be up half of the night. Sometimes I get a little noisy when I’m drinking. You go on to bed in your own room and I won’t bother you when I come in.”

Robert paused before agreeing, but he declined the money altogether. He would like to sit by the hearth and do some thinking. There seemed to be fire in Yancy-doc’s eyes, and he knew that his friend had made not a request but a demand. He went to his room and sank between the quilts and feather tick. Thoughts of Abingdon and home began to invade his mind, and the snow and sleet pecked at the window unmercifully. Soon he was warm but not sleepy. Where would he go in Kentucky? Who would vouch for his character if he was lucky enough to find a job? These and other problems plagued him, and he wondered if perhaps he would not be happier if he were more like Yancy-doc, and able to take everything so masterfully in stride.

A troubled sleep gave him refuge until some predawn hour. Human voices penetrated the walls on both sides of him. For a moment he could not decide whether everyone had risen for the day or if they simply had not gone to bed. He lay very still and concentrated on the sounds he could hear. High-pitched female laughter carried through the walls on both sides of him. When morning was a certainty, in spite of overcast darkness and heavy falling snow, he washed his face from the pitcher of water on the dresser and descended the stairs. Only one of the men he had noticed the previous night was being served his breakfast. He wanted to eat with the man, for the loneliness he had felt in his bed during the night still occupied his mind.

“Looks like you and I are the only ones with any get-up and-go this morning,” Robert said.

The man returned a friendly smile and said, “Sit down, sit down. We may have the ‘get up’ but there won’t be any ‘go’ today. Look out the window.”

“That’s pretty near as deep as a wagon wheel,” Robert agreed

“Where are you headed for?”

“We’re driving farther on into Kentucky to look at some land,” Robert said, aware of the deceptive “we” he had used.

“I’m going on to Lexington. You ought to look around that part of the country. Some of the prettiest land God ever made. Going to start tobacco raising or stock grazing?”

‘We don’t know what we’re going to do yet,” Robert said. “We’re just going to do some looking around.”

Robert had finished his breakfast and a long conversation with his new found friend before Yancy-doc descended the stairs. He took one look out the window and dropped into the nearest chair. Robert got up and joined him, though Yancy-doc’s behavior was less than hospitable. His eyes were red and swollen and he smelled of the sourness of fermented fruit.

“Didn’t count on getting’ snowed down in a one-horse village,” Yancy-doc growled.

“It won’t last but a day or two.”

Yancy-doc ignored him and growled at the innkeeper, ‘’Where’s my breakfast?”

Presently the same freckled tavern maid who had served them the previous night hurried to their table with fried potatoes and eggs. Yancy-doc cast an evil grin at her, but she would not look at him. This seemed to annoy Yancy-doc. The girl hurried from the table, and Robert reported all he had learned from his early-morning breakfast companion.

“I knew about the place a long time ago. I patched up the back of a boy from Lexington at New Orleans – or what there was left of his back, that is. A volley of grapeshot took the fat off his back down to the spine. That boy used to lay and moan and talk about Lexington like it was the Garden of Eden, if there ever was such a place. If it’s half as good as he said it was I want to own at least half of it.”

Yancy-doc seemed to eat more hurriedly, the more they talked about the land, and his disposition got better as he filled his stomach. His mood changed again for the worse, however, when he stepped outside and saw again the impossibility of travel for that day – and several more if a rapid thaw did not quickly take place.

Throughout the day Robert expected the various tradesmen to break through the snow and open their shops. Most of them lived only a mile or two away, he was told by the innkeeper. Yancy-doc paced the floor in obvious foul humor. He guessed aloud that the blacksmith wasn’t going to try to open his shop and that consequently his horse would not be shod with new shoes and ice nails. He expressed his certainty to Robert that on the following day most of the two-foot snow would be melted and they could be on their way.

That night a howling wind beat upon the inn and Robert didn’t need to guess what sight would be visible when he came down to breakfast. Snowdrifts held fast the front door to the latch. It was the same at the doors and windows of all the buildings he could see. The road was scarcely visible except where some wind-swept spots revealed mud and stone, and farther along, as the road turned north, shoulder-high drifts farther along, as the road turned north, shoulder-high drifts could be observed. Yancy-doc took one look at what Robert had seen and let go with a thunderous oath.

“Might as well calm down,” the innkeeper suggested. “Last year we stayed landlocked like this for nearly two weeks. What happens is the wind piles it up in one direction one night and piles it in another place the next night and –“

“Curse the wind – we want to get out of here and be on our way to Lexington!” Yancy-doc snorted.

“So do we, mister,” one of the other men declared.

“We’ve got plenty of grub,” the innkeeper said. "We get caught like this every winter – ain’t nothin’ to worry about.”

“Well, if you’ve got plenty to drink, the situation might be a little more tolerable,” Yancy-doc said.

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 4
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Page 74-77 – Snowed in at Heidrick, KY
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None of the shops was opened during that day either, Robert observed. As the innkeeper had said, what was the use? Almost all the village trade depended upon the travelers going north or west, and if there was no travel, it was easier just to stay home with one’s family.

Yancy-doc drank heavily all day, but he was sober enough to patch the shoulder of the stable boy who had been forced against a broken door hinge by an unruly horse. The boy took his treatment with a few shrieks of pain and trudged home through the snow. All the captive guests and tavern maids started calling the physician “Doc” then, with increased respect that he did not return. By nightfall Yancy-doc was drunk, and Robert led him to his bed. Each morning he came downstairs, looked out, and carried a bottle back to bed.

It was on a Sunday, five days later when the first break in the weather came. By midmorning a warming sun sent slides of snow tumbling from the roofs, and cedar shingles popped and crackled in the drying sun. By Tuesday all snow had disappeared except for the massive drifts, shoulder-high and abundant in number.

One or two shops in the village were opened again and only because their owners were not prevented from so doing by drifts between their places of business and their cabins, Robert surmised. What had once been snow now flowed down the mountainside and flooded the creeks and branches. Shop owners and workers who had no drifts to cross now found themselves captives of high-water conditions.

Of the village people, there were two distinct groups, the innkeeper told Robert. North, along the same creek that fed the waterwheel of the gristmill, lived nearly all of the craft-shop owners and additional workers. A short distance to the west were the homesteaders and trappers.

“Them creek people are law-abidin’, do their day’s work, and go home without botherin’ anybody,” the innkeeper said.

“And what about the others?” Robert inquired.

“’They’re a little like your friend upstairs. They can be jolly or downright hostile. Some of ‘em are the scrapin’s of the earth and some of ‘em are as humble and God-fearin’ folks as you’ll find. That first bunch I was tellin’ you about by the creek, they got hooked up with those Moravian missionaries that come through here from North Carolina. Whatever their religion is, they practice it downright honest, you can count on that.”

Snowdrifts remaining in the road could be crossed with a horse and buggy when the following Sunday arrived. Robert looked forward to leaving the village and heading for Lexington. The same cabin fever from which the others suffered was beginning to affect him too. Yancy-doc did not come down to breakfast, but Robert ate with the other six guests in what he knew would be a farewell breakfast. He chose to sit with the first of the men he had met and the one who had told him about the good land around Lexington. They had become almost friends during their captive days together and Robert had learned Peter Reed’s name as well as his occupation.

“A stonemason can’t do much work until the weather warms up, can he?” Robert asked.

“Not much. The days have got to be warm enough so’s the mortar will dry and not freeze. . .’ You never did tell me your present occupation,” Peter Reed said.

“You’re not traveling permanent-like with the other fellow’! I thought you two was going to buy up a big parcel of land.”

Riding with Doc until I want to get off,” Robert said.

“I hope he turns out to be a good fanner or stock raiser …. I’d think twice afore I’d let him doctor me for anything more than sour stomach.”

“He’s a nice enough fellow when he’s not drinking,” Robert said.

“I got my doubts about that. Drinkin’ don’t change a feller – it just brings out what’s already in him.”

‘Maybe so,” Robert said. “I won’t be with him much longer anyway.”

“My guess is that that’ll be your good fortune. The two of you don’t fit together somehow. You got a good look in the eyes, young feller. I’m ahopin’ you do well.” Peter Reed got up and shook Robert’s hand.

Within the hour all of the guests had mounted their horses or climbed into their buggies to continue toward their destinations. If they didn’t come back in an hour or so it would mean that all the drifts were passable and the swollen streams could be forded. Maybe half sober, Yancy-doc was playing it smart after all. If the others didn’t get through, he wouldn’t have wasted his time. Robert grinned at the thought.

About midafternoon Yancy-doc staggered down the stairs, his blue eyes bloodshot and hazy.

“Where’s my breakfast?” he bellowed.

The innkeeper told him that both breakfast and dinner had come and gone.

“Well, fix me some breakfast anyway. We’re leaving this God-forsaken wilderness today if we have to swim.”

Fried meat and herb tea put a congeniality back into Yancy-doc that Robert had despaired of seeing ever again. They gathered their things from their rooms and faced a smiling innkeeper who, Robert was sure, appreciated their leaving as much as the extra coin Yancy-doc placed in his hand.

In the absence of a stable boy, the innkeeper went to get the horse and buggy for his remaining guests. When he delivered them, Robert and Yancy-doc stood talking to the youth, who had returned to the inn, but not alone. A team of horses pulled the family wagon, and the boy sat astride the lead animal. He pointed to the wagon, which looked empty.

“They’re alayin’ in there,” he said.

Yancy-doc did not move toward the wagon, and the boy’s eyes remained upon him.

“I was ahopin’ you’d still be here to doctor ‘em,” the boy said.

Yancy-doc lowered his head for a moment, appearing reluctant to step forward. He finally looked up at Robert, and Robert knew what he was thinking.

“Please, Doc. They’re awful sick,” the boy pleaded.

Robert and Yancy-doc took quick strides to the wagon and looked in. Yancy-doc pulled back the quilts in which a middle-aged man was wrapped. A sickening stench reached their nostrils as soon as the man was fully uncovered. The purging of his bowels penetrated his clothing and his face lay bathed in his own vomit. He was conscious but unmoving. Robert moved automatically to the other side of the wagon and helped Yancy-doc pull the quilt from the other person.

“That’s my brother,” the stable boy said as Yancy-doc and Robert observed the same sickness in the boy as in his father.

“How long has your pa been sick?” Yancy-doc asked.

“The next day after you patched up my shoulder he got to feelin’ poorly and then brother got bad sick.”

“Are any of the other people who live near you sick with the same thing’?” Yancy-doc asked.

“I don’t know. Ain’t no way we could get around and get help with the snowdrifts and floodin’ and all. The road in both directions from our place has been under water. Today was the first day we could get out.”

“Are any other members of your family sick?” Yancy-doc inquired.

“No. Least they wasn’t a few minutes ago.”

Yancy-doc turned to Robert and said: “Well do you want to try your hand at doctoring or go to Lexington?”

Robert didn’t hesitate a second. “What can I do?”

“I don’t know, but let’s get them back to their house first. We can’t do anything but wash them off in that wagon bed. If you’ve got the stomach for it you can help me do that.”

