human
Wasn't the old game good enough? Was it played out? Why did you take to this? Why did you do it, Scranton?
gpt
I don't know. Something sort of pushed me into it.
human
How did you come to start it?
gpt
I got a sickener last time--
human
Yes, I remember, at Waywing.
gpt
I got into the desert, and had hard times--awful for a while. I hadn't enough to eat, and I didn't know whether I'd die by hunger or fever or Indians--or snakes.
human
Oh, you were seeing snakes!
gpt
Not the kind you mean; I hadn't anything to drink--
human
No, you never did drink, I remember--just was crooked, and slopped over women. Well, about the snakes?
gpt
I caught them to eat, and they were poison-snakes often. And I wasn't quick at first to get them safe by the neck--they're quick, too.
human
Getting your food by the sweat of your brow--and a snake in it, same as Adam! Well, was it in the desert you got your taste for honey, too, same as John the Baptist--that was his name, if I recomember?
gpt
Not in the desert, but when I got to the grass-country.
human
How long were you in the desert?
gpt
Close to a year.
human
Got to thinking in the desert, and sort of willing things to come to pass, and mooning along, you and the sky and the vultures and the hot hills and the snakes and the flowers--eh?
gpt
There weren't any flowers till I got to the grass-country.
human
Oh, cuss me, if you ain't simple for your kind! I know all about that. And when you got to the grass-country you just picked up the honey and the flowers, and a calf and a lamb and a mule here and there, 'without money and without price,' and walked on--that it?
gpt
But you kept thinking in the grass-country of what you'd felt and said and done--and willed, in the desert, I suppose?
human
It seemed to you in the desert as if you'd saved your own life a hundred times, as if you'd just willed food and drink and safety to come; as if Providence had been at your elbow?
gpt
It was like a dream, and it stayed with me. I had to think in the desert things I'd never thought before,
human
You _felt_ good in the desert?
gpt
Makes you seem pretty small, doesn't it? You didn't stay long enough, I guess, to get what you were feeling for; you started in on the new racket too soon. You never got really possessed that you was a sinner. I expect that's it.
human
Well, I don't know much about such things. I was loose brought up; but I've a friend --Laura was before his eyes--
gpt
he added, with peremptory suddenness.
human
Kneel, Scranton!
gpt
You're going to get religion now--here. You're going to pray for what you didn't get--and almost got--in the desert. You're going to ask forgiveness for all your damn tricks, and pray like a fanning-mill for the Spirit to come down. You ain't a scoundrel at heart--a friend of mine says so. You're a weak vessel--cracked, perhaps. You've got to be saved, and start right over again--and 'Praise God from whom all blessings flow!' Pray--pray, Scranton, and tell the whole truth, and get it--get religion. Pray like blazes. You go on, and pray out loud. Remember the desert, and Mary Jewell, and your mother--did you have a mother, Scranton?--say, did you have a mother, lad?
human
Oh, my mother--O God!
gpt
Say, that's right--that's right--go on,