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About Valentine Democrat. (Valentine, Neb.) 1900-1930 | View Entire Issue (July 27, 1911)
STEB HASW.R09SER COPYRIGHT" 1910 BY TMC CENTURY co COPYRIGHT 1910 BY THE SUCCESS CO 12 SYNOPSIS. Philip Cayley , accused of a crime of not guilty , resigns from the , /hich / he is ermy in disgrace and his affection for hlsfriend. Lieut. Perry Hunter , turns to Ektred : Cayley seeks solitude , where he perfects a Hying machine. While soaring fever the Arctic regions , he picks up a curiously shaped stick he had seen In the assassin's hand. Mounting again , he dis covers a yacht anchored In the bay. JJe- cendlng near the steamer , he meets a girl on an Ice floe. He learns that the girl's name Is Jeanne Fielding and that the yacht has come north to seek signs of her father , Captain Fielding , an arctic explorer. A party from the yacht Is ma king search ashore. After Cayley departs Jeanne finds that ho had dropped a cu riously-shaped stick. Captain Planck and the surviving crew of his wrecked whaler are in hiding on the coast A giant ruf fian named Koscoe , had murdered Field Ing and his two companions , after the ex plorer had revealed the location of an enormous ledge of pure gold. Roscoe then took command of the party. It develops that the ruffian had committed the mur der witnessed by Cayley. Roscoe plans to capture the yacht and escape with a big load of gold. Jeanne tells Fanshaw , owner of the yacht , about the visit of the Bky-maa and shows him the stick left by Cayte ? . Fanahaw declares that It Is an Es feno throwing-stlck , used to shoot darts. Tom Fanshaw returns from the eearching party with a sprained ankle. Perry Hunter IE fesund murdered and Cayley Sz accused of the crime but Jeanne believes him innocent. A relief party goes to find the searchers. Tom professes his love for Jeanne. She rows ashore and enters an abandoned hut , and there finds her father's diary , which discloses the ex plorer's suspicion of Roscoe. The ruf fian returns to the hut and sees Jeanne. He Is intent on murder , when the sky man swoops down and the ruffian flees. Jeanne gives Cayley her father's diary to read. The yacht disappears and Ros- coe's plans to capture It are revealed. Jeanne's only hope is In Cayley. The seriousness of their situation becomes ap parent to Jeanne and the sky-man. Cay ley kills a polar bear. Next he finds a clue to the hiding place of the stores. A cellar In the hut has a chimney-Ilk * hole leading up through the ice to an ob servatory where Captain Fielding had hidden supplies. CHAPTER XVI. Continued. about , and Jeanne , it was no base less terror , no product of the twilight and the fact that you were far from home. There was something there , slipping along from the shelter of one boulder to that of another. I found the tracks in the snow. They weren't more than ten paces away from you when I came down out of the sky. " "Was it the bear ? " she asked. "That was what you thought it might have been , at the time. " But he could see in her eyes that this was not the an- Bwer she expected. He shook his head ; that told her enough. As Roscoe fled along the beach on the night Cayley descended upon , him through the fog , there was no doubt In his mind that he had seen the ghost of the man he had murdered and the shadow of a black avenging spirit .hovering over his head. When he found that his boat had gone adrift and that his only means of getting back to the Aurora had gone with it , he dropped down upon ( beach , crawled up into the lee of a great rock and had spent the night there , his mind completely torpid with fear. fear.When When the numbness of this terror passed away , as gradually it did. he bent all this thoughts upon the Aurora and upon the possibility , not quite in conceivable , that his crew had suc ceeded in overpowering her people and were now in possession of the yacht. He tried to persuade himself that this was so and that with the coming of the dawn they would send a boat ashore for him. Of the strange figure he had seen there in the hut , so like and yet so terribly unlike the victim of his mur derous lust four years ago of that , aud of the more terrible apparition he had seen coming down out of the sky , he thought , or tried to think nothing at all. It was only a nightmare , only a delusion , natural enough when one considered all the circumstances. When the fog lifted with the approach preach of dawn , he discovered what Philip and Jeanne did not become aware of until several hours later , that the Aurora had drifted out to sea in the gale. The clean line of the hori- con was broken by nothing but the plunging masses of the ice. There was Just one chance , he thougnt , that she might still be Comparatively near at hand. Southward and eastward the horizon was unbroken , but the jutting mass of the promontory to the west cut off his view in that direction. It was possible that the gale which had destroyed the floe that formed the harbor , had also broken up the pack Ice fct the other side of the peninsula , the cide from which Cayley , on the "aping , had first approached this un- xnoya land. The yacht might be ther , > , riding safely In practically open He got up from the snow