Robert nodded his willingness and Yancy-doc instructed the stable boy to drive the wagon home as fast as he could.

 

[rockytopva]

Here are two gentlemen that appear to have been passing through our area of Virginia. It looks like their life came to an abrupt end. Someone did their grave stone up great. Asked around... Could never figure out who they were. The trip west was not a rosy one! These are not the only two gentlemen who would loose their life looking for a better life!

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 5
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Page 78-83 – Cholera
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In spots the trio still had to dodge floodwaters as they wound their way along the creek for about three-quarters of a mile, to where the well-built log house sat among large hemlocks and laurel thickets. Yancy-doc did not allow time for introductions when a middle-aged, plumpish woman stepped out on the porch.

“Get us a kettle of hot water now and put another one on the fire,” he ordered. “Bring us scrap cloth and two more quilts. We’re going to clean them up out here.”

Robert worked faithfully with Yancy-doc and between his frequent gagging he questioned the physician. ”What’s the matter with them? They look near dead to me.”

“They’re pretty much gone, and my guess is that they won’t make it. As to what the matter is, I’m not altogether sure, but I’ll bet it’s cholera.”

“Anything you can do for it? You got any medicine with you?”

“We’ll have to do some studying first. I’ve never treated this disease before, and hadn’t heard a. lot about it until a few years ago. There was a big outbreak: of it ill India and China not long after we left New Orleans. And I learned while I was still at Norfolk that it was spreading over Great Britain.”

“How you suppose it got across the ocean?”

“I’m not sure I’m right, but if I am, disease travels where people travel.”

Yancy-doc worked on until the boy and his father were clean and wrapped in dry quilts. Robert watched his friend with a new admiration. He was not the same man who a. few hours earlier in the day staggered drunk and abusive down the stairway of the inn. He might not have wanted to come and clean up the vomit of a sick man but once started he did the job quickly and in good spirits.

Both of the sick were placed on the same feather tick and Yancy-doc asked again if any of the others of the household felt feverish or had signs of purging or vomiting. The woman, who introduced herself as Millie Caudle, assured them that she and her three daughters had no symptoms of the illness. All the children looked old enough to report their physical condition with accuracy and Yancy-Doc accepted the woman’s assurances without question. The sick boy appeared the oldest of the children – about seventeen or eighteen – and the stable boy next, with all the girls being younger and about a year between them.

Yancy-doc explained to the sick man’s wife what he thought the sickness was, but said that he wanted to consult his medical books. He excused himself to get them from the buggy.

The woman attended her husband, then her son. They moved about but little and their heaving stomachs generated only watery fluid. She bathed their foreheads with cool cloths and motioned the oldest girl to take over the chore.

There were no tears from the woman, but her face was grave and her lips were pale. She searched Robert’s eyes unduly long and stepped near to him with a whispered request.

”The countenance of God is in your face. Will you pray for my man and my boy?”

The question stunned him. He had never before uttered a prayer in the presence of a stranger. He wanted to, and he wanted the inner power to, he knew that. What strength he lacked he soon found in her pleading gaze. He started a simple prayer, and sought the woman’s eyes, that she might know that his words were sincere as far as they went.

It was dark now, and Yancy-doc studied the books by the lamplight. Within the hour he stood up, convinced. “It’s bound to be cholera,” he said. All the symptoms are there. And now for the hard part _ the remedy. For the recommended treatment we have poor substitutes.” The doctor scratched his head a moment in contemplation and spoke sharply to Robert. “Go out in the buggy and get my satchel. There’s an extra flask of brandy in it. We’ll need that.”

Robert was back quickly. Yancy-doc stood over his patients. "We’re going to need more brandy. Do you have any?” he asked Millie Caudle.

“We’ve got all you’ll be aneedin’,” she said.

“What about flaxseed for tea, and dried mustard?”

“We got a little of both in the garret, but it won’t be much.”

“It won’t take much,” Yancy-doc said. “Robert, I want you to warm this bottle of paregoric in your hands for a few minutes and shake it up good.”

Robert helped administer the first dosage of medicine to each patient before he and Yancy-roc were offered supper. He had not the slightest appetite under the conditions at hand, but Yancy-doc ate heartily.

When they all had eaten, Millie Caudle had her girls get out of the garret two small straw ticks, which she placed on the floor.

“You and the doctor can sleep on these,” she said to Robert. “They ain’t much but they’re better than a pallet.”

Robert went to bed when Yancy-doc assured him that he could be of no further help. The sick man groaned mournfully, preventing his sleep, and he wondered if by morning they would be dead. Calvin Caudle was the chief miller at the gristmill, Robert had learned, but one thing he knew – Calvin Caudle wouldn’t be sacking any cornmeal any time soon.

Before daylight Calvin Caudle was dead. Before lunchtime, the boy was dead. Worse yet, by the end of the day the youngest girl started vomiting copiously.

At Yancy-doc’s insistence the dead were to be buried the next morning and not later. The necessity of immediate burial, while reflecting the medical wisdom of Yancey-doc, nevertheless, had an adverse affect on neighboring families, Robert learned. This information came that evening from one Matthew Cullegin, who, according to Millie Caudle, was the self-ordained preacher who was their spiritual leader.

“We will do as you say, Doctor. Brother Caudle and his son will be buried in the morning, before the sun is half high. This urgency has frightened our people. And our midwife will not prepare the body after her usual custom. I will lay them cut myself,” Matthew Cullegin said, “but I will need some assistance to move them.”

“We’ll help you.” Yancy-doc volunteered himself and Robert. “I can’t be with you long, but Robert will aid you as long as you need him.”

Robert felt his stomach turn against his will, but he said nothing and followed Matthew Cullegin.

They used Calvin Caudle’s own wagon and moved the bodies to Matthew Cullegin’s barn. Robert was sure that he would be allowed to walk back as soon as the bodies were unloaded. The wagon would have to be left to take the bodies to the cemetery the next morning, but he would gladly walk any distance.

Matthew Cullegin soon revealed himself as a man who could do any job well and without being selective about it. But Robert wasn’t allowed to leave. Every half-minute Robert would say he’d be going and Matthew Cullegin would intone, “Just a minute now, son, I want you to do this or get that for me.” Robert tried to ask all sorts of questions to consume the waiting. In only two or three minutes he learned that Matthew Cullegin had lived in Heidrick for twenty years and that he had a wife and two daughters. He had been converted by Moravian missionaries and later ordained himself as a preacher of the free-will church he himself had raised “from the foundation to the rafters.”

The more Robert talked to Matthew Cullegin, the more he liked him. He was a rather serious man, and yet there was mirth in his voice at times. His responses were quick, and he reminded Robert of paintings he had seen of the Catholic friars of Italy. He was bald in a saucer-shape on top of his head, but the side hair was thick, curly, and sand-colored. He was both older and heavier than Yancy-doc.

After what seemed an eternity of time, Robert heard the resonant voice of Matthew Cullegin call out that the laying-out was done. The corpses looked as natural as possible under the circumstances and their meetin’ clothes had never fit them better. The pride of an unusual job well done was still one of humility, Robert felt. He had only to look up to Matthew Cullegin’s face to believe he had served his God by this work just as much as he might have in the pulpit with the split-log benches crowded with people.

When the older man had washed his hands with salt and rinsed them in the watering trough he fixed his deep blue eyes upon Robert. “There are many ways to serve the Lord, many ways to serve the Lord, friends used to teach: ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren ye have done it unto me.’ Do you believe that, Robert?”

“Yes, sir,” he answered obediently, without quite knowing why.

“Come eat with my family and me and then we will load the bodies back on the wagon so they will be ready for their last earthly journey when daylight comes.”

Robert took a deep breath and followed the plump frame of the older man to his cabin.

By mid-morning of the next day the burial was over. It had been attended by few. The reason was not the time of day nor a lack of knowledge of the death. Fear had kept some of tile people away, but Matthew Cullegin had learned something else at the time of burial: Two other families had illness in their households – illness with all the symptoms too well known, now, by every householder of Heidrick.

After the news of Yancy-doc’s presence in the community became known there was no time for sleep and little for taking food. Yancy-doc left the young Caudle child reluctantly, but others were worse off. Two days after the Caudle funerals, households with the illness numbered eight. In two homes all family members were ill.

Robert made the rounds with Yancy-doc and became an expert in mixing dosages and ingredients needed for various patients. He sensed what Yancy-doc might be thinking but had not said: they were fighting a losing battle, and what medicines they had were running in short supply. Yancy-doc had no more paregoric and he needed more flaxseed and dried mustard. Brandy was the only thing in abundance.

At the invitation of Matthew Cullegin, Robert and Yancydoc made their headquarters at his house after the Caudle funerals. Even on the subject of medicine Matthew Cullegin had some suggestions.

“The People along the creek here don’t raise much flax,” he said. “Most of them make their living at the craft shops. You will need to go to the homesteaders for more flaxseed and dried mustard.”

“Go there immediately, Robert.” Yancy-doc acted on the suggestion. “Take the stable boy – the Caudle son – with you to show you the way.”

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 5
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Page 84-90 – Cholera

Robert is offered the Pilgrims Progress... Just got through with that devotion here on CF! The Pilgrims Progress
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“Most of them are centered west of the village,” Matthew Cullegin directed. “In a way I ought to go with you, but I’m needed here. If it’s the Lord’s will, I’ll prepare their bodies and preach their funerals . . . and dig their graves too, if need be.”

“At least you won’t be alone.” Yancy-doc managed a tired grin. “I notice your midwife has got her courage back.”

“Yes, she’s bad scared, but she wants to follow this part of her calling. I have a hunch that that barn is going to see a lot of bodies being fixed before going to rest. I’m not doubting your doctoring now, don’t get me wrong – I’ve just seen a lot of this kind of thing.”

“I’m afraid you might be right,” Yancy-doc interrupted, then to Robert: “Be gone with you now and get at least three peeks of flaxseed and half as much dried mustard. Tell Miss Caudle I’ll check on her girl some time today. Get back as soon as you can. I need you.”

Robert picked up his passenger and delivered Yancy-doc’s message. Millie Caudle had tears in her eyes this time, and before he knew it Robert had some in his own.

They drove to the inn, where the Caudle boy wanted to stop to assure his employer that he would return to work as soon as he could leave his mother – and to please wait on him, for he needed the work now more than ever. The innkeeper seemed agreeable but on learning their destination gave a word of warning: "They may not welcome your comin’. They don’t have no sickness over there, and some of them was in the village yesterday and learned about it. They got outta here like a scared hant when they heard the news.”

“They’ll be obliged to help,” Robert said confidently.

Later that day Robert returned with only a small portion of the items he had been sent for. The innkeeper was right. They had not been welcome among the homesteaders and trappers and had in fact been chased from the settlement. All the flaxseed and dried mustard Robert had was gleaned on the way back from one elderly couple living in isolation nearer to the village.Returning up the creek, he met Yancy-doc on one of’ Matthew Cullegin’s horses and told him of the misfortune.

“They’ll be more helpful when the scourge starts taking its toll among them,” Yancy-doc said.

“You’re sure it’ll spread over there?”

“I’ll bet on it.”

