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5
SYNOPSIS.
Enid Maitland, a frank, free and un
spoiled young Philadelphia girl, is taken
to the Colorado mountains by her uncle,
Robert Maitland. James Armstrong,
Maitland’s protege, falls in love with her
His persistent wooing thrills the girl, but
she hesitates, and Armstrong goes east
on business without a definite answer.
Enid hears the story of a mining engi
neer, Newbold, whose wife fell off a cun
and was so seriously hurt that he was
compelled to shoot her to prevent her be
ing eaten by wolves while he went for
help. Kirkby, the old guide who tells the
story, gives Enid a package of letters
■which he says were found on the deaa
woman's body. She reads the
at Kirkby’s request keeps them. wnue
bathing in mountalng stream Enid is at
tacked by a bear, which is
shot. A storm adds to the girl s terror.
CHAPTER V (Continued^
Suddenly the rolling thunder peals
concentrated, balls of fire leaped out
of the heavens and struck the moun
tains where she could actually see
them. There were not words to de
scribe the tremendous crashings
which seemed to splinter the hills, to
be succeeded by brief periods of si
lence, to be followed by'louder and
more terrific detonations.
In one of those appalling alterna
tions from sound to silence she heard
a human cry—an answering cry to
her own? It came from the hills be
hind her. It must proceed, she
thought, from the man. She could
not meet that man, although she
craved human companionship as never
before, she did not want his. She could
not bear it. Better the wrath of
God, the fury of the tempest.
Heedless of the sharp note of warn
ing, of appeal, in the voice ere it was
drowned by another roll of thunder,
she plunged on in the darkness. The
canon narrowed here; she made her
way down the ledges, leaping reck
lessly from rock to rock, slipping,
falling, grazing now one side, now
the other, hurling herself forward with
white face and bruised body and torn
hands and throbbing heart that would
fain burst its bonds. There was once
an ancient legend, a human creature,
menaced by all the furies, pitilessly
pursued by every malefic spirit of
earth and air; like him this sweet
young girl, innocent, lovely, erstwhile
happy, fled before the storm.
Then the heavens burst, and the
fountains of the great deeps were
broken open and with absolute lit
teralness the floods descended. The
bursting clouds, torn asunder by the
wild winds, driven by the pent-up
lightning within their black and turgid
breasts, disburdened themselves. The
water came down, as it did of old
when God washed the face of the
world, in a flood. The narrow of the
canon was filled ten. twenty, thirty
feet In a moment by the cloud burst.
The black water rolled and foamed,
surging like the rapids at Niagara.
The body of the girl, utterly unpre
pared, was caught up in a moment and
flung like a bolt from a catapult down (
the seething sea filled with the trunks
of the trees and the debris of the
mountains, tossing about humanly in
the wild confusion. She struck out
strongly swimming more because of
the Instinct of life than for any other
reason. A helpless atom in the boil
ing flood, growing every minute great
er and greater as the angry skies dis
gorged themselves of their pent-up
torrents upon her devoted head.
CHAPTER VI.
Death, Life and the Resurrection.
The man was coming back from one
of his rare visits to the settlements.
Ahead of him he drove a train of
burros who, well broken to their work,
followed with docility the wise old
leader in the advance. The burros
were laden with his supplies for the
approaching winter. The season was
late, the mountains would soon be im
passable on account of the snows. In
deed he chose the late season always
for his buying in order that he might
not be followed, and It was his hab
it to buy in different places at different
years that his repeated and expected
presence at one spot might not arouse
suspicion.
Intercourse with his fellow men was
confined to this yearly visit to a set
tlement, and even that was of the
briefest nature, confined always to the
business in hand. Even when busy
In the town he pitched a small tent in
the open on the outskirts and dwelt
apart. No men there in those days
pried into the business of other men
too closely. Curiosity was neither
safe nor necessary. If he aroused tran
sient interest or speculation it soon
died away. He vanished into the
mountains and as he came no more
to that place, he was soon forgotten.
Withdrawing from his fellow men
and avoiding their society, this man
was never so satisfied as when alone
in the silent hills. His heart and spirit
rose with every step he made away
from the main traveled roads or the
more difficult mountain trails.
For several days he journeyed
through the mountains, choosing the
wildest and most inaccessible parts
for his going. Amid the canons and
peaks he threaded his way with un-
erring accuracy, ascending higher and
higher until at last he reached the
mountain aerie, the lonely hermitage,
where he made his home. There he
reveled in his isolation. What had
been punishment, expiation, had at
last become pleasure.