nest he ff fead made for s elf in the lee of the rock , and cctrtSously flexed his stiffen ed muscles , with the idea of setting out at once down the beach and around the headland to learn whether this last hope of his was groundless. Really , in his heart , he had no hope at all , but that fact made It easy to postpone for a little longer the putting of this delusion of a nope ne haor to tlie test of reality. The excuse he made to himself was , iliat he was ravenously hungry , and that his most sensible course would be to go up the glacier to the cave and himself .a breakfast before he did elsa * ' He was fully persuaded by that time that what he had seen at the hut last night during the storm had been noth ing but a hallucination. None the less , he knew that It would be easier to walk past that empty hut In full broad day , than in this tricky , misty , uncer tain light of dawn. He carried out this plan at once , to the point , that Is , 'of going up the glacier to the cave , building a fire there and satisfying his sharp hunger with an enormous meal. But he had not slept at all the night before , and now the warmth and the satisfaction of his appetite made his nerveless hand release the bone he was gnaw ing , and caused him to roll over be side the fire and to fall asleep. He slept deeply for a number of hours. Then , arming himself with a throwing-stick and a numDer of darts , he stepped outside the cave , intent upon his expedition to the other side of the peninsula where there was a possibility of finding the yacht. The cave was situated some little distance up the glacier , and the shortest , though by far the more dif ficult , way of reaching his destination lay , not along the beach but up through the interior valley and across the precipitous coast range of hills. It was not the natural way to go , but the fact that it was actually short er gave him a sort of excuse for avoid ing another visit , just now , to the scene of his discomfiture of the night before. He swore at himself , not so much for taking this course as for the reasons which his common sense al leged against him. His present route took him close to the gold ledge , and the sight of the Inexhaustible , precious , useless metal that remained here brought upon him for the first time , in full force , a sense of his loss , a sense of what that luckless trip ashore from the Aurora in search of that rosewo'od box had cost him. At an Increased pace he descended from the glacier , crossed the valley and scaled the landward side of one of the mountains of the coast range , to a notch where he could command a view of the sea to the westward. He saw there what , in tne bottom of his mind , he had all along been sure he would see nothing but another barren , bleak horizon. At that , for a while , his fortitude broke down , and he raved and wept and cursed like one demented. But at last , spent , sobered , conscious once more of a sharp hunger , he climbed a little farther up the mountain to a ledge , where , as his minute knowledge of the country led him to expect , he found a number of loons sitting. He killed one of these birds with a dart , and then , Mke the brute he was , ate it raw and warm. By that tJme It was late in the aft ernoon. Bravado , combined with a more real beJief than ne had yet suc ceeded In retaining , to the effect that all his terror of the night before had resulted from nothing more serious than a nightmare , led him to decide to go home by way of the beach , rather than along the difficult interior trail up which he had come. The descent from.the cliff-head to the beach was nothing to a man of his inhuman strength and activity , though an ordinary skilled mountaineer might have hesitated before attempting it. Nevertheless , two-thirds of the way down he nearly fell but for luck he would have fallen , for he caught a glimpse of a lonely figure'a quarter of a mile away , perhaps , seated upon a ledge , bending forward , chin In nand , in an attitude which recalled , and horribly echoed , that of the man he long ago had murdered. When he had steadied himself a lit tle , he made his way cautiously down to the level of the beach. His emotions were divided about equally between fear and anger , the anger existing be cause of the fear. With infinite caution he approached that lonely , unsuspecting figure , slip ping from the shelter of one rock to that of one a little nearer. Three times his left hand drew back the throwing-stick , balanced and aimed along a line that would send Its thin ivory dart as swiftly and as sure ly to that beautiful throat as the one that had found and transfixed Perry Hunter's ; and three times his mus cles braced themselves for the effort to propel it. But each time , with a breathless oath , he lowered the weapon again , and with the back of his hairy hand wiped the sweat from his forehead. The act had none of the quality of mercy in it ; it was simply the result of a logical dilemma. If the thing he saw before him were a ghost , the ghost of the man he had already mur- iered , his dart would do no harm. If it were not a ghost ; if it were what it looked more and more like as he drew nearer , a living , breathing woman ho licked his lips and