“They don’t think it will if we stay away from them. They said so and let us know that if we came back they’d bury us alive.”

“They’ll learn,” Yancy-doc said. “Now you go on back to the cabin and start compounding what medicine we’ve got. I’ll finish my rounds and be home long enough to eat and lie down for a few minutes. Help Cullegin all you can. He’s got his hands full now. There are four bodies in the barn since you left.”

Robert didn’t ask who. He didn’t want to know. That night after supper Robert sat at his stool, compounding more medicine, while Yancy-doc slept. Matthew Cullegin’s oldest daughter had made a homemade pestle that she used to powder the dried mustard in a small dough tray. She worked tirelessly, brushing the raven-black locks from her sweating face only rarely. Then, abruptly, the color of her pretty face changed and she became pallid. Suddenly she ran from Robert’s presence to the out-of-doors, where even the log walls could not suppress the sounds of her violent retching. Presently she re-entered the cabin, supported by her father.

“It’s struck home now,” Matthew Cullegin said, and the girl’s mother was only then aware that even her own house was not immune.

“I’ll wake Yancy-doc,” Robert offered.

“I guess you’ll have to,” Matthew Cullegin said. “I want to talk something else over with him. Me and the midwife decided – you may as well know too – we can’t keep laying out these corpses. It’s too much for both of us. Two more bodies were brought to us a little while ago.”

“What are you going to do then?” Robert asked.

“We’re going to be obliged to bury them as soon as they die. It’s not the right way, but it’s the only way.”

In a few minutes Yancy-doc lumbered down the steps and to the bed of the sick girl. He wiped the sweat from her forehead and gave her a dosage of paregoric. He had told Robert that he had no more of this, the most vital of his medicines.

“There is nothing more we can do here,” Matthew Cullegin said after his daughter rested, “but we are needed at the barn. Robert, would you come and help us load the bodies back on the wagon? We’re going to have to stack them crossways on slats to get them all on.”

Robert agreed and followed the older man to the barn. The midwife stood preparing the body of a child. The child was the little daughter of Millie Caudle. Before all the prepared bodies were loaded, Robert saw Yancy-doc ride off into the night with another man who had come for him. Presently Matthew Cullegin’s wife came to the barn and called her husband aside. They conferred in whispers until finally he sent her back to the cabin. As he stepped back toward the lamplight Robert could see that his face was both flushed and troubled. By dawn of the next day two horsemen stopped at Matthew Cullegin’s cabin. Yancy-doc had not finished his breakfast but he rose from the table without question. Matthew Cullegin did not know the men, he said, but he guessed that the visitors meant one thing: the scourge had finally found its way to the settlement west of the inn. After talking to the strangers his guess was confirmed.

“How does it spread?” had been a question often asked, and Robert had seen Yancy-doc shake his head and say, “In the floodwater or maybe bad drinking water, or poison milk or bad air … “The guesses were endless and unsatisfying. Yancy-Doc was certain to be gone all day and, as instructed, Robert delivered doses of medicine to all the known sick along the creek. Matthew Cullegin had before him the task of burying seven people, one of whom had not been laid out. Robert promised to meet the older man back at the cemetery and help when his own errands had been done.

When he did finish and return, the meetinghouse was full of those members of the seven families not too sick to travel or too scared of exposure to attend. He finally worked his way down the dirt aisle and took a crowded space beside Millie Caudle and her three remaining children. Matthew Cullegin preached a long and weary sermon and remained afterward until the last shovelful of dirt covered the dead. Robert stayed with him, and at the preacher’s request. He tied his own horse to the tailgate and rode in the wagon.

“Let us hope we do not go home to find new guests in our barn,” Matthew Cullegin said. As an afterthought he added, “And it is getting cold again.”

Robert knew what he meant. Since the illness had engulfed them a warming of the weather had prevailed. Now winter appeared to be upon them again. Matthew Cullegin pulled his frock coat tighter about him and eyed Robert gravely. “Robert, how long have you been acquainted with the doctor?”

Robert told him and asked in return if he was thinking about asking Yancy-doc to stay in the community permanently.

“I had no such thing in mind,” Matthew Cullegin replied. “Just the opposite, in a manner of speaking.”

“I don’t understand,” Robert said, surprised.

“Oh, I know he’s doctored us all, day and night, and that’s being the good shepherd, but there’s a lot of the wolf in him too.”

Robert knew better than anybody the two men who lived in the skin of Yancy-doc, but he defended him anyway.

“But he’s taken care of everybody like they were his own kin." Robert said.

“That’s what makes it so hard,” Cullegin agreed. “But some strange whisperings have been reaching my ears from others, and I didn’t have any more doubts after last night. You saw my wife come to the barn. She told me that your doctor friend was lookin’ over our sick girl in a way he shouldn’t’ve been. She saw part of it for herself, and the girl told her mother more about it.”

Robert didn’t know what to say. For one thing, this information helped to explain things about Yancy-doc that were otherwise unexplainable, and, second, he wondered how they would all live together now if the sickness continued, and made it necessary. By dinnertime of the next day Yancy-doc had returned. He asked if any more deaths had occurred. Informed there had been none, he told Robert that he would take the medicine and make the rounds himself this time. He gave Robert an extra set of saddlebags full of flaxseed and dried mustard. He also had new medicines he had thought of and found in some of the garrets of the homesteaders: dried peppermint and fermented rhubarb. In the first new remedy he placed great hope, for if the near-dead survived they would need to take nourishment after the flux or purging subsided, and peppermint tea would help condition their stomachs for food. In the fermented rhubarb he had a good medicinal syrup. He set Robert and the youngest Cullegin girl to pulverizing the flaxseed. The milky white tea, as sticky as egg whites, could be a lifesaver for those with bloody flux. The medicine would help to heal the lesions deep in their intestines, Yancy-doc explained.

That night standing water froze solid and for the second day in a row no one died. Matthew Cullegin’s girl was able to get out of bed although she was still far from well. Yancy-doc had an equally good report after returning from his rounds. There were no new deaths and no new cases of the sickness. Some of the patients were still in the life-and-death struggle, but the peppermint tea was helping. Some were keeping down nourishment after drinking the tea. Yancy-doc ate with the rest of the family and told them that he would ride to the settlement west of the inn. More new cases might develop there, he said, since the disease had spread. He said he would spend the night and told where he could be reached if needed. Robert asked to go along but was told to stay where he was and rest up. If things got bad among the homesteaders and trappers he would be sent for. For the first night in a long while Robert slept well. The garret of Matthew Cullegin’s cabin had begun to seem like home. In the morning after breakfast he and his host made the calls to all of the sick, taking to each a fresh batch of powdered peppermint. Robert enjoyed the outing with Matthew Cullegin and felt in his presence fatherly wisdom and new insight into compassion and humble servitude. He told him so.

“I don’t hanker to see you leave either, Robert. I’m sorry I can’t say the same or your traveling companion. Where will the two of you go?”

Robert told him of their original plans.

“Sounds to me like you’re running away from something – not to something,” the older man said.

Robert felt chastened by his opinion, but there was something about the force and conviction with which he had spoken that stuck in Robert’s consciousness. That night by the fireside Matthew Cullegin’s words still I had not left him. Just where was he going and why? What was better about Lexington or any part of Kentucky than his own native Virginia? The longer he thought about it, the more it disturbed him. Finally he asked for a pen and parchment and wrote to Lawrence at Emory and Henry College, telling him only of where he was and what had happened. He was tempted to say in the letter that he wanted to come home, but he didn’t. When Robert had finished the letter Matthew Cullegin gathered his family about the fireside and asked Robert if he would join them in thanking God for delivering them all through the trials of the scourge and for a blessing on those who had lost loved ones or were yet sick. Robert bowed his head submissively and felt that if ever a man talked directly to God, Matthew Cullegin was doing so. But the preacher did not stop in his prayers with requests for comfort of the ill and courage for the bereaved. He prayed for Robert by name, that he might be used as a special servant of his Creator. Robert was more than touched by the prayer. He trembled from the deep conviction of the preacher’s words and the thought suddenly occurred to him that an attentive God might be answering the petition as it was being uttered. Robert was quiet after the devotions as they all sat about the fire. It was good to hear the banter of a family again.

After awhile his host said to him, “I am. Going to bed, but you may stay up if you like. Would you like something to read? The Bible or another book perhaps?”

Robert said he would like to read, and his host brought the Bible in one hand and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress in the other. Robert chose the latter.

“My father brought that book from England. It won’t stand much more wear, but you can touch it and almost feel the sweat and holiness of its author.You will not be the same man when you finish this allegory, Robert. Know that in advance.”

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 5
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Page 90-94 – The sad departure of Yancy-doc Womack

...God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. - Galatians 6:7-8
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Yancy-doc did not come back the next day or the next. Maybe all the sickness that was disappearing along the creek was finding its way to the west of the village. Still, Yancy-doc had not sent for Robert or for any more of the medicine he and the Cullegin girls had compounded.

Robert finished his book and waited two more days. He told the Cullegins during the noon meal that he was going after Yancy-doc the following morning if he did not show up by nightfall. Matthew Cullegin reacted without comment to Robert’s suggestion except to assure Robert that he was welcome to stay where he was as long as he wanted. By midafternoon, the sound of horses’ hooves were thought to be the return of Yancy-doc. A frantic pounding on the door indicated otherwise.

Matthew Cullegin reached the door first. “Yes, what is it’?”

“Is this where the doctor was stayin’?”

"Yes.’’

“You better come and get him. He’s been shot.”

”Where is he?” Robert gasped.

“I’ll take you to him,” the messenger said.

They saddled two horses quickly and followed the informant at a gallop. Westward, past the inn, they traveled the same road that Robert had taken to get the extra medicine, but turned off short of the main settlement onto a steep mountain road. When the leader came to a halt they were facing a small but new-looking cabin. On the eastern side the outside wall was nearly covered with stretched and drying hides.

The man led the way to the small barn. A single milk cow occupied the stall, and they passed through the stall door into the feedroom. On the hay-covered floor lay Yancy-doc. Robert and Cullegin knelt beside him and saw no blood. His eyes were open and he breathed laboriously.

“But you said he was shot!” Robert said.

“Try turning his worthless hide over,” the man said.

“He’s been shot in the back!” Matthew Cullegin exclaimed.

“Ain’t that the only target a man would have if his wife were on the other side?”

“Your wife?” Cullegin asked.

“No. The woman is my sister. Her husband is in the cabin, sick.”

“Did you shoot him?” Robert asked.

“No, he did. Her husband.”

They turned their attention to Yancy-doc, whose mouth opened, emitting blood rather than sound. Robert wiped the blood with the tail of his shirt. They propped him up on the hay so that his oral bleeding would not choke him. He seemed. To gather a little strength, and Robert steadied his shoulders.

“Preacher … Robert,” he said in a whisper. They held him on each side.

“Press no charges . . . I take the blame. . . . Robert, you…. should have been . . . surgeon . . . you could take pistol ball out of … my back.”

“Be easy, brother, we’ll do all we can for you,” Matthew Cullegin whispered.

