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About The Omaha morning bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 1922-1927 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 10, 1922)
The Sunday Bee MAGAZINE SECTION" VOL. 52 NO. 13. OMAHA, SUNDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 10, 1922. FIVE CENTS The Woman in the Cage By Beatrice Grimshaw Hit) Papua's Teeming Wilds, a Girl of Gold and Marble and Mystery, and the Sudden Growing Up of Young GaulL THIN' Miiokr, smelling of all the forests, rose up from li e mount of ashes that Ao had piled on the ramp oven. Thrre was a thigh of young wallaby inside, ami a the native ilirred the a-he, and tilted up the oven lid ever o little with a long-forked stick, odors of baked meat, warm and mouth-watering, slipped out. 'Smell that," said Gault, the Kglishman impatiently, "It must be done." Irvine, the Australian, motioned to Ao, who dropped the oven lid attain. "loa meat," (aid Irvine, "is like pineapples. You know it'i ready when the smell gets o that you just can't keep your teeth out of it. lt' rndurahle, still." dan It I. Miked at the oilier. Though he had been tiavcl.ng the forests oi 1'aptia with Irvine for six week, he had never quite got over hi first aston ishment over the fact that the. Australian miner, bird hunter, ahellcr, any thing and nothing as to profession, nothing at alt a to birth used excellent I-" II flish. Gault was very fresh from "home;" he could not help feeling instinctively that the man he had-hired to run his expedition for him should have talked dialect or cockney, rather than chosen, cultivated lan guage a little better than his own. It was true that Irvine showed an unde niable gift of swearing on occasion; but any man could swear; Philip Gault could himself, if need were. The typical btishman's tik ni" for fine literature was not within his knowl edge. Nor did Irvine vol unteer bookish talk. He had. been engaged in Port Moresby by this globe trotting lad from England to take him through a part of the interior and let him shoot birds of paradise this being before the days of protective laws. Irvine was willing to do all that he was paid for, but, as he had allowed to Mac Pid gin, biggest man and 'hardest case" in Papua, during a "wet evening" at Ryan's hotel, he didn't see that he was bound to act governess to the Kid, even if he did have to be nursery maid. It was not within Mr. Philip Gault's knowledge that the town and, inci dentally, the territory; for Papua is one big family referred to him, after that, as "Irvine's Kid." Gault was not quite so ' young as the name might have led one to suppose. He was 22, a well-sct-up fellow with the public had poured it over the meat, set the plate on a fl.it log, and grunted at hii mailer to say that "dinner was served," "Look at this kid," thought Irvine, as he tat down on his hrel, bush fashion, and plunged a knife into the juicy meat. "He's gone through life, in a way, before he's begun it. Shacks of money, travel round the world, in all the regular places, and now the irregular ones seen all the big stage folk, all the big races and cricket matches that a fellow can want to see in his life and tiger hunted, and buffalo hunted with somebody to ntimc him through every bit of it eaten his rakes before he knrw what cake was got engaged to be married, too. Lord save him, and with it alt, isn't more than a kid still." I'pon which, having filled and emptied his capacious mouth a few times, he felt moved to repeat his thoughts aloud. Phil Gault, with entire good humor, buttered a biscuit and replied: "Awfully good of you, old thing, Don't quite sec what you're driving at, all the same." Irvine fixed him with his blue, keen gaze, which was to Phil's good-natured, impersonal look as chilled steel to -i i-icf m 45wm They say," he explained, "that there's a woman somewhere about" school stamp clear to see on his smooth, pleasant, inex pressive face. Gault had stayed late at school; it was a source of secret and inextinguishable laughter to Irvine to know that his employer had been "saying lessons and get ting whacked" scarcely two years earlier. Irvine himself, at two and twenty, had already gone through the separate careers of horse dealer, road contract or, foremast hand, pear poacher, and sandalwood trader; had his nose broken in a prize fight, strictly illegal, and conducted without rules or gloves; had been engaged to two girls, and should undoubtedly have been married to several more; had seen the world, and fought the world, and fed and kept himself while doing it, without asking a pound note from any man in the world save Jim Irvine, lie was 35 now; the tale of his wanderings and adventur ins was Odyssean and Jim could have told you what you meruit by that; but would have added, quite without rever ence, that he always did think that old bloke meaning Ulysses had too much yap about him. . . . Now, while lie lifted the oven lid again, and sniffed the seven times seven delicious smell issuing therefrom a smell that caused the curly-headed heathen Ao to bring for ward, without further words, the big enamel plate he was thinking of the newly-enlarged schoolboy who sat so com fortably on a folding chair beside him, and wa'ted to he fed. Irvine did not fancy it could be particularly good for young men just out of school to come into larse fo'rtunes, and set otT to see the world, traveling on velvet. "They're bound to get into mischief," ran hi thoughts as lie speared the savory roast on a long kniie, and landed it safely in the plate "but the smacks they get won't be the kind to teach them, and make men of them, a they'd be if there wasn't the money to reckon with. A b!ke who te on hi own will be learn nu so iu th rt$ rverv lime he riir a cropper. Not thre gilt-edk'ed kids. Now look at this kid oi mine" A a was dishing up dinner; he bad put (lie baking tin (in the hot ashes, and blown them to a n'w. and nude it. h guvy th a splash oi boding waur stirred ut the tm; l.t hardwood. "What I'm driving at," he said, "is that it would do you a lot of good if something got up and hit you." "Gold tried in the fire and all that sort of tosh. Don't particularly want any in mine, thank you. Where's the tea:" "I don't mean you're likely to get it,' said Irvine. "On the contrary, I think youll even get out of this cursed country, that you'd think so romantic, without having your head lammed by any of its romance. There's your tea; I