But say, Jesus had done all this on purpose to get Peter to believe in Him, and He told him not to be afraid any longer, but said, “Fear not; henceforth thou shalt catch men...”
When Barry said that, Circus’ bright eyes lit up and he interrupted the story to say, “What’d he mean by that?” Before Barry could answer, Little Tim Till surprised us all by cutting in and saying across the crackling fire to Circus, “He meant, ‘Don’t be scared; from now on you’ll be what our Sugar Creek minister calls a _soul winner_.’”
Well, it was a wonderful true story, and for some reason I had the happiest feeling all inside of me. I not only wished all of a quick sudden that I had been there and had maybe been Peter or Andrew or one of Mother Salome’s two boys, but I felt also that maybe the most important thing in the world was to be a soul winner, or a fisher of men...
Well, the story was done and the sky above the lake toward where the sun had gone down, reminded me of the reddish, purplish and also yellowish spread-out feathers of a terribly big fantail pigeon.
I was sitting there on a small log, looking at the extra beautiful sky, looking at it over the top of our camp fire, thinking about how the rays of the sun shooting up looked like a lady’s many colored unfolded fan or the tail of a fantailed pigeon, when Barry said, “One of the Sporting Clubs up here is offering a prize for the best original Paul Bunyan story... Here’s a chance for you boys to stretch your imaginations a little...”
Pretty soon we were all racking our brains to see if we could think of something about Paul Bunyan that nobody had ever thought of before, which Barry might decide was good enough to write about and send in to the contest... Different ones of us made up different things, such as: One time Paul Bunyan gave a wintertime party in a terribly big recreational center in Bemidji, and so many people answered his invitation and came that there wasn’t any place to hang their fur coats and other heavy coats, so Paul went out and blew on his horn and hundreds of great big huge antlered deer came running in from all directions, and Paul stood them up all around the outer wall of the building, each one of them facing the center, and the fancy ladies hung their fur coats and other kinds of different colored coats on the antlers, using them for what is called “costumers.” Those deer stood there patiently, without moving, with their kind eyes watching the skaters.