“Nothing you . . . can do . . . Robert, we won’t . . . get to . . . Kentucky . . . wonder if – if it was like Eden. . . . Write my wife … tell her I loved … her much … “

They sat with the dying man until Robert felt as if he was growing numb all over. He wiped blood from his friend’s mouth until there was no dry spot left on his shirt. Matthew Cullegin removed his own without being asked. Once they thought the doctor was gone, but he rallied and opened his eyes. He tried to speak and could not until they swabbed his mouth dry. “Bury … me . . . by the creek . . . with my patients . . . I did my best . . . I tried to save . . . them.”

He tried then to cough and could not. Bubbles of blood formed on his mouth, and he was gone.

“Where are his horse and buggy? We will take him away,” Robert said.

The man led them to the rear of the cabin, and Robert brought the buggy around to the front. A heavily bearded man supported himself against a porch post and talked to Matthew Cullegin. He looked almost too sick to stand. But he did, and spoke his piece to the preacher.

Robert turned the buggy toward the barn and prepared to load the body of his friend. He pushed the door open and saw kneeling on the hay beside the dead man the smallest wisp of a woman – not even a woman, perhaps, for she appeared in her teens. Tears streaked her face as she continued to run her slender fingers through the hair of the dead man. The girl’s brother took her away and Yancy-doc rode his buggy to the inn for the last time.

He was buried where he wished, among many fresh graves. Early the next day Robert prepared to go. His heart was heavy.

“I will mail all his personal effects to his wife and tell her of his death and burial place. Neither will I forget to include your letter,” Matthew Cullegin said.

“Will you tell her how he died?”

“If I said he died at the end of a cholera epidemic it would not be an untruth, would it?”

“No sir” – Robert grinned – “and tell her how well he cared for the people when they were sick - I did.”

“I will, Robert, but we must not dismiss the main message we have learned here. Do not ever forget that truth cannot travel in the cloak of a lie nor can an angel’s mercy be gilded in the black death of the devil’s deception.”

“I will not forget, but I will always have love in my heart for Yancy-doc.”

“Bless you. That is God’s mercy shining through you. But do not be deceived by evil, and that evil which is half truth and half lie is the worst kind of all – a despicable mockery to a just God. May hell consume you if you ever use a gift of Providence, as your friend did, for the destruction of your neighbor.”

Robert could talk no more; his heavy heart was getting heavier. “Where will you go, Robert? You have not told me.”

“I don’t know. Perhaps farther on into Kentucky, but maybe back to Virginia. Tell Yancy-doc’s wife I will send her a draft for the amount the horse and buggy are sold for when I reach my destination.”

“I think you should keep them. You’ve earned them, and she would likely agree.”

Robert leaned from the seat and extended his hand. To those on the porch he waved.

“I have prayed the same prayer more than once, Robert. The countenance of God is in your face. Serve Him well.”

The inn was filled with travelers, and spring would soon be coming. Most of the people were going west, and Robert , had over half the gold with which he had left Abington. Still, Matthew Cullegin’s words asked of him again whether he ran to something or away from something. He cracked the buggy whip and turned east toward the gap of the Cumberlands.

There was no snow or ice on the return journey, and he did not tarry until he reached the beautiful mountain range and the picturesque gap, cut as perfectly from the stone as a bite from a biscuit. He stopped the buggy and withdrew the quill and ink and parchment Matthew Cullegin had given him. Patiently he formed the lines and shadows that seemed to move the mountain gap from its place of repose onto the fine texture of his parchment. Yancy-doc would have liked that. Perhaps he would mail the drawing to Yancy-doc’s wife in Norfolk or, if not, perhaps to James’s law office in Marion.

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 6
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Page 95-97 – Back home in Virginia – Robert is baptized and tutored by a Mr. George Washington Buchanan
Back to the beautiful mountains of SW VA! This time in Marion, VA.

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Robert told his story to his brother, and at James’s and Ellen’s invitation took up residence with them in Marion. He would not have accepted his brother’s hospitality a month previously. It was different now. It was different for more reasons than Robert could fathom, but he felt them all whether he could explain them or not.

For one thing, the month was April – a little over six weeks since be bad stepped into Yancy-doc’s buggy for the first time. It seemed to him more like six years. April was a good time to think things out and a good time simply to be alive. Soon the dogwoods and the Judas trees would be in bloom and all would seem fresh and new. Abington would be most beautiful of all, for even in this year of 1839, Washington County and the town itself were old – over sixty years old and forsythia, apple japonica, spirea, and other flowering shrubbery from the mother county (many times divided and replanted) added magnificently to those native colors that of I themselves painted a canvas of breathtaking beauty. He did not think it strange that Abingdon seemed so exquisite in the eyes of his mind, for he felt now that it would be the only way he would see it ever again.

Both James and Ellen were sympathetic to his feelings of hurt at the hands of his aunt Elizabeth. He thought, however, that they didn’t fully understand, couldn’t fully understand; James had made some passing remark about pride and mentioned the matter no more. James informed him soon afterward that he himself was more interested in the years ahead rather than the past. In that connection he advised Robert to be thinking about his plans for the future. Robert did so, first keeping his appointment on the banks of the Holston, where he was baptized.

With James’s help he had gotten a summer job clerking in Tate’s store, a dry-goods establishment located near the hotel and stage stop. The next suggestion James made took him by surprise. “Robert, college is not going to be easy for you. You will be the first to admit your lack of zeal for learning. After closing hours at your store job I have arranged to have you tutored by a very scholarly gentleman here in Marion. His name is George Washington Buchanan, and you will like him. He takes to scholarship with the same dedication as that of a beautiful woman to her mirror.”

“But I’ll be going to college in June,” Robert protested.

“That’s the idea. I want you to be adequately prepared for college. You will be working on the college farm part of the time, and when you get to the classroom you must be ready. If you are not a serious student they will tell you quickly to go home and stay.”

Robert consented and went to his tutor faithfully every Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and a half-day on Saturday. It was not long before the names of Plato. Alexander the Great. Ramses II, Pliny the Elder and Younger, not to mention the great composers and poets of the world, became well known to him. There were some his tutor mentioned of necessity but with a shudder. Voltaire was foremost among these, with Calas and La Barre not far behind.

It was bad enough to be anti-Christian, Mr. Buchanan explained, but in the case of Voltaire, to be a writer of naughty plays and a mocker of public figures was just too much. To have been so loved for his devilment that admiring lady friends would, at his death, have his heart cut out and preserved in a silver box was downright ludicrous, Mr. Buchanan said. Still, the man was too historically important to ignore.

Robert’s tutor not only breathed the breath of life into the great and near-great of the world, but he was equally fascinated by algebra and logic, and he admitted to lying awake nights, packing his brain with the latest developments in chemistry as well.
George Washington Buchanan frequently reminded his student of the short amount of time they had to work together. If it was possible to cram a man’s head with knowledge, like the barrel of a muzzle-loading rifle is tamped with powder and shot, Robert was quite sure that his tutor was so doing.

The first of June came none too soon. Classes at Emory and Henry did not commence until the latter part of July, but Robert did as most of his classmates were doing, working a month ahead to build up work credits.

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 6
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Page 97-100 – Robert Sheffey begins his formal education at Emory and Henry

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The first of June came none too soon. Classes at Emory and Henry did not commence until the latter part of July, but Robert did as most of his classmates were doing, working a month ahead to build up work credits. The work to be done on the college farm during midsummer consisted mostly of raising and processing food for either the students and faculty or the farm animals. One rarely had the choice of working in the gardens or the hay field. Work was by assignment. It was in the hay field where he met Zeno Sprinkle, Raleigh Stinson, and Hiram Strong, students like himself.

During the first part of July the four of them worked steadily. Zeno, the chunky one of the four, maintained his vigil around the hay pole, seeing more and more of the pole disappear as the hay rose higher and higher. He walked around and around the pole, packing the hay with his feet, and as the stack rose higher his perch became more precarious. His wiry red hair seemed to stand out in all directions when the haystack reached a needle point and the walking surface narrowed to nothing. Robert and Hiram Strong tilted the ladder upright against the haystack and Raleigh Stinson started up the ladder with the “weights,” two fence rails tied together that would be looped around the hay pole and allowed to hang down the stack to keep the wind from blowing any of the hay away.

Their field master, who during the academic sessions would probably be just as precise in the classroom as he was in the field, explained to them the desirability of getting the weights on properly. “If the wind does not take any of the hay from the stack, then the stack remains peaked at the top and turns the rain well,” he said.

Zeno said that he was not impressed with such. A detailed explanation of fundamental logic and he asked Robert and the others why the field-master-teacher didn’t realize that every boy in the field was experienced in this task long before he came to college. Zeno then said, “Maybe I’d better change my mind about becoming a teacher if they all get feebleminded.”

They laughed, because Zeno was always making observations like that. And the truth was that none of them could quite envision Zeno as a teacher. They had discussed it as the time for classes to begin came nearer.

Each boy except Robert seemed pretty positive about his life’s work. Raleigh Stinson, like Zeno, wanted to be a teacher. Raleigh, however, seemed the epitome of what a teacher should be: articulate, commanding, and with a personal vibrancy that would be a great asset in the classroom. He even looked like the stereotype of the schoolmaster, with bushy hair, a gaunt frame, and the pointed intellectual nose.

Hiram Strong resembled Raleigh Stinson in physical appearance but he was much more prone to weigh his words before speaking, and when he did speak his words seemed b carry such conviction that they were most times incontestable. But, strangely, this evidence of powerful intellect did not seem to detract from a capacity for compassion. They were not bad attributes for a minister, Robert thought, if Hiram continued his plans in that direction. Such were Robert’s closest friends as they began the more serious part of the school term.

Lawrence Sheffey had his own friends at the college but he did help his brother to adjust in every way possible. Although the college proper sat in the midst of six hundred acres, five hundred and ninety of those acres could still be considered farmland. The main college building was a large , brick one, four stories high in the center with a wing on each side of the main building rising three stories high. The building had a deep basement and a steep-pitched garret, neither of which was wasted room.

Squire Henry, the servant janitor, lived in the basement, but if anybody thought his duties consisted only of keeping the living quarters and classrooms clean they simply did not know the college tradition. Squire Henry was friend and confidant to every boy in the school and a self-taught authority on the Revolutionary War. He could also quote the works of Chaucer from memory. By July twentieth the boys had their class assignments and their work accounts reconciled. Robert, Zeno, Hiram, and Raleigh had each accumulated about one hundred and sixty hours’ work credit, and figured at the set rate of five cents per hour, they had about eight dollars to apply toward tuition, board, books, and the fee for the use of the library.

“It sure isn’t any way to get rich,” Zeno expressed what seemed to be a universal opinion. All of them, including Lawrence and his friends and still others, were not discouraged, however, from the hard schedule. Study started at five o’clock in the morning and lasted until one P.M. After lunch they all did farm work from two o’clock until five o’clock P.M., and from seven P.M. until nine P.M. studying was again the order of the day. But it wasn’t too much for any boy, or, if it was, not one would admit it. Robert worked hard as one week passed into another. Often at his side, sharing both knowledge and encouragement, was Lawrence. Much of what was to be learned seemed to Robert a useless waste of time. Zeno agreed with him, but Raleigh and Hiram would make no complaint.

