Well, that was Billsky all over, and most men thought it was a great joke. Radway did. “What does the little rat take me for?” he said. “I guess he’s in no hurry. I’ll have some time to wait.” Most men thought so, too, but not all.
Meanwhile, Billsky stuck to his job till he could quit without giving inconvenience. Then he got his time. He sunk every dollar of his pay in a fine pony, a quick goer. And down he came the eighty miles to Borromeo, like a fire in grass.
The betting was all on Rad, of course. It was said he thought Billsky too good a joke to shoot; he’d just beat him up a bit if he was troublesome, and let him go.
Twenty miles out of Borromeo, Billsky had to stop at a preacher’s. And there he got religion.
Yes, it’s a fact; he got it overnight. What he told the preacher, or the preacher said to him, I don’t know. I don’t begin to know. But Billsky went off afoot into the desert, five miles maybe; and it is pretty much of a desert round there. He had nothing with him but the gun he was going to shoot Radway with, and a Bible. He laid them both under a sagebush, and all night he knelt in front of them, and waited for the Lord to begin on him. There isn’t much in the desert at night, you know, but stars; and a sky back of ’em that makes even the planets look cheap. The Lord must have had His way with Billsky, without fear or favor, for at dawn he came staggering back to the preacher, drenched with sweat and dew. He had only the Bible with him.
“I believe,” he said to the preacher, “and as I hope for forgiveness, so I forgive the man it was in my heart to kill. Tell him so from me,” he said; “but it’s laid on me,” said Billsky, “that I’ll never save my soul till I tell him so myself. So tell him, too, to wait for me, for I’m a-coming to forgive him.” Then he went down in a heap at the preacher’s feet.
That old man was a real Christian, and he put Billsky to bed and looked after him like a father. He’d never had an out-and-out hot-on-the-spot convert like that before, and he was so worked up and excited over it that he saddled his old horse and rode into Borromeo himself to give Radway the message of forgiveness.
I was in Duluth’s, with some of the other fellows, looking at some new saddles he had in; and Rad was there, too, and there was a good deal of talk going on of one kind and another. Some one must have told the old preacher where Rad was, for he pulled up his old white nag outside Duluth’s, and “Mr. Radway!” he called, in a high voice, “Mr. Radway! I have a message for you.”