Civilization was bursting through
the hills In every direction, railways
were being pushed hither and thither,
the precious metals were being dis
covered at various places and after
them came hoards of . men and with
them —God save the mark—women;
but his section of the country had
hitherto been unvisited even by hunt
ers, explorers, miners or pleasure
seekers. He was glad, as he had
grown to love the spot where he had
made his home, and he had no wish to
be forced, like little Joe, to move on.
Once a man who loved the strife,
noble or ignoble, of the madding
crowd, he had grown accustomed to
silence, habituated to solitude. Winter
and summer alike he roamed the
mountains, delving into every forest,
exploring every hidden canyon, sur
mounting every inaccessible peak; no
storm, no snow, no condition of wind
or weather daunted him or stopped
him. He had no human companion
ship by which to try his nettle, but
nevertheless over the world of the
material which lay about him he was
a master as he was a man.
He found some occupation, too, in
the following of old Adam’s inherit
ance; during the pleasant months of
summer he made such garden as he
could. His profession of mining en
gineer gave him other employment.
Round about him lay treasures ines
timable, precious metals abounded in
the hills. He had located them, tested,
analyzed, estimated the wealth that
was his for the taking—it was as val
ueless to him as the doubloons and
golden guineas were to Selkirk on his
Island. Yet the knowledge that it was
there gave him an energizing sense of
potential power, unconsciously enorm
ously flattering to his self-esteem.
Sometimes he wandered to the ex
treme verge of the range and on clear
days saw far beneath him the smoke
of great cities of the plains. He
could be master among men as he was
a master among mountains, if he
chose. On such occasions he laughed
cynically, scornfully, yet rarely did
he ever give way to such emotions.
.A great and terrible sorrow was
upon him; cherishing a great passion
he had withdrawn himself from the
common lot to dwell upon it. From
a perverted sense of expiation, in a
madness of grief, horror and despair,
he had made himself a prisoner to his
ideas in the desert of the mountains.
Back to his cabin he would hasten,
and there surrounded by his living
memories—deathless, yet of the dead!
—he would recreate the past until de
jection drove him abroad on the hills
’to meet God if not man—or woman.
Night-day, sunshine-shadow, heat-cold,
storm-calm; these were his life.
Having disburdened his faithful ani
mals of their packs and having seen
them safely bestowed for the winter
in the corral he had built near the
base of the cliff upon which his rude
home was situated, he took his rifle
one morning for one of those lonely
walks across the mountains from
which he drew such comfort because
he "ancied the absence of man con
duced to the nearness of God. It was
a delusion as old nearly as the Chris
tian religion. Many had made them
selves hermits in the past in remorse
for sin and for love toward God; this
man had buried himself in the wilder
ness in part for the first of these
causes, In other part for the love of
woman. In the days of swift and sud
den change he had been constant to a
remembrance, and abiding in his de
termination for five swift moving
years. The world for him had stopped
its progress in one brief moment five
years back—the rest was silence.
What had happened since then out
yonder where people were mated he
did not know and he did not greatly
care.
In his visits to the settlements he
asked no questions, he bought no pa
pers, he manifested no interest in
the world; some things in him had
died in one fell moment, and there
had been, as yet, no resurrection. Yet
life, hope, and ambition do not die,
they are indeed eternal. Resurgam!
Life with its tremendous activities,
its awful anxieties, its wearing strains,
its rare triumphs, its opportunities
for achievement, for service; hope
with its Illuminations, its encouiag-’-
ments, its expectations, ambition
with its stimulus, its force, its power;
and greatest of all, love, itself alone —
all three were latent in him. In touch
with a woman these had gone. Some
thing as powerful and as human must
bring them back.
It was against nature that a man
dowered as he should so live to him
self alone. Some voice should cry in
his soul tn its cerements of futile re
morse, vain expiations and benumbing
recollection; some day he should
burst these grave clothes self-wound
'■
^CWiceoJ Coura&e
! / Bcinilk Stay ©F Certaih^ J X
M Uho Drank dLH Conquered \
(A / ovn 9n c c Pbj qT
- .-J
about him and be once more a man
and a master among men, rather than
the hermit and the recluse of the soli
tudes.