“It will all come in handy,” Hiram would say authoritatively, meaning that all learning would find application somewhere. Robert and Zeno would grudgingly concede the momentary wisdom of the statement and buckle down to Hedge’s Logic, Wayland’s Political Economy, Turner’s Chemistry or Kingsley’s Tacitus, and others. There were reviews with each professor at the end of every month of the session.

“Robert, your Uncle James would be proud of you, were he still living,” Ephraim Wiley said at the end of the first review month.

Robert thanked the professor and remembered how much more hostile his elder had seemed when they first talked at the Fourth-of-July celebration in Abingdon.

“I want you to do as well the rest of the session. I suspect you will like some of the literature we will be studying, as well as your chance at oratory,” Professor Wiley said.

Robert said he probably would and chuckled to himself, remembering Zeno practicing his elocution in advance while rounding up the milk cows in the late afternoon. His resonant voice sounding the sharp A’s and round O’s, was enough to sour the cow’s milk, Hiram Strong would say without the hint of a smile. Robert too would work on his elocution in the fields, among the animals and everywhere else.

“Your voice is too soft,” Raleigh opined, “and you’re not getting any roll in your O’s –“

“Nor any force and depth in your voice,” Hiram added.

Zeno practiced gestures while Robert tried again and again.

When the time came to put all his rehearsals into application, Robert was a miserable failure at oratory. His high voice went even higher, he forgot how to use his hands, and his short arms hung limply at his sides. As if all that wasn’t bad enough, his speech displayed no continuity of thought and his delivery ended up in a jumbled outpouring of unrelated half-thoughts. His embarrassed, as were his classmates, who couldn’t help showing it. His embarrassment turned to despondency when there was no noticeable improvement in succeeding days. Nothing Lawrence or his friends said to him seemed to compensate for this failure.

Professor Wiley approached him one day after the class had adjourned. “Robert, not all men are born to speak well, nor can some of them be taught. It is no disgrace. Many of our students go on to become farmers or merchants. If one does not intend to become a teacher or minister or lawyer, proficiency in oratory is not mandatory.”

“I know that. Thank you, sir,” Robert said formally, and left the room. He wanted. To say more to his professor, but the time had not seemed right. He had told no one what he wanted to be although he had felt the birth pangs of it months ago. If this ambition ever really came to fruition he would need the ability that seemed to flee from him.

That night during the study period he closed his books and left the building. To the northwest of the structure a steep hill overlooked the college grounds. He climbed to the crest, knowing well that his act was contrary to college rules: he ought to be studying, and by nine-thirty he was supposed to be in bed.

The thought of it bothered him little – but the moon was bright and the night only slightly chili. It was the first week of September, and he knew that winter would soon be upon the campus. Thinking about that, he became still more chilled, and put his hands under his armpits for warmth. In the distance he could see the lamplight in the dormitory windows, looking like another world to him, with an ocean separating the orange glow of the windows from his solitary perch. Suddenly he jumped from his seated position and ran a ways down the opposite side of the hill.

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 6
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Page 101-102 – Robert Sheffey begins his formal education at Emory and Henry
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The night air invigorated him, and he wished he could keep on running or, better still, that he could be upon the saddled back of Ginger, headed by harvest moonlight to the banks of the Holston. He thought about Big Edmund and Ann and how they were getting along. He thought also of Yancy-doc, and wondered if the flesh had rotted from his bones, and which place in the unseen eternity the soul of his friend had I found refuge. The thought that Yancy-doc might be roasting in a never-ending hell caused Robert to grit his teeth in a kind of inner pain. He could not put the doctor out of his mind. No matter how much he tried, it could not be done. At the strangest times the face of Yancy-doc appeared to him. Sometimes in the visions his friend would be doing a great kindness, and at other times he would be submerged in the blackest of evil. Robert felt that if he could justify the doctor’s life and philosophy in some way the visions would disappear and no longer bother him. At times he felt as if Yancy-doc called to him from the farthest reaches of eternity. But the call had no message. What could possibly explain a man like Yancy-doc? Had there been both a devil and an angel beneath his skin, and while one worked the other slept? Robert thought of his own conversion and how quietly and serenely his own being was being changed. He had as yet talked deeply to no one about it, in the sense of what it meant to him. He had hoped to do so with his aunt Elizabeth, and casually he had mentioned it to Yancy-doc, but his friend had cut him off with a definite signal of disinterest. Once when he and· Yancy-doc were working among the sick he started to open his heart to Matthew Cullegin, but something always seemed to interrupt.

All in all his life up to now didn’t add up to much. He felt the peace of God in his heart, but he hadn’t done much about it. Indeed it was not at all clear what God expected him to do, if anything. Lately he had experienced a sense of mission but maybe “the sense” was too weak to be real and he was not sure whether his thoughts were more those of fantasy than of guidance. One thing was certain: whatever things he felt in his heart would have to stay there. Throughout the week he had proved to himself, his classmates, and his professor that he had no ability to speak convincingly about them in any well-prepared and professional manner.

Now his head started to spin and his heart was heavy. He descended the hill wearily, feeling the dew soak into his brogans and making his feet as wet as his eyes. He tiptoed through the dark halls and fell onto his bed.

The next afternoon he and Zeno were assigned to clean out some of the stalls, but they had worked only a few minutes when Lawrence stuck his head through the door. “I’m afraid I have some bad news, Robert. Aunt Elizabeth has sent a courier to tell us that Francis has died.”

“Was he at home?” Robert asked.

“No, in Florence, Alabama. He had been ill with fever, Aunt Elizabeth said – almost a duplication of the tragedy James Lowry suffered."

Robert began to wonder if family investments in the state of Alabama had not turned into a sinister omen.

“Will you go to Aunt Elizabeth?” Robert asked.
“Yes. Will you accompany me?”
“I don’t feel I could give her any comfort.”
“Very well then. I will be back tomorrow.”

Zeno looked at him strangely, with questioning eyes. Finally he said, "Your cousin? Did I understand right?”

“Yes, my aunt’s third son. He was just admitted to the bar a few months ago. He was only twenty-four and was graduated from Princeton with honors,” Robert added as a sort of final tribute.

Toward the end of September, Robert’s monthly conference was scheduled not with Professor Wiley but with Reverend Charles Collins, president of the college. Lawrence, aware of his brother’s nightly wanderings, had told Robert that the conference would cover the subject of rule breaking. Lawrence’s warning did not frighten him; and he was prepared to tell Reverend Collins or anybody else that he could search for life’s answers at the top of the hill in the moonlight just as well or better than in the classroom.

“You know you have broken the rules of the college,” Reverend Collins began firmly but calmly.

“Yes, sir,” Robert confessed.

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 6
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Page 103-105 – “most of mankind did not respond to the call of God because they did not feel His lovingkindness.” –The sermon that changed the life of Robert Sayers Sheffey.
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“The evening hours before bedtime are set aside for study.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but I have been studying,” Robert said.

“I mean the conventional kind, Robert: with your books open by lamplight. Your college work has been going downhill lately. You are aware of that, aren’t you?”

“I can’t understand some of the chemical formulations, and logic sometimes gets hard for me.”

“It’s more than that. Your whole attitude has changed. Professor Wiley thinks part of your trouble has to do with your failure at oratory. You hope to go into law? Teaching?”

“I wanted to be able to speak. I don’t know altogether why – and I don’t know what I want to be for sure yet.”

“Robert, you must learn to conform to the college rules, and if you expect to stay here you will find us harsher than before. I suggest you put your failure at oratory behind you and settle down to work. I admire your desire to grasp something you obviously cannot, but Professor Wiley assures me that this is not one of your talents. You might as well accept the fact that. Whatever life holds for you, public speaking will not be a part of it.”

“I’ll sure miss walking up the hill. I’m getting a lot straight up there. It’s the most peaceable place in the world to get your thoughts in order.”

“Do your walking after supper or Sundays after church,” Reverend Collins said and dismissed him.

Robert tried to keep the rules for awhile, but when the first snow came in November he was not deterred from climbing to the peak. Sometimes he would ask Zeno or Raleigh and Hiram to accompany him, but most times he preferred to go by himself. Once he sketched a landscape scene from the top of the hill for Lawrence to hang in his room.

During church one day at the end of the month a second and very heavy snow fell. He could not wait to trudge his way to the peak, for his soul felt full and the morning sermon had opened his eyes to something. The minister had preached long and eloquently. His theme was that most of mankind did not respond to the call of God because they did not feel His lovingkindness.

After his dinner Robert walked up the hill alone, thinking of the responsive chord that this message had struck in his heart. In truth, he knew not why the thought moved him so, but immediately his thoughts turned to Yancy-doc. His friend had surely been exposed to the teachings of the Bible and must have bypassed the call to conversion dozens of times; he had implied as much. Then why had no one been able to reach him?

No matter how Robert approached the question – from Yancy-doc’s point of view or his own – the answer came out the same: the doctor had not found the peace of God simply because he had never felt nor been shown God’s lovingkindness and grace. Nobody had stood halfway between God and Yancy-doc to be the convincing messenger, to point the way. Yancy-doc had either missed the entire mission of Christ or ignored it altogether, and no minister or friend was ever able to bridge the gap as intermediary.

The first session of college ended just before Christmas, and Robert came back to James’s and Ellen’s house, more learned but more confused. He was even thinking about dropping out of college before the February term began. James’s reaction to the pronouncement was a quick re-establishment of tutorial services from George Washington Buchanan. Robert was told that if he kept up his studies during the interim of six weeks between sessions he would not lose interest in going back in February. It was a poor kind of logic, Robert thought, but neither James nor his tutor agreed.

Robert made his appearance at the home of Mr. Buchanan the day after Christmas. He was minus a greatcoat even though the day was bitterly cold and the wind howled with ferocity.

“Do you wish to destroy yourself by coming out in this weather without a greatcoat?” George Washington Buchanan asked.

“I don’t have one, and James said he would not buy another until I learned my lesson. I must say it occurred to me what he had in mind just walking over here. I am chilled to the marrow of my bones.”

“In the name of Jehoshaphat, what happened to your greatcoat’? Did you get careless and lose it?”

“In a way, I suppose. I went down to the dry-goods store where I worked last summer to pay my respects and then stopped by the hotel for a few minutes. A man got off the westbound stage without a coat, and his body shook so bad from the cold that he could hardly stand up.”

“And you gave him your coat?”

“Yes,” Robert confessed. “James said if I went without one for awhile and checked the price of a new one I might appreciate ownership a little more.”

“You cannot be charitable to every rum-guzzler you meet. Your brother works hard at his practice, and keeping you in school adds to his burden. Purchases of extra greatcoats do not ease his situation.”

One day shortly after New Year’s, Robert made clear to his tutor his reluctance to study. He did want to talk of other things, however.

‘’Have you ever thought that too much learning might be the work of the devil?” Robert asked.

“What!” Mr. Buchanan’s glasses nearly fell from their place far down on his bulbous nose as he jerked to attention.

