Northfield by Johnny D. Boggs Read Free Book Online

again.’” With that, he closed the Bible, put it back in his pocket, and walked back to the well, where he drew his water.
    My wife, she wasn’t never at a loss for words, and she wasn’t struck dumb too long by Ben Wood’s preaching.
    “That man is a preacher!” she told me, watching him sling a strap over his shoulder and haul the water bucket back to their camp, before reminding me to bring in the sugar, coffee, and flour.
    Thought they’d be gone come first light, but Ben Wood met me at the door with a handful of greenbacks.
    “I know we said we would not intrude, Mister Brown,” he told me, “but some of our horses are a little green, and my colleagues do not wish to travel all the way to the northern timbers on skittish mounts. We’d like to leave our wagon here, ride off to do some training, and return by evening.”
    Preacher or not, I figured Matilda would raise Cain about that, but before I could say one word, Ben Wood pulled a gold coin from his vest pocket and wrapped it inside the greenbacks, which he pressed into my hand.
    “Ain’t no need…,” I started, but Ben Wood had already turned around and was heading back to their camp.
    Which is how things went over the next three or so days. Matilda, she sure had no complaints because Ben Wood—directly we started calling him Preacher Wood—paid us each and every morning they was there, and he’d read Scripture with her of evenings. Like having a camp meeting at our place of evenings. And a horse ranch every afternoon, because, after the first day, they done some training at our place after they had come from wherever they rode off to each morn. Appeared to me they were teaching the horses neck-reining, jumping fences. Some of the horses seemed hopeless, but others learned fast, and those boys worked them animals, I mean to tell you. ’Course, if I had saddles and bridles like they had, I’d want my horses well trained, too.
    They all seemed nice fellows, even that Sam Wells who had startled me so when he come riding out of the woods with the wagon. Preacher Wood would come over of evenings and read Scripture with Matilda and me, and Matilda even baked an apple pie to share with his friends. ’Course, Preacher Wood, he insisted on paying for the pie, and Matilda didn’t protest too much.
    I’d come out to their camp each night, after Preacher Wood did his preaching, make sure they didn’t need anything, and we’d talk some more. Talked about lots of things, not just the country around here, but religion and science and farming and the War of the Rebellion.
    “Where are the biggest banks?” the serious fellow, the one who did the cooking, asked one evening.
    “Oh, I don’t know. You mean in the forest country?”
    “No, closer to here.”
    “Never really trusted banks,” I said, which got all of them to laughing, and I grinned and chuckled myself.
    “If there were more people like you, Joe,” the one with the Gus-sounding name said, “then men like us would….” He just grinned like I knew what he meant, though I didn’t, and the men busted out laughing again.
    “The banks?” Mr. King, the serious one, asked from the cook fire where he was getting coffee ready.
    “Oh, hear there’s a big one in Mankato. Reckon there must be a nice size bank in Northfield what with that big Ames mill on the river there.”
    “Ames?” The big fellow, the one with the pale blue eyes and thinning hair, straightened up. “As in Governor Ames from Mississippi?”
    “I told you that already, Cole!” said the clean-shaven one, the gent from somewhere here in Minnesota.
    “Hold your tongue, Stiles,” Preacher Wood said, and nobody was laughing any more.
    “Well, I think it’s his daddy,” I said, breaking the silence. “But, like I said, I know farming, not banking.”
    Preacher Wood’s grin returned. “I don’t know, Joe,” he told me, tossing me a new plug of Navy tobaccy “Were we to stay much longer, paying our way as the Lord sees