He did not allow these thoughts to
come Into his life; indeed, it is quite
likely that he scarcely realized them
at all yet; such possibilities did not
present themselves to him. Perhaps
the man was a little mad that morn
ing, maybe he trembled on the verge
of a break —upward, downward, 1
know not so it be away—unconscious
ly as he strode along the range that
morning.
He had been walking for some
hours, and as he grew thirsty it oc
curred to him to descend to the level
of the brook which he heard below hlm
and of which he sometimes caught
a flashing glimpse through the trees.
He scrambled down the rocks and
found himself in a thick grove of
pine. Making his way slowly and with
great difficulty through the tangle of
fallen timber which lay in every di
rection, the sound of a human voice,
the last thing on earth to be expected
in that- wilderness, smote upon the
fearful hollow of his ear.
Any voice or any word then and
there would have surprised him, but
the're was a note of awful terror in
this voice, a sound of frightened ap
peal. The desperation in the cry left
him no moment for thought, the de
mand was for action. The cry was
not addressed to him, apparently, but
to God, yet it was he who answered—
sent doubtless by that Over-looking
Power who works in such mysterious
ways His wonder to perform!
He leaped over the intervening
trees to the edge of the forest where
the rapid waters ran. To the right
of him rose a huge rock, or cliff, in
sir ' 5
Mfanig I' ~ x 11 '*■ —— gn
I
I i
He Caught a Glimpse of Her White, Desperate Face.
front of him the canon bent sharply ward the bend which concealed him
to the north, and beneath him a few from her and then he stopped. Had
rods away a speck of white gleamed he any right to intrude upon her
above the water of a deep and still privacy? He must of necessity be an
pool that he knew. unwelcome visitor to her; he had sur-
There was a woman there! prised her at a frightful disadvantage,
He had time for but the swiftest he knew instinctively, although the
glance; he had surmised that the voice fault was none of his, although he
was not that of a man’s voice instant- had saved her life thereby, that she
ly he heard it, and now he was sure, would hold him and him alone re-
She stood white breast deep in the wa- sponsible for the outrage to her mod
ter staring ahead of her. The next j esty, and although he had seen little
second he saw what had alarmed her at first glance and had resolutely kept
—a Grizzly Bear, the largest, fiercest, his eyes away, the mere conscious
most forbidding speciman he had ever ness of her absolute helplessness ap
seen. There were a few of those mon- pealed to him—-to what was best and
sters still left in the range; he him- noblest In him, too. He must go to
self had killed several. her; yet stay, she might not yet be
The woman had not seen him. He clothed, in which event —. But no.
was a silent man by long habit, ac- she must be dressed, or dead, by this
customed to saying nothing, he said time, and in either case he would
nothing now. But instantly aiming have a duty to discharge.
fro-u the hip with a wondrous skill It devolved upon him to make sure
»nd a perfect mastery of the weapon, of her safety: he "as in a certain
and indeed it was a short range for sense responsible for it. until she got
so huge a target, he pumped bullet back to her friends, wherever they
after bullet from his Winchester Into might be; but he persuaded himself
the evil monarch of the mountains, that otherwise he did not want to see
The first shot did for him. but mak- her again, that he did not wish to
Ing assurance double and treble sure, know anything about her future; that
he fired again and again. Satisfied at he did not care whether it was well or
last that the bear was dead, and ob- ill with her; and it was only stern
serving that he had fallen upon the obligation which drove him toward
clothes of the bather, he turned, de- ■ her —oh, fond and foolish man!
scended the stream for a few yards He compromised with himself at
until he came to a place where it was last by climbing the ridge that had
easily fordable, stepped through It ! shut off a view of the pool, and look
without a glance toward the woman j ing down at the place so memorable
shivering in the water, whose sensa
tion so far as a mere man could, he
thoroughly understood and appreciat
ed, and whose modesty he fain would
spare, having not forgotten to be a
gentleman in five years of his own so
ciety—high test of quality, that.
He climbed out upon the bank, up
rooted a small tree, rolled the bear
clear of the heap of woman’s clothing
and marched straight ahead of him up
the canon and around the bend.
Thereafter, being a man, he did not
faint or fall, but completely unnerved
he leaned against the canon wall,
dropped his gun at his feet and stood
there trembling mightily, sweat be
dewing his forehead, and the sweat
had not come from his exertions. In
one moment the whole even tenor of
his life was changed. The one
glimpse he had got of those white
shoulders, that pallid face, that golden
head raised from the water, had swept
him back five years. He had seen
once more in the solitude a woman.