“I mean, couldn’t a man get so smart that he thought he knew everything and had no humbleness at all?”

“I should think it would be very hard to get that smart. Very hard indeed!”

“But it could happen, couldn’t it’?” Robert pressed the question.

“I suppose it could – maybe.” The other retreated a little.

“Even if it just happened a little, wouldn’t it be wrong?”

“Well – humility is not always virtuous,” Mr. Buchanan hedged a little.

“I have lately come to think otherwise. I don’t have enough, and I have been awakened to it. I am sinful with pride -.”

“Now wait, Robert. I do not hear confessions. I enlighten minds when given half a chance.” And he peered mockingly at Robert over the top of his glasses.

Robert ceased his probings that day and studied halfheartedly thereafter until it was time to re-enter Emory and Henry in February.

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 6
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Page 106-107 – Robert concludes his studies at Emory and Henry.
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There was more time for reflection and study in the second session than in the first. The weather was too bad to do anything out-of-doors except clean the barns and see that the animals were fed. If one did not relish books there was an abundance of time on hand. Robert made an honest effort at study and spent longer periods in conversation with Zeno and Raleigh, and Hiram too, when he could command the latter’s I time and attention. Lawrence tried to get him interested in drama, for during the winter months thespian endeavors especially seemed to flourish. Robert paid scant attention to the art of the theatre, saying that all men were acting all the time and that no need existed to pay attention to their acting at a given time or place. He started the long outside walks again whenever he felt the need. At first no one said anything, for the winter was unusually severe and many of the students felt an unsuppressible cabin fever. The professors recognized this and relaxed the regulations a little.

In his last semester at Emory and Henry Robert began to question the need of much education. Once again he was before Reverend Collins.

‘’The learning is wrong for me. Too much of it would make me more haughty and proud.”

“There is no reason that you should not be proud of, learning,” Reverend Collins said, “and whatever you do, you will need this and more.”

“I have been thinking for many weeks about knowledge. Isn’t it true that all knowledge comes from God? That everything you and the other professors know comes from Him? Even that all things to be known will come from God?”

Robert could see that the magnitude of the question stunned Reverend Collins somewhat, but his elder answered quickly.

”Yes, Robert, in a manner of speaking, but this does not remove from us the obligation to do our part in gaining such knowledge.”

“I do not agree, sir. If I give my life to God He will give me all the wisdom I need to be His advocate.”

“Robert, I had not thought of you in the ministry. I mean no offense. But you are in no way qualified, and I must discourage you. Now promise me once more you will pay serious mind to your studies. Have you ever given thought to becoming a teacher?”

Robert hung in with Emory and Henry until May, concluding his studies. He came back to Marion and asked to stay in the house of his brother and sister-in-law, promising to get his job back at Tate’s and pay his own room and board while looking for work as a teacher.

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 6
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Page 108-109 - Robert begins a life of exhortation and begins to attend many revivals. "If one man or woman, however, felt after hearing his exhortations that God’s grace and lovingkindness were things of reality to be drunk into one’s soul. He considered the time well spent."
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By midsummer he started attending all the revivals within a day’s riding distance of Marion. When there were no revivals, he would simply drop in to a church at random, paying little attention to the denomination or the appearance of the church building. Neither did he observe the color of the congregation, and one Sunday, in the community of Adkins, he unintentionally interrupted a servant church service. He walked into the building in the middle of a rousing spiritual and recognized Ann, whom he immediately sought out and hugged vigorously. He must have given the impression that a white man was attempting to drag the woman from the building when her shouts went up. Moments later the verses of the hymn resounded from the log rafters again.

In August he attended a revival in the village of Saltville, where the sweating Baptist minister in his closing pleas was getting few converts. Robert noticed a man a little older than himself who appeared to be in deep travail. Several times the man would seem in an anguish of indecision and yet unable to move from his bench. Robert got up from his seat and went to him, kneeling at his side and offering words of comfort and encouragement. The minister observed Robert’s efforts and prolonged the service with more pleas and singing. Soon Robert came walking down the aisle with the young man and sat with him on the penitents’ seat.

When the service was over, the exhausted preacher came to Robert with outstretched hand. “Do I have a visiting brother of the cloth in my midst?” he asked.

“No, I am not a preacher, I just saw a brother who lacked only the lovingkindness of God to make his journey to the front.”

“Bless you for your exhortation, my brother. Without you our convert might be sitting at the point of indecision until this time next year.”

Robert disclaimed the credit; and yet his success was more than a little startling.

“The hand of God is upon the exhorter as well as the preacher. Do you consider this work a calling’?”

“I don’t know,” Robert said earnestly.

He thought about it, riding back to Marion. The word “exhorter” was almost as new to him as was what was expected of such a person. More thought and study on the matter I revealed that such a calling was indeed a divine one. In Philippians he read of Euodias and Syntyche, and he learned of those non-clergical men throughout history who had been intermediaries between a loving God and a reluctantly yielding Mankind.

The revivals around Marion did not end until the passing of the new year. By then the weather prevented attendance. Or no warm place could be found to conduct them. But as long as they lasted Robert made the rounds – sometimes to more than one on the same day.

An exhorter did not get paid, but Robert was saving a little money from the meager pay at his store job. Soon he would own his horse and James would not frown at him each time he saddled up and rode off.

By the spring of 1841 Robert was again in the saddle, covering even greater distances than he had the previous year. Before daylight on Sundays he would ready his own horse and quietly leave Marion. As often as not he would return by the light of the moon.

This rigorous schedule extracted a toll from him and he found it hard to keep his mind on his work at the dry-goods store. His employer spoke to him, but not as sever might have, for he had heard of Robert’s good work.

Nevertheless, the conflict grew greater for him. He wanted to do an honest day’s work in the store during the week. But half-days on Saturday and one full day on Sunday limited the range of his travels and the amount of time he could spend in his exhortations. He knew he had no ability to address a group, but his exhortations directed to one man or one woman at a church or in a home or, more and more frequently, along the roadways, were abundantly fruitful. Increasingly he found the opportunity to stop at homes along the byways and the less-traveled roads and pathways of the mountains.

During the months of summer he started traveling short distances during the week after his regular working hours had ended. But he couldn’t go far in the three or four hours of daylight left after work. If one man or woman, however, felt after hearing his exhortations that God’s grace and lovingkindness were things of reality to be drunk into one’s soul. He considered the time well spent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRPqSBRF3DA
His exhortations in Burke’s Garden were not well received. He himself innocently jeopardized their effectiveness. When he had topped Walker’s Mountain and ridden farther north, until the vast flat, garden-like expanse of land could be entered from the most accessible side, on the east, he had not been prepared for the beauty he was to come upon: as he crested the mountain there lay before him a picturesque valley of fertile land framed by mountains thick with the largest trees he had ever seen. The grass was greener and the air seemingly more pure than in any place he had ever been. Flocks of birds both melodious and colorful flew playfully from ridge to ridge, their voices haunting in the stillness. He could not truly imagine what the Garden of Eden must have looked like, but here, he thought, is the nearest thing to it. He was so taken with this gem of nature set apart in the wilderness that he hitched his horse to a sourwood sapling and knelt upon a moss-covered flat rock to say a prayer. A man came up out of the valley on horseback and passed by him. So peaceful was his communion with the Creator of this beautiful garden of fertile earth that he prayed to keep on praying so that it would not be broken.

He had not finished when the solitary rider returned back down the mountain. Finally, when he had straightened his stiff knees, mounted his horse, and reached the valley below. He found that he was being looked upon with suspicion. It had already been reported that a certain crazy man had been seen kneeling on the mountain, and it had been observed that his praying had lasted for over four hours.

“Are you a preacher?” Some of the more sympathetic extended the benefit of a doubt.

“No, not exactly,” he had to reply.

He left Burke’s Garden and an uneasy host before the week was out and followed Wolf Creek along the south side of East River Mountain for a full day’s distance. The territory he reached was sparsely settled, and he anticipated the houses and cabins grew farther and farther apart.

Wolf Creek began to grow wider and deeper, and he suspected that before he went many more miles the stream which he followed would empty into New River. He was debating whether to keep on his present course or cross East River Mountain to the more populated settlements he had heard about, when his horse gave a warning whinny. Out of the brush ahead of him an elderly man staggered into the road and fell. Robert dismounted and started to wipe the blood from the nose and mouth of the fallen man, who now wept quite openly. While he was yet kneeling over the wounded man a second man, young but husky, sprung out of the brush as if to attack his prey again.

“I whupped **** outta him. He thought he could cuff me around and I whupped **** outta him.”

“Who is this man?” Robert asked.

“He’s my –pa. Look at him laying there, crying like a sucklin’ kid. I reckon he won’t be bossin’ me around no more.”

“How old are you, son?”

“What business is it of your’n? Who are you, anyhow?”

Robert told his name and repeated the question.

“I’m pretty nigh sixteen – big enough not to be bossed around! And it ain’t your concern.”

'Have you ever heard that daughters and sons should honor their fathers and mothers?” Robert asked.

The wounded man started to get up, but fell back, exhausted and bleeding. He was not too weak to talk, however, and his voice trembled with anger, but even more with shame.

“If I was ten years younger I’d wear a razor strop plumb out on your backsides!” he said.

The younger man kicked dirt into his father’s face. Robert restrained him.

“You wanta lose a little blood too – like the old man? You just give me half a reason and I’ll whup **** outta both of you -.”

The older man wept again and started to pull himself from the road by crawling and pulling at the brush.

“I’m going to help him home,” Robert said, and started in the wounded man’s direction.

“Leave him be,” the younger man growled and jumped in front of Robert.

“Then go get your mother – or your brothers and sisters.”

“I ain’t getting’ nobody! Look at him laying there. A blubberin’ like an old woman.”

“He’s not crying for himself. He’s crying for you. Does it make you feel better to shame your own father? Can you go brag about beating up a man who must be sixty-five or seventy years old? You’re a lot more pitiful sight than he is. I said I’m going to get him home. You do what you please.”

The young man stood in his way, but Robert calmly stepped around him and helped the older man to his feet. When they got to the cabin, a quarter-mile or more back in the woods, the occupation of the family became evident. In sight of the house a bold spring gushed out of the rocks. And wooden tubs encircled the spring. Robert guessed that they were not full and fermenting – corn harvest would not be until fall – but the smell of ripe mash and com whiskey seemed to be coming from every tree. He sat the man on the front porch of his house, and a scrawny woman half his age came and stood in the doorway.

“He’s hurt. I brought him home,” Robert said.

“Yeh, I know about it,” she said, but made no effort to help her father-in-law.

Robert started to tum away, sure that he could not help further. Why couldn’t he help further? The thought suddenly reversed itself. If this wasn’t the time and place to offer his prayers and exhortations, then there was no right place. He didn’t have his Bible – it was in his saddlebag down by the road – but he asked the man if he might pray with him.

“No, that wouldn’t do,” the man said. “You might get a knife stuck in your back if you was on your knees for a long minute.”

Robert gave a quick but passionate prayer for the man and his family just the same. He did not close his eyes while doing it, however.

