Dominion Read Free

woke early one morning and made his way out to those stretches of the trail in the mountains where no law ruled but only strong arms. When night came he made his way toward a camp and untied one of only two pack animals that belonged to the party traveling away.
    In the darkness he led the mule over the ridge of earth back to his lands. Morning found the beast learning to bear the yoke instead of other burdens.
    In this way he would clear twice as many acres that second spring as he had the first and increase vastly that year his purchase over the wilderness—where he had gone, when none other would go there, to make a home in the world where none existed before him and all said none could be made, to exist and hold him.
    For the woman he turned in other directions. At the settlement’s center was a tavern where one of three rooms could be rented by those with no other place to stay the night or, if so happened, the month. This is the same outpost where he had spent the spring before his own roof was yet ready to cover him. The proprietors of the inn were free-thinking people and had been the only ones who did not shy from him when they learned where he had bought and was building. They had even nodded on it as the scientific thing for one in his position who wished to improve it. As he did not see a way to steal a woman as you would a mule, he turned to these friends for advice as to where he might find one who was eligible.
    â€œI am looking for a woman. Do you know where I might find one?” he asked Content, the husband.
    The two looked at each other when he put this question out, and at first made no reply.
    â€œWell, you might do as I did,” said Content, “which is to search in the church.”
    â€œNo,” Merian answered his friend.
    â€œWhat do you mean no?”
    â€œThat I will not look there. I cannot go.”
    â€œOf course you can. If they are not set up for it, they are certain to make arrangements.”
    â€œThat is not what I mean.”
    â€œWhat is it you do mean, Merian?”
    â€œThat I have no faith in that course.”
    â€œStill, you should go there if your aim is a wife.”

two
    The man rises half clothed in darkness and dresses himself fully. At his fire he heats yesterday’s porridge for his breakfast, then sets out on his journey. A cold spring rain belts the landscape, and he pulls himself tight trying to keep warm. He is solitary and on his way.
    His cold form plows the gray empty roads of Sabbath morning, but he is happy to walk out here without encountering anyone. He holds his thoughts close to himself as the goose bumps on the underside of either arm, which are wrapped around his coldness. He does not consider himself to be making a sacrifice, or ask for special favor or forgiveness from Providence for this great effort in getting to the meetinghouse, but wants only to sit as a parishioner among parishioners and a believer among the devout. He will do this to gain their human company and does not think any more or less of himself for it; certainly he does not think it a thing to speak to God about in the silent talking back and forth that Protestants and Deists do with their Lord, or pagans and hypocrites with their idols.
    He wishes for and, in his mind, talks to the mule—whom he could not resist naming after his former companion, his wife, even if there were some who would not agree to that term, as they had not been wed in church or made any other formal arrangement with authority.
    He curses himself for not saddling the beast and wishes for its presence. If you were here, Ruth, he whispers against the morning wind, this road would not be half as hard on a body. He wonders now whether he should not turn back and spend his Sunday improving the hut or sorting his grain for the first planting. He frets over these constantworries, as well as the minor ones that have occurred to him only this morning. What if the congregation judges him