wrung them with iis hand If it were a woman , he did not want to kill her. If he could be sure , could only be sure , he would drop his weapon and make one rush and hold her helpless in those great bands of his. , And with every five paces that' lessened the distance between them , that certainty grew upon him. No , wag no immaterial scirit of a man 'long dead. She was alive ; warm. He was near/jenough / now to make out the soft curve of her throat , the retreat ing and returning color which bathed cheeks and forehead. He could see the faint rise and fall of her breast when she breathed. He laid the throw ing-stick upon the ice , drew nerves and muscles taut for his rush. Then , just then , he saw the thing that made Jeanne close her eyes , the flashing sword-cut of that great gold en wing , as the thing it bore turned upon the other. Roscoe dropped down , as If he had been blasted by the sight of a sword- ed archangel , in the shelter of his rock. He lay there , prone , hugging his head in his arms. He did not rouse himself , did not succeed in forc ing his treacherous nerves and mus cles to obey his will nntU it was quite dark. Then , without a glance behind him , he arose and began scrambling madly up the broken face of the talus , and , reaching the top of It , went on and scaled the cliff itself. It was a feat which even he could hardly have accomplished except under the ex tremity of terror. For only BO long as was necessary to regain his breath , he lay panting upon the cliff-head. In the dark , rush ing along as If the precipitous trail he followed had been a well-worn thor oughfare , he retraced his way down the landward side of the mountain and across the valley. He did not pause until he found himself safe in the cave again beside the glacier. CHAPTER XVII. A State of Siege. Cayley's discovery of the tracks fur nished the last element of the drama which was to play itself out that win ter upon this stage which had been so strangely set for it. It was just three days since , flying slowly north ward before a mild southerly breeze , the ice pack below him , he caught his first glimpse of the unknown land where Captain Fielding had met his tragic fate so many years before. Three days since he had witnessed , from aloft , the murder of a man he might have saved , the man to whom , had he saved him , he might have turned for exoneration from a stain upon his name which was now ineradicable. Three days ago he had thought his world was empty , swept clean of hu man concern and human affection. Three days ago he had not known that Jeanne Fielding existed. As for the identity of the monster who had left the proof of his existence in those tracks which Philip had dis covered in the snow , they of course had no certain knowledge ; neverthe less , they entertained but little doubt that he was Roscoe himself. The foot prints were immense , Cayley said , and their distance apart bespoke the stride of a giant If It were Roscoe who had been crouching there behind the boulder , then it seemed to them unlikely that he was here alone ; unlikely that he had not at least two or three of his crew with him. That idea , when It first occurred to them , brought little added terror with it. The person of the monstrous mur derous ruffian , who was the chief , dwarfed his subordinates to pygmies. Yet when they came to think over the situation , reasonably , this uncertainty as to the number of their enemy proved a vital element in it. It put an unequivocal veto upon Cayley's first plan , which was to start out at once and take the aggressive against their enemy , before he should have time to move against them. This bit of beach where the hut stood was practically fortified. The cliff behind it was absolutely sheer , and was capped with deep , perpetual snow. Half a mile to the westward was the promontory , and about half a mile up the beach from the hut , to the eastward , the glacier projected its ice. masses in a long floe out to seaward. This glacier provided the only practicable means of entrance to the Interior valley and the ledge whrfre the gold was. By means of a large scale map , Cay ley pointed out to Jeanne this advan tage of their position. "So long as we stick to this bit of beach , " he said , "we can't be rushed nor surprised. No one can attack us without either com ing down the glacier at one end , or around the promontory at the other. From either direction they've got to approach without cover. Of course If there are a lot of them , we sna'n't have any chance. But it may be there's only one , and it's likely that there are not more than three. " "But at night , " said the girl , " at night there'll be nothing to prevent their coming as close as they please. They may be out there , not a dozen yards away. " "They're not doing much if they are. We're securely barracaded here , and they can't attempt to break in with out giving us fair warning. Unless there are too many of them we should beat them at that game. No ; the time to look out for them Is when we're outside the hut , out on the beach do ing the things we'll have to do bring ing in firewood , looking for more game , and so on. " "Shall we have to do that ? Can't we just stay In here , safe ? " "The