As he turned away, the wounded man called, “Much obliged,” and added, “There’s cabins, plenty of ‘em, between here and New River. You’ll be wantin’ to spend the night someplace. It ain’t fittin’ here or I’d ask you.”

When Robert went back down the footpath to the road his horse was gone. For a moment he was frightened. Then angered. Either the youth had stolen the horse or he had struck the animal and she had galloped down the road.

With a prayer on his lips, Robert followed the horse’s tracks as they wound down the valley, in and out, paralleling the meanderings of the creek. Finally, rounding a turn, he saw the animal, and she looked up, whinnied, and trotted to him.

It was now that time between sundown and darkness and he had eaten no dinner. His eyes searched both right and left for a house. Daylight had almost given way completely when farther along Wolf Creek he came to a large cabin built partly of creek rock and finished with hewn cedar logs. It reminded him of his first school house, except that the workmanship here was better. He did not pause to consider whether or not he would be welcome. The mountain custom was that no traveler would be turned away if he appeared as an honorable man, especially if he was also hungry and tired.

Hound dogs started a mournful baying when Robert reined in at the front gate. A man of powerful build and flash of face, with a mop of white hair, greeted him with what Robert felt was an equal measure of gladness and suspicion.

Robert got to the point quickly. “Would there be room in your house for a servant of the Lord?”

“Indeed there would Laddie.” He was answered in a Scot’s brogue. “And have you traveled far?”

Robert told him of the distance but not of the happenings along the way.

“Tie your horse, laddie. We’ll oat ‘er later, but it’s about you I’m thinkin’ – you look as lean as my hounds.”

Presently Robert stood in the kitchen, where he met his host’s wife, sweating at the crane of the fireplace and poking a two-pronged fork periodically into a stewing hen. “You’ll be eatin’ a tough old hen. We’re stewin’ her the best we can, laddie, but she’s puttin’ up a fight,” she said good-naturedly.

Before supper was ready Robert had learned Ellie McComb’s name and that of her husband, Shed. He marveled at how much this man and his wife looked like brother and sister, for they had the same ruddy complexions and searching blue eyes, not to mention similar white hair and large-boned bodies. He was about to pluck the stewing hen from the kettle when at last Ellie McCombs invited him to the table.

“Would the advocate of Providence care to thank his Master for this, I suspect, very tough stewing hen?” Shed asked.

Robert paused for a moment, then said a very long prayer in spite of his hunger. He would not have stopped even then, for there was so much to be thankful for; his host, however, made uneasy sounds, sounds that ceased only when Robert’s I prayers ended.

When supper was over and his horse fed and turned out into the grazing lot Robert read a chapter from his Bible to his host and hostess.

“You read with the piety of a devout Presbyterian,” Shed said.

’’Then I must have read much too slowly,” Robert replied, and smiled a little.

“You would be Baptist, then?” Ellie McCombs said, in answer to his jest.

“No, I’m not a preacher exactly, and I’m not lined up any denomination except by own conscience. If I were to give you my likes, it’d be Methodist.”

“It’s a trifle of a shame, laddie,” Shed McCombs said. “We’re lookin’ for a sermoner – within the faith o’ course _ and we haven’t had one for eight months. Pity _ raised a new meetin house and got nobody to christen it.”

“And you helped build it too,” Robert said.

“How’d you know that, laddie?”

“Your hands. The joints of your hands are big and your knuckles and skin are shiny. You have been gripping the plane and saw for a long time, and the resin of the pine and the oil of the walnut have polished your skin.”

"You are right, laddie, and I made this house and the very bed you will sleep in too.”

The talk continued even more congenially then, and Robert told the couple of his travels and exhortations and the experience he had had that very afternoon with the wounded man and his son.

“The old man is the only decent one o’ the bunch. You and him both might as well give up on that clan. If they’re not likkered up they’re pickin’ a fight with somebody.”

“We can’t forget the lost sheep, Brother McCombs,” Robert said with a feeling of brotherhood he genuinely felt.

The conversation turned to other subjects the traveler might have heard and could pass on. Where were there new roads? Were there any new cabins along the byways, any new trading posts and crossroad stores? What was the political news in areas he had visited?

Soon what small amount of energy Robert’s body held in reserve was completely exhausted. He asked to be shown to his bed, with or without white counterpane. Ellie McCombs started up the stairs, and he followed.

Shed called to him, a tone of mirthful kindness in his voice. “Laddie, sleep well and think on your best sermon. An empty church house is the delight 0’ the devil. Suppose we disappoint him – very mildly o’ course – with a Methodist sermon, come Sunday,”

Shed McCombs had spread the word himself, Robert learned. The church house was new and the spirit of the occasion would be the same, the older man advised him in advance.

“It’s like a hungry laddie a-takin’ to food. When the doors have been shut there’s more hunger for the Word.”

When Sunday came Robert knew he had the confidence of Shed and Ellie McCombs, but it was small consolation when his own confidence – and, he was sure, that of some sixteen or eighteen other families – was lacking. He had been honest with Shed, and told him time and again that he had never preached from the pulpit before. Yet there was an understanding that had passed between them that buoyed Robert’s spirits upward.

Horses and buggies surrounded the church, and every pew was full or near full. Robert’s legs trembled violently and his I lips stuck together, for there was no moisture in his throat. He dreaded the ending of the first hymn, and hoped that the worshipers would be lenient with him.

At last every voice was silent. Not even a cough interrupted the stillness of the small building, even new smelling of the hewn locust logs Shed McCombs had selected to ensure the longevity of this house of God.

Robert raised his eyes to the rafters as he had seen numerous other preachers do in what he supposed was one last pleading for strength. His Bible was already open to Genesis, his scriptural reference, for the story of Noah and the ark. He had selected that, for as Noah had come to rest in a new and uninhabited wilderness, so had the people along Wolf Creek.

As he read the Scriptures his knees banged uncontrollably against each other and the sweat of his hands left moist imprints upon the pages of the Bible. After he closed the Book he paused unduly long, forgetting how he had planned to start his oration. He made a first attempt and his voice went high, like the changing voice of a young boy. Finally he uttered several halting sentences, but none had any relation to the other nor to the passages he had selected. It was no use, and he knew it. He could utter not one single word.

He ran from the pulpit in his humiliation and shame, but Shed caught him at the door.

“I will not let you fail, Brother Sheffey. You are God’s man. I am sure of that now, laddie. I will go back with you and you will give any o’ your exhortations you can remember. Then you will pray for us.”

Suddenly the exhortations he had used in so many different places and so often came from his lips with force and reverence. He prayed, asking God to’ bless the new church and the wilderness people, and soon he had stopped formal praying and was talking to God as he had done in the schoolroom, ; oblivious to time and his surroundings. When he lifted his eyes every pew was empty and every knee clung to the dirt floor. As he finished, seemingly immobile bodies came to life, and countenances were radiant.

“Aye, Me thinks the devil is more than a little unhappy today,” Shed said to him as they all three rode home in the buggy.

Robert smiled only halfheartedly, for he still felt that he had failed.

“Be patient, laddie. You will be an awesome adversary of the devil in time – I’m sure o’ that – but neither did I learn the mastery o’ the wood until I had first rendered a mountain of logs into firewood.”

The hands of Shed and Ellie McCombs given in parting held his a long time until, with all eyes moist, Robert departed. He followed Wolf Creek westward for a distance, then crossed East River Mountain. In that far-ranging and thinly populated territory to the west he stayed a week, moving from one home to another, one village to the next, always inquiring of the spiritual lives of the inhabitants. His exhortations there had the impact of a single footprint in a field of untouched snow. Someday soon he would return. Of that he was certain.

 

[rockytopva]

The book is now six chapters underway. The movie covers these six chapters in all of ten minutes!

The Conversion of Robert Sayers Sheffey - YouTube

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 7
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Page 113-115 – Revival and a liken' to Methodism
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Robert kept his job at Tate’s dry-goods store until the last of July, nearly a month after he had received a handwritten contract from Cass Wilkerson confirming his employment as a teacher. “For teaching during the period of October 1, 1842, until March 31, 1843, we the undersigned promise to pay Robert Sayers Sheffey at the rate of $30.00 per month, payable on the last Saturday of each month,” the contract said in part. The new position would pay him almost double what he had received at Tate’s. But had the pay been half as much it would have mattered little.

His resignation from Tate’s two months before his new job began was not without purpose. During August and September he wished to carry his exhortations to some of the areas having revivals. And, more particularly, to extend his range of work to other counties – if time and opportunity allowed, into the fringes of Tennessee and Kentucky.

As he traveled from county to county and village to village, he wrote Lawrence of the joy of human fellowship among strangers. But they weren’t; really strangers, he said in the letters, for the moment they all prayed or broke bread together, some impenetrable bond seemed to hold them fast. He spoke also of the mounting interest in the establishment of campmeeting grounds throughout the areas he traveled. The Methodists in particular were pushing this movement, and Robert told Lawrence how much the Methodists impressed him with their energy, piety, and zeal. They would be a good group to join, Robert opined, and what did Lawrence think of that?

By the middle of September, Robert returned to Marion. He looked as though he had been on the trail for months; his clothes were dirty and worn, and his horse seemed to rattle from three broken shoes that slapped annoyingly against her hooves.
James and Ellen showed only remote interest in his work and travels, he sensed, but he gave them a full accounting anyway. He told them of warmhearted, hospitable people whom he had met and with whom he had often stayed overnight, or, in some cases, several days. Sometimes they were people of wealth with plantation homes and acreage, but as people of wealth with plantation homes and acreage, but as often as not his host might be the owner of a one-room log cabin. In either case the household would hear his prayers and exhortations and sometimes be moved to join him at a nearby revival. There be would continue his work inside, outside, before and after services, or take his usual place on the back pew to watch for those who wavered back and forth in their decisions.

He had also slept out under the stars when the distance between villages was great and the landscape sparsely settled. His eyes shone when he told them that, for the experience was just like riding to the banks of the Holston again and drinking of the purity of nature. Now it was even better than that, for the scope of his purpose was enlarged and, it seemed at times, divinely defined.
He had little to pack as he prepared to leave Marion the third week of September. He had his clothes (which had been added to by Ellen when she contributed some oversized castoffs of her husband) and a few books. That was the sum total of his worth except for the forty dollars he had saved from his earnings at Tate’s. All combined, they did not provide an excessive burden on the back of his animal as he beaded for Cripple Creek in Wythe County, some thirty-five miles’ distant.

He had no definite place to stay upon reaching Cripple Creek, and, since the creek ran the entire length of the county, he would need to orient himself.

He had little trouble locating Messrs. Gleaves and Wilkerson, since their Raven Cliff iron furnace was a hub of activity and of great local interest. The enterprise was only one of several like it along the sparkling waters of Cripple Creek, but, Robert learned, this firm boasted better than thirty years of successful existence.

Cass Wilkerson took charge of him once a tour of the iron furnace was concluded. “Your schoolroom isn’t much,” he said as they reined their horses to a stop in front of a combination stone-and-log building about twenty feet square.