took mine first." Gault drank from the iron pannikin, looking about him as the rim tilted slowly up. He was penetrated, more than he would have cared to say, with the romance that Irvine scorned. Night had shut suddenly down upon them a little while before; it was nearly 7 now, and the flame of the cooking fire flung butterflies of orange light against the dark surrounding walls of forest. They were in a narrow clearing formed by an outcrop of rocky soil; a small stream slipped away silently at the foot of the rocks; the opening of sky above them, like the opening of a well, was full of stars. It was hot; they sat away from the fire and kept the necks of their shirts wide open and the sleeves rolled up, but sweat, trickled down their arms and faces. There might be a breeze somewhere among the tops of the banyans and the cedars and the cottonwood trees; but dowu below, in camp, it was as still as the bottom of the sea. Gault reveled in it; he felt that he was seeing life and tasting adventure. Only that morning, traveling on a forest track, they had been ut lacked by cannibal; he had written a vivid account of it in his diary and mvm to otfer it to a newspaper when he got away ai?ain. ('Imee mouths later one of Irvine's "mates" down south received a letter mentisiiin the occurrence: "A party of bum the llaba. li'i tribe pegged spears at us it vt were coining duwn the valley; they didn't mean anything parliiul.ir, and cleared at soon as we fired into the bush, hut my kid thought we'd just (razed the cemetery fence and has been singing hymns f buns. H ever iiu e.M) They had got a doien or so ol bird of paradur and two giant rsiwarir; they had shot all. gat. us, icn iuIisv dances, and, greatly dating, a it' seemed to Gault, had vinited and been poliiely entertained in a number of more or lest cannibal towns, which seemed, on the whole, disappointingly like the towns that were not cannibal. They had had an attack of fevrr apiece Gault's, according to Ins own estimate, very severe, Irvine's Hilling "the Osmometer would have told a different tale if he had seen its reading). They had peeped at the inysterirs of the great devil temples, ren the sorcerer handling, with horrid familiarity, llu'r tamed, deadly snake familiars; pros pected for gold and found none (but the looking was the real fun), eaten strange fruits and foods, spent Leads and tick tobacco upon native curios. They had. in Gault's opinion, been drinking romantic adventures deep, at its very spring; the overdrawn black tea in the iron mug was the sweeter for it; the walUby hindquartrr was stuffed and spired with romance. Kven the fact that thev were camping in the heart of the great forest instead o( some village delighted him; for Irvine had told him that he didn't think the iiahakiri (blacks) were altogether drlighled to have them in their district, and it might, therefore, be as well to get into the bush for the night. Which was, of course, adventure, atl the more,' 1 hey were both too hungry to talk much while feeding. It was not until Gault's plate was empty, and Irvine was culling himself a last junk of tinned plum pudding, that the "kid" opened, once more, the question of his standings in the world of men. Irvine's remarks, thrown out carelessly enough, had left a scratch on his vanity. "I'm essentially as old as I ever shall be," he de clared, his pink, boyish fare, with the indetermin ate dark eyes, turned to ward Irvine's teakwood countenance. Irvine, like to many bushmen, was al most ageless; you could not have told with any certainty whether he was an old 26, or a young .V; in 10 year's time, when he would be 45, you would probably put him down as 30 or 50, or anything be tween. "Sorry to hear it," an swered the bushman. Be hind him in their own nar row corner of the camp ing ground the carriers, naked and perspiring, sat around the fire which they had built high, apparently to make themselves still hotter, and passed the large, tooled bamboo to bacco pipe from mouth to mouth. It was a "qu;ct night; no wind was stir ring1, but sometimes, in the pauses of the native chatter, one could bear some creature pig, or wandering vilage dg, per haps move with an in definite rustling through the bush. "I'm going to be mar ried in six months," played Gault, throwing down his ace. If that was not bemq grown-up", what was. Why, in a year and a half frn now, he'd probably be the head of a family. . . . Irvine, who was busy lighting his pipe, said nothing, and Gault, hi pride growing rawer and pulled a little case out of the more uneasy every moment. twag that lay beside him on the ground. "I suppose you don'.belicve mc," he said. "I do believe you, kid," answered Irvine, gravely, taking the first draw at his pipe. "I congratulate you, though you've told me before." "You couldn't quite understand, I fancy," was Gault's comment, as he fought with a refractory snap. That so:t of thing isn't much in your line But there she is." Irvine, pulling at his pipe, and watching, though per haps he did understand rather more than the Kid supposed. That catch was rusted. . . . He remembered a photo he had been in the habit of carrying with him, 13 years ago. It had been in a case, too. He remembered that the catch was so weak it would hardly hold. Use had weakened it. . . . The day he had snapped the case shut for the la-t time, and flung it into the rapids of the Strickland river, it had opened out as it went through the air; a face had looked at him from the boiling water, as the rapids sucked it down. He Jeaned over the picture of Thilip Gault's wife that was to be. A nice girl. Yes, a nice girl. Interesting. Distinguished-looking. The face that had gone down in the rapids of the Strickland river was not distinguish"" ' looking. Its ryes clutched you by the heart; its moui'i tore your soul from your body. Put distinguished no, Nice? Irvine laughed, silently, bitterly. "Glad you like her," said Gault. taking the smile to him self, He shut the case again, and tossed it in bis swa. bag. He lit his pipe; it was hicger and blacker than Ir vine's; a manly sort of pipe. Silcnre MI between the two. Gault was thinking "I should fancy he'd respect me now " Irvine was saying to himself, "Kid, kid. You havsn't even met love on the road -or off it. Well, that thoroughly nire girl wilksee to it you don't on or off, ever any more " "Irvine," said Gault in a whisper, "Yes." "Did you hear that?" The bushuun did not ask "What?" He Jerked a word