Other women he had seen at a dis
tance and avoided in his yearly visits
to the settlements. Os course, these
had passed him by remotely, but here
he was brought in touch intimately
with humanity. He who had taken
life had saved it. A woman had sent
him forth; was a woman to call him
back?
He cursed himself for his weakness.
He shut his eyes and summoned other
memories. How long he stood there
he could not have told. He was fight
ing a battle and it. seemed to him at
last that he triumphed. Presently the
consciousness came to him that per
haps he had no right to stand there
idle; it may be that the woman need
ed him; perhaps she had fainted in
the water; perhaps—. He turned to-
• to him. He was prepared to with
i draw instantly should circumstances
warrant, and he was careful so to con
: ceal himself as to give no possible op
. portunity for her to discover his
scrutiny.
With a beating heart and eager
■ eyes he searched the spot. There lay
the bear and a little distance away
prone on the grass, clothed but wheth
' er in her right mind or not he could
not tell, lay the woman. For a moment
; as he bent a concentrated, eager gaze
upon her he thought she might have
• fainted or that she might have died.
In any event he reflected that she had
strength and nerve and will to have
dressed herself before either of these
things happened. She lay motionless
under his gaze for so long that he
finally made up his mind that com
mon humanity required him to go to
her assistance.
He rose to his feet on the instant
and saw the woman also lift herself
from the grass as if moved by a simi
lar impulse. In his intense preoccu
pation he had forgot to observe the
signs of the times. A sense of the
overcast sky came to him suddenly as
it did to her, but with a difference.
He knew what was about to happen,
his experience told him much more
as to the awful potentialities of the
tempest than she could possibly imag
ine. She must be warned at once,
she must leave the canon and get up
on the higher ground without delay.
His duty was plain and yet he did it
not. He could not. The pressure
upon him was not yet strong enough.
A half dozen times as he watched
her deliberately sitting there eating,
he opened his mouth to cry to her,
yet he could not bring himself to it.
A strange timidity oppressed him;
halted him, held him back. A man
cannot stay away five years from men
and women and be himself with them
in the twinkling of an eye. And when
to that instinctive and acquired reluc
tance against which he struggled in
vain, he added the assurance that
whatever his message he would be
unwelcome on account of what had
gone before; he could not force him
self to go to her or even to call to
her, not yet. He would keep her un
der surveillance, however, and if the
worst came he could intervene in time
to -rescue her. He counted without
his cost, his usual judgment bewil
dered. So he followed her through
the trees and down the bank.
Now he was so engrossed in her
and so agitated that his caution slept,
his experience was forgotten. The
storm in his own breast was so great
that it overshadowed the storm brew
ing above. Her way was easier than
his and he had fallen some distance
behind when suddenly there rushed
upon him the fact that a frightful and
unlooked for cloudburst was about to
occur above their heads. A lightning
flash and a thunder clap at last ar
rested his attention. Then, but not
until then, he flung everything to the
winds and amid the sullen and almost
continuous peals of thunder he sent
cry after cry toward her which were
lost in the tremendous diapason of
sound that echoed and re-echoed
through the rifts of the mountains.
“Wait,” he cried again and again.
"Come up higher. Get out of the
canon. You’ll be drowned.”
But he had waited too long. The
storm had developed too rapidly; she
was too far ahead of and beneath him.
She heard nothing but the sound of a
voice, shrill, menacing, fraught with
terror for her. not a word distinguish
able; scarcely to her disturbed soul
even a human voice, it seemed like
the wiejd cry of some wild spirit of
the storm. It sounded to her over
wrought nerves so utterly inhuman
that she only ran the faster.
The canon swerved and then dou
bled back, but he knew its direction.
Losing sight of her for the moment he
plunged straight ahead through the
trees, cutting off the bend, leaping
with superhuman agility and strength
over rocks and logs until he reached
a point where the rift narrowed be- '
tween two walls and ran deeply. There
and then the heavens opened and the
floods came and beat into the open
maw of that vast crevice and filled it
in an instant.