daylight will answer that ques tion for me , " he said. "We must make the most of it A month from now there'll be but little. We musn't make prisoners of ourselves until the winter does it for us. There is one thing , though , " he added thoughtfully after a little silence , "one thing that I must do at once , and that is to destroy these sheds where they kept their stores. They would furnish a cover as good a cover as any enemy could ask for. They hinder our view up the beach. " "How long do you suppose it will last ? " she asked , in a voice that shook a little. "How long can it last ? How long can we live like that , even sup posing that our watch is effective and that they aren't able to surprise us ? " She clasped her hands , with a shud der , and gripped them between her knees. "Oh , if it would only happen soon , " she went on , "whatever it is ! " "What I don't understand , " said Cayley , "is why they haven't attacked us already. Why have they waited until we are fortified and secure ? Why didn't they attack us yesterday mornIng - Ing when they would have found us helpless ? " "Surely , " said Jeanne , "he couldn't have hoped for a better opportunity to attack me than he had when I was alone there in the twilight , before you came flying down'out ' of the sky ; and you said he was quite near. Why do you suppose he didn't ? Why do you suppose he waited ? " "And even after I came down , " said Cayley , "I was helpless for a minute while I was getting clear of my planes. Yes , that was his chance , and yet he waited. After we had gone , he ap parently scaled the cliff , for his tracks led right up to it , and then disap peared. It's not quite so precipitously steep there as it is here , but I would hardly have dreamed that a human being could climb it. " "He's afraid , " said Jeanne after a little thoughtful silence , "simply afraid. But if he's the man we think he is , it wouldn't be a human fear. It must be superstitious In some way. It wouldn't be wonderful if he felt that , after the two glimpses he had of you. I remember how I felt at first when you alighted on the floe beside me. He's seen you twice , remember. The first time at night in the fog ; the second time in broad day , with the sun on your wings. No , it isn't strange if he thinks of you , not as a man at all , but as a sort of terrible angel keeping guard over me. When [ go''very long without seeing you , or when I see you in flight , I get to think ing of you in that way myself. " "If that's the way he thinks of me , " said Cayley , "we'll try not to disabuse him. A belief like that is an item on our side of the ledger , certainly. And we haven't any such balance in our favor that we can afford to throw an advantage away , even a small one. " Really the balance of advantage be- I * 1 "H 't Afraid * " SaidJwnne , Afttr a Llttl * Thoughtful Silence. tween them and their enemy was amazingly even. They had the hut , the enemy the stores. They had Cap tain Fielding's journal , their enemy the experience and practical knowl edge of the country. They were two , with but a single weapon between them. Their enemy , for aught they knew , might be one or a half a dozen ; and how armed , they did not know. Fortunately , no prophetic vision en abled them to anticipate , on that first evening , the length of time that that precarious life and death balance would maintain itself. They had agreed , Philip and Jeanne , that the only thing to do was to wait and to maintain an unwinking vigilance. But both of them thought of the duration of this wait In terms of hours , or , at most , days. Had they foreseen that it would stretch itself out Into weeku and months , they might well have des paired. There were two things that kept them from succumbing to despair. The first was that they never really permitted themselves to hope , to in dulge in any thoughts of a summer's day when their horizon should be cut by the spars and funnels of a ship bringing relief. They were simply going to live one day at a time. For every day that they could snatch out of the hand of death , they would give thanks. It was the only attitude pos sible for people in their condition. And the thing that helped them to maintain it was the abundance of nec essary routine occupation. They di vided their day into watches. Cayley slept from four o'clock in the after noon until midnight and then kept watch alone , as the girl had done , un til eight. During that period they re mained inside the hut. The day , from eight until four , they spent out of doors , when the condition of the weather made this possible , either at work or merely tramping up and down for exercise. At first there was a good deal of work to do. Tearing down the sheds which clustered about the hut , and reducing their frames and planking to fire-wood was an arduous task , but he worked at it until It was done , Jeanne standing sentinel all the time. When it was done , they were prac tically secure against surprise , for from their windows , with the aid of a field-glass which Cayley had found in the observatory , they were able to sweep the whole beach absolutely clean , in both directions. And almost every day while the light lasted , with Jeanne , armed with the