“Looks like somebody started to build it out of creek rock and got tired or ran out of rock,” Robert said.

“It was built by a German mining assayer. He used it for his tools and ore samples and once in a while for his company’s workers to guzzle a little Saturday-night brandy.”

“Looks substantial enough for a classroom,” Robert said.

“Substantial it is, but it’ll take work to put it in shape. They say that assayer never did trust the waters of Cripple Creek. That’s the reason he built it half high out of rock.”

“Can you offer any suggestions as to where I might find room and board?”

“I figured you’d ask that, and I found a couple of “places. Neither one of them is very close to the building here, but I guess it won’t hurt you to ride a ways. Most of the children have a good distance to come too.”

Wilkerson then handed Robert a sheet of torn ledger with the names of two people on it and gave him instructions on how to find them. “Either place ought to be comfortable enough for you. The first one belongs to an old widow lady. She could use the money if you like the accommodations. Let me know when you get settled and we’ll move all your supplies into the building. Might as well go ahead and put up the stove too.”

They shook hands and Robert started to ride off. He wheeled his horse around, however, before Cass Wilkerson had moved.
“I used to know of a family of Sweckers – Wendell Swecker – living somewhere along Cripple Creek. Ever hear of them?”
“Can’t say that I have. Of course they could live at either end of the creek. That’s a long way.”

Robert thanked him and said he’d find out about the family and it wasn’t really important anyway.

Cass Wilkerson had described Bertha Kincannon as an “old widow lady,” but when Robert found her, farther west along the creek, if she was a day over sixty, she carried her years well. When he walked into the yard of her well-kept brick house she was spreading black walnuts upon the ground for drying. Her movements were sprightly, but she tilted her spine excessively backward as if to unlatch a crick when she saw him approach her. He introduced himself and commented on the large size of the walnuts and her foresight in preserving some for cracking during the winter months.

“They are big ones. It’s been a good growing year.” She dislodged the hull from two or three of the walnuts with her foot. “The hull maggots don’t seem to be doing such a good job of loosening up the hulls. Wonder why that is?”

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 7
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Page 116-120 – At the home of Bertha Kincannon
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He had no informed answer to this, but said, “Since they’re so big and the hulls so thick, maybe the maggots need a little longer to cut through.” She chuckled at the simplicity of his answer and her stout body shook. He liked the woman almost instantly. She was homely, with round pink cheeks and disheveled gray hair, but possessed warmth he could feel immediately.

“You would be the young man coming to teach?” Her blue eyes focused questioningly upon him. “Cass asked me if I’d be willing to board you.”

“Yes. We will use the old stone building three or four miles down the creek. Looks like I might have two dozen students, according to Mr. Wilkerson.”

“I know most of the families,” she said. “One or two of those young’uns you could just as well do without.”

“Well, I suppose there’s no job without its own problems,” he said.

“A lot of the foreigners that have come in here to work these ore mines are funny people. They don’t think like you and me. Well, now, I guess you’d like to look at the room?”

“I’m sure it’s nice,” he said and followed her.

She turned around and faced him. “Don’t be sure about nothin’ until you’ve seen it for yourself,” she said brusquely and wrinkled her gray, bushy eyebrows into a scowl.

She took him to an upstairs room that was spacious and tad a large poster bed, a dresser, and a highboy. She stepped on the first step of the little ladder needed to climb onto the bed and brought her hand down with force on the feather tick?

‘”Look at the size of that hole! Is that soft enough for you?”

He looked at the indentation and at the artistic patchwork quilt.

“Do you have a white counterpane for the bed?” he said. “I like a white counterpane.”

She was stunned for a moment and, he feared, offended.

“You’re the first man I ever saw that could even say the word, much less know what one was. You a nephew of the Marquis de Lafayette? Where’d you ever get used to a white counterpane on a bed?”

“My aunt Elizabeth, who raised me, she always kept my bed covered with a white counterpane and clean bed linen. She used to say you could tell what people were like just by looking at their beds.”

She stared at him severely for a minute while fingering a wisp of her hair. “I don’t suppose I’ll ever meet your aunt . Elizabeth, but I can tell you right now she’s already made a peck of trouble for some woman if and when you ever get married.

Why, a women would have her fingers rubbed raw on a scrub board keeping a white counterpane clean on a bed all the time.”

He said nothing, now certain he had offended.

Finally, when her second oration had run down, she said, “Yes, I’ve got a white counterpane I’ll put on the bed. Far be it from me to discourage our new schoolmaster from his rest if it takes a white counterpane to make content his slumber. I won’t even raise the room-and-board price for doing it. Is ten dollars a month all right?”

He said it was and that he’d pay extra to have his washing done.

By the first school day in October he had scrubbed the cobwebs and dirt from the classroom walls. Cass Wilkerson had more supplies than Robert had anticipated; a wagon load of handmade stools with short legs (milking stools, the children laughingly called them) arrived along with a hand-planed desk of thick walnut for himself. Next to be unloaded were the more commonplace items: slates and chalk and a few books.

About one thing Robert was ecstatic from the beginning: addressing his class of seven- to twelve-year-olds seemed so natural he could hardly believe the steadiness of his own voice.

Bertha Kincannon helped him to understand the phenomenon even better during the evening meals of those first few days. “When the nut sets in its own pod it fits well,” she said philosophically. “You’re doing what comes easy to you if you can just keep the false fears away of believing you can ‘t do it.”

Robert became accustomed to Bertha Kincannon quickly. She was like some lost member of the family whom he had overlooked all these years. Perhaps she was. Certainly she had every characteristic of those German and Dutch ancestors of his own, whose lives, fortunes, and temperament were well known to him.

By the middle of October he commented to Mrs. Kincannon I that he felt now that he had the class under control and every student save one in the jug with the stopper plugged tight. The exception was a twelve-year-old girl who was a mystery to him – ‘’To put it mildly,” he said.

“And you don’t have to tell me which one,” Mrs. Kincannon said. “It has to be Wanda Lewinski. She’s the daughter of one of those Polish families who came here to work in the furnaces and ore trenches. The child is either crazy or just plain mean – or maybe got a little witchery in her.”

“If they haven’t been in this country long, maybe she’s just frightened.”

“No, I don’t think it’s that. As I understand it the Lewinskis lived up north for fifteen years before they came here, and they speak English good. Some of these furnaces and ore fields are owned by northern capitalists, you know. Wythe County people weren’t good enough for them. They wanted to send some of their own workers down. They say that Europeans who have worked in trench mines know more about them than anybody else, and claim they have a special knack for smelting and forging ore.”

“If the child’s mind is affected we can’t keep her in the class. God bless her, but it would disrupt the other children. If it’s meanness, maybe we can cure that.”

They spoke no more of the child, but Bertha Kincannon promised to aid him by finding out all she could about the family. He forgot the matter for the time being, both because it was Saturday, and the days were still almost as hot as summer, and because he had other things on his mind. He first oriented himself a little better by determining the exact location of his place of lodging. Mrs. Kincannon told him they lived east of the community of Simmerman, near the junction of Thorn Creek and Cripple Creek.

“If you rode along Cripple Creek all day you wouldn’t need a jug of brandy, you’d be drunk just following the twists and turns,” she said.

“Somewhere along this creek there’s a man called Wendell Swecker. He has a daughter named Elizabeth. I heard a long time ago she was getting married to a young man who works at one of the forges. Do you know of them?”

“Law, yes. I remember Wendell Swecker. Haul ore back when my family had the old Bell-Kincannon ironworks. He was a young man then, but he was one of the quietest, most honest men I ever knew. He wasn’t an educated man, but nobody was any harder a worker than he was.”

“Which direction do they live along the creek?”

Bertha Kincannon eyed him suspiciously and grinned. “Are you hoping she is married or not married?”

“Oh, it’s a sure thing she’s married by now, but I just knew her and wondered where she lived.”

Mrs. Kincannon changed her tone to one of seriousness because his own demeanor was one of stiff propriety now. “I don’t know his family at all, but they moved on after working for us. The last I heard they lived near the community of Huddle way on down the creek. I don’t know distances, but it’s a half day’s ride or better.”

“I guess it’s just curiosity. Of course I’ll have to ride in that direction anyway someday soon. I told my brother James I’d ride down to Ivanhoe and give him a report on how our renter is taking care of our homeplace.”

“You never mentioned you came from this section.”

He told her his history and that he had been too young to remember when they had lived at Ivanhoe. She still eyed him suspiciously as if she thought he was concocting the trip to Ivanhoe. Suddenly he wished he had found out about Elizabeth Swecker’s father from somebody else.

The following Saturday the rising sun had barely winked a greeting across the mountain range before he was on his way eastward along the creek. A slight fog rose from the chilly water of Cripple Creek, and in the stillness of early morning the lilting lap of the water rushing over rocks seemed magnified and especially melodious. It was the kind of quietness that should not be broken except by some sound more melodious still, he thought, but then he shattered the silence he himself had declared sacred. “Thank you, Lord, for water so pure and sunlight so bright and breaths of fog that fall at night.” He had not meant to make a rhyme and he smiled in wonder at the way his praise came from his lips. He had not lowered his voice when speaking the first time, but he repeated the phrase louder a second time so that his voice would travel afar.

Men were already at work as he passed the Raven Cliff ironworks. The lot behind the furnace seemed covered with huge bowl-like objects, the identity and purpose of which he did not know. The power-furnishing waterwheel turned with a labored groan that he could hear long after the building had disappeared from sight. Soon he passed wagons coming and going, heavily laden with either bar iron or fresh ore.

Bertha Kincannon couldn’t be disputed on one point. Cripple Creek was like a dying snake at sundown. It twisted in. every direction, and the narrow dirt road followed the serpentine meanderings almost perfectly. When he approached what seemed to match Bertha Kincannon’s description of Huddle he stopped his horse. While he waited for someone to come along and confirm his assumptions, he pulled a cheesecloth from his saddlebag, unwrapped it, and began eating a meat biscuit. He consumed the rest of his meal and, still seeing no one, proceeded to crack some of the black walnuts lying in the road and dehulled by churning wagon wheels or plodding hooves.

By the time a rider came by, the road lay littered with cracked nuts and Robert’s hands were colored the rusty stain of the walnut hulls. He had gone too far east, he was told by the rider, if it was Wendell Swecker’s house he wanted. He could not understand the harelipped man well and he listened carefully to the mail’s complicated directions on how to leave the main road and find the right hollow.

“Do you know his daughter, Elizabeth? Do she and her husband live nearby?” Robert asked.

“I don’t know no women. I ain’t hardly the kind of feller they’d be a-botherin’.”

When he found Wendell Swecker’s house he rode on by it. Near to the house two men and three women worked in a corn field, loading pumpkins onto a one-horse sled. Robert craned his neck as the landscape passed all too quickly. The younger of the two men must be Elizabeth’s husband, he thought. They hadn’t even looked toward him, none of them. Any other time his horse would have whinnied at the sight of strangers and the proximity to other animals. He should have pitched a small stone at the house or barn roof, he thought. The noise would only have sounded like a falling walnut or broken tree limb, but they would have looked up and faced the direction of the sound.