soakin' wet, like he'd been crying under the water"




THE LEATHERWOOD GOD


Already, in the third decade of the nineteenth century, the settlers in
the valley of Leatherwood Creek had opened the primeval forest to their
fields of corn and tobacco on the fertile slopes and rich bottom-lands.
The stream had its name from the bush growing on its banks, which with its
tough and pliable bark served many uses of leather among the pioneers;
they made parts of their harness with it, and the thongs which lifted
their door-latches, or tied their shoes, or held their working clothes
together. The name passed to the settlement, and then it passed to the
man, who came and went there in mystery and obloquy, and remained
lastingly famed in the annals of the region as the Leatherwood God.

At the time he appeared the community had become a center of influence,
spiritual as well as material, after a manner unknown to later conditions.
It was still housed, for the most part, in the log cabins which the
farmers built when they ceased to be pioneers, but in the older clearings,
and along the creek a good many frame dwellings stood, and even some of
brick. The population, woven of the varied strains from the North, East
and South which have mixed to form the Mid-Western people, enjoyed an ease
of circumstance not so great as to tempt their thoughts from the other
world and fix them on this. In their remoteness from the political centers
of the young republic, they seldom spoke of the civic questions stirring
the towns of the East; the commercial and industrial problems which vex