revolver , keeping watch before the hut , Cayley took to his wings and patrolled the beach , from the glacier to the promontory , high up above the level of the crest of the cliff. His flight was always along the same track. He never winged his way in land nor out to sea. There were two reasons for this. He dared not go so far away from Jeanne that a flash and a swoop would not bring him to her side. The other reason was , that if a superstitious fear of this great man-bird were really what deterred their enemy from at tacking them , It was well to let him believe that immunity from this portent tent could be secured by keeping away from this particular stretch of beach. As the shortening days sped by and began to get themselves reckoned into weeks , the conviction grew upon Philip and Jeanne that their securest protection lay in his wings , in the terrorizing effect upon their invisible , silent enemy of the majestic winged apparition which was so often seen soaring in midsky above the hut and the little stretch of beach surrounding it. Something was protecting them evidently. Almost every week brought some evidence , not only of the exis tence but the nearness of their enemy. They never actually caught sight or sound of him , but some times when the wind blew from the right quarter they could make out with their field- glass , a wrack of brownish smoke , such as would be given off by burning whale oil , drifting down from some where along the glacier , and made visible by the dazzling whiteness of that background. And sometimes they saw track in the newly fallen snow , never coming very near the hut , but trespassing a little way , either down from the glacier or up from the headland , upon the stretch of beach they were de fending. They never found the tracks 3f more than a single man , and these were always the same. So that they : ame to believe , although they could not know , that they bad only one man to deal with. They sometimes speculated on the luestion whether he was Roscoe or some other member of the Walrus : rew ; really , in fact , they found it impossible to hope that it was any ather than he. They got proof of his identity , or ? /hat amounted to it , along toward the * md of October. Cayley's keen eyes caught , one day , from up aloft where le was soaring , the glint of something m the beach near the foot of the leadland. He circled down in a long > weep , caught it up without alighting ind mounted into the air , a trick of lercnautics which made Jeanne , ac- justomed as she was by now to see- ng him in flight , catch her breath a ittle. c ittle.When s When he descended and alighted jeside her a few moments later , he showed her a sheath knife , the haft of srhich" was a rudely carved walrus c : usk. The hand of the last user of it lad had blood upon it and its imprint ipon the surface of the ivory was jlainly to be seen. The lines in thei jalm were traceable and , lengthwise , Uong the side of the handle , the jrint of an Immense thumb. S "Yon see , " said Cayley quietly , "he vas using this knife left-handed. " The girl paled a little as she handed the weapon back to him , but she spofc * quietly enough : "It's good to know. " she said , " most a relief. " CHAPTER X.VIII. f An Attack. The fact that their enemy alone and that he was Roscoe himself was responsible for the conviction that Cayley's wings were all that stood between them and an attack. No terror attributable to human causes would have held back that solitary and altogether desperate out cast The thing in the situation which caused Cayley the most uneasiness was the fear that some time or other Roscoe would solve the mystery , would see him In the very act of taking to the air. This fear suggested an expedient to him one day as he was flying along near the snow-crest ed edge of the cliff. "I don't know why I never thought of It before , " he said to Jeanne as he alighted beside her a moment or two afterward ; "but I've got it now the way to prevent Roscoe from every "What Do We Do to Sentinels Who \i Go to Sleep ? " solving the mystery of your guardian angel. I thought of it when I saw the mound up on the cliff-head that Is formed by the observatory. It can't be buried so very deep in the snow because the mound isn't so very big. I'm going up there now to dig it out enough , at least , so that I can take wing from there. " "You never can dig out enough snow to get a running start up there , " she objected. "I sha'n't have to. I'll just dive off the cliff. " "Philip , you sha'n't ! " "Why not ? " "You know what you told me your self. That none of the big birds can take to the air without a running start ; and about taking pelicans and birds like that up into high buildings and throwing them out of windows , and how they were always killed. " "That's because they've only got instinct Instead of intelligence. None of their family had ever been thrown out of windows before , and they didn't know what to do. But I can get my start quite as safely that way as any other. Oh , yes , I've done it. Do you imagine , Jeanne dear , that I'd take an unnecessary risk so long as my life is the only possible protection there is for yours ? " He spent the rest of the day tun nelling out from