Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1878-01-08
How the Gospel Came to Jim.

One christmas Eve a Strange JTASedy
was enacted in the far Northwest
Away up in Montana a mining camp
was established in days when women
were as scarce in that country as they
were in the early days of the settlement
of California; there was in fact but one
woman in the camp. She was young,
of fine appearance, great physical
strength and endurance and indomita-
BILE nerve. Two years before she had
left an unhappy home in Wisconsin to
become the wife of reckless dare devil
named Jim Oaks, with whom she had
shared the vicissitudes of long, slow
journey across the intervening plains
This man just missed being a ruffian
through his wife's influence. She loved
him with noble devotion. and, although
he was incapable of like attachment,
he loved her, too, after fashion of his
own. She was made much of by the
camp; it would have been a sorry day
for the miner who should have shown
any disrespect to Minerva Oaks.
The day before Christmas dawned
lowering Toward the middle of the
afternoon huge. Numbering clouds be-
gan to loom in the northwest. A
mournful wind soughed through the
gulches. The miners, housing their
picks, shovels and pans, took their axes
into the neighboring bottoms and set at
wood cutting with vengeance. All
signs portended one of those fierce, cold
storms that occasionally descend upon
the border, arresting torrents in chains
of ice and freezing even the shaggy
coated buffaloes.
The wagons, heaped with freshly
chopped sticks of cottonwood and as
pen, had hardly distributed their loads
at nightfall when the wind, changing to
the northeast, grew stronger and
brought snow. Higher and higher it
rose as darkness came on; faster and
faster fell the snow. AS the cold in.
creased the snow was condensed into
fine particles that bit like needles into
the cheeks of belated miners struggling
toward their cabins. Still swelling in
volume the roar of the tempest appeared
to affect the earth as well as the air; the
plains and distant mountains were
shaken and the ground under the camp
trembled like the floors of dwelling in
city when heavy trucks roll by along
the pavement; the heavens swirled gi
gaDtically overhead; at length the tenn
pest became hurricane. The volumes
of pulveriZed snow in the atmosphere
were so dense and piercing and the
sible to see even a lighted window at a
few yards distance.
It was considerably past Jim Oaks
supper time. But as Oaks was the only
man in the camp who didn't. have to
cook his own meals be had lapsed into
a habit of coming late into supper, for
which fault his wife, who was not of a
complaining or nagging disposition,
never reproached him.
\ Seven o'clock. Mrs. Oaks fed the fire
from the ample supply of wood which
one of the wagons had dropped at her
door, then stepped to the pane of glass,
which formed the only window ia the
diggings, and essayed to look out into
the night. The glass was caked inside
with frost and covered on the outside
by snowdrift. Signing, the young
wife returned to her seat by the fire.
She snuffed the candle with pair of
shutters which Jim Oaks had ingeni-
ously carved out of an antelope's horn
for her last birthday present, and then
putting her hand into the bosom of her
dress she drew Out-what?
A well worn copy of the New Tesla.
ment.
manner in which she brought this vol
uIAlO AbtO viz liSho, duu, DIG
heard noise at the door, she thrust it
back again. Jim Oaks had somehow
and somewhere acquired SO rank a de-
testation of the Holy Scriptures that he
could not bear to hear them quoted
from or even mentioned. The sight of
Bible affected him exactly as the devil
was described by Pat O'Grady's grand
father to have been affected by holy
water.
Finding that the noise was nothing
hut the crunch of settling drift she
opened the little book and began to
read
For if We forgive men their trespasses;
your heavenly Father will also forgive
you.
But if we forgive men not their tres
passes, neither will your Father forgive
. our trespasses.
Come unto me all We that, labor and
are heavy.laden, and will give youIrest.
Then said Jesus unto his disciples if
any man will come after me, let hin.
deny himself, and take up his cross and
follow me.
l am the resurrection and the life; he
that believeth in me, though he were
dead, yet shall he live; and whatsoever
liveth and believeth in me shall never
die.
These passages, on which Minerva
Oaks was accustomed to dwell, were all
marked in her New Testament, and un
derscored with pencil. High spirited
and able to handle rifle or a revolver
on occasion, she was sincere Christian
j most respects and quiet in her ways
She sat, with the Testament spread
open on her lap and the Christmas Eve
; upper growing browner in front of the
lire, until nearly eight O'Clock. Then,
: mighty throe of the storm threat
ned to wrench the cabin from the foun-
tions, she started up with cry
Jim! Why, Jim was to be off at
'Y1ld Swan Gulch this afternoon. He
was going to get us some feathers for