As the deluge came roaring down,
bearing onward the sweepings and
scourings of the mountains, he caught
a glimpse of her white desperate face
rising, tailing, now disappearing, now
coming into view again, in the foamy
midst of the torrent He ran to the
cliff bank and throwing aside his gun
he scrambled down the wall to a cer
tain shelf of the rock over which the
rising water broke thinly. Ordinarily
it was twenty feet above the creek
bed. Bracing himself against a jagged
projection he waited praying. The
canon was here so narrow that he
could have leaped to the other side j
and yet it was too narrow for him to '
reach her if the water did not sweep !
' her toward his feet. It was all done in ■
I a second. Fortunately a projection on i
| the other side threw the force of the I
■ torrent toward him and with it came
i the woman.
She was almost spent. She had
been struck by a log upheaved by
some mighty wave, her hands were
moving feebly, her eyes were closed.
■ she was drowning, dying, but indomit
ably battling on. He stooped down
and as a surge lifted her, he threw
his arm around her waist and then he
braced himself against the rock to
sustain the full thrust of the mighty
flood. As he seized her she gave way
suddenly, as if after having done all
that she could there was now nothing
left but to trust herself to his hand
and God’s. She hung a dead weight
on his arm in the ravening water
which dragged and tore at her madly.
He was a man of giant strength,
but the struggle bade fair to be too
much even for him. It seemed as if
the mountain behind him was giving
way. He set his teeth, he tried des
perately to hold on, he thrust out his
right hand, holding her with the oth
er one, and clawed at the dripping
rock in vain. In a moment the tor
rent mastered him and when it did so
it seized him with fury and threw him
like a stone from a sling into the
seething vortex of tbe raid-stream.
But in all this he did not, or would
not, release her.
Such was the swiftness of the mo
tion with which they were swept
downward that he had little need to
swim, his only effort was to keep his
head above water and to keep from
being dashed against the logs that
tumbled end over end or whirled
sideways, or were jammed into clus
ters only to burst out on every hand.
He struggled furiously to keep him
self from being overwhelmed in the
seething madness, and what was
harder, to keep the lifeless woman in
his arms frvm being stricken or
wrenched away. He knew that below
the narrows where the canon widened
the water would subside, the awful
fury of the rain would presently cease.
If he could steer clear of the rocks in
the broad he might win to land with
her.
The chances against him were thou
sands to nothing. But what are
chances in the eyes of God! The man
in his solitude had not forgotten to
pray, his habits stood him in good
stead now. He petitioned shortly,
brokenly, in brief unspoken words as
he battled through the long dragging
seconds.
Fighting, clinging, struggling, pray
ing, he was swept on. Heavier and
heavier the woman dragged in an un
conscious heap. It would have been
easier for him if he had let her go;
she would never know and he could
then escape. The idea never once oc
curred to him. He had indeed with
drawn from his kind, but when one
depended upon him all the old appeal
of weak humanity awoke quick re
sponse in the bosom of the strong.
He would die with the stranger rath
er than yield her to the torrent or
admit himself beaten and give up the
fight. So the conscious and the un
conscious struggled through the nar
row of the canon. <
Presently with the rush and hurl of.
a bullet from the mouth of a gun,
they found themselves in a shallow
lake through which the waters still
rushed mightily, breaking over rocks,
digging away shallow-rooted trees,
leaping, biting, snarling, tearing at the
big walls spread away on either side.
He had husbanded some of his
strength for this final effort, this last
chance of escape. Below them at the
other end of this open the walls came
together again. There the descent
was sharper than before and the wa
ter ran to the opening with racing
speed. Once again in the torrent and
they would be swept to death in spite
of all.
Shifting his grasp to the woman's
hair, now unbound, he held her with
one hand and swam hard with the
other. The current still ran swiftly
but with no gigantic upheaving waves
as before. It was more easy to avoid
floating timber and debris, and on one
I side where the ground sloped some
what gently the quick water flowed
more slowly. He struck out desper
ately for it, forcing himself away from
the main stream into the shallows
and ever dragging the woman. Was
it hours or minutes or seconds after
that he gained the batU' and neared
the shore at the lowest edge?
(TO BE CONTINUED.)
Dictograph.
The dictograph consists of a series
of sensitive metal plates set in a hard
rubber cylinder. In its elements it Is
a telephone transmitter magnified.
Used In a business way it enables a
man to sit at his desk in his private
office alone and talk off his corre
spondence without tbe stenographer
being present. The stenographer may
be in the next room or on the other
j side of the building, but she hears the
I words as distinctly as though she
I were at his elbow, and sets them
। down. The dictograph promises to be
; of great service In detective work.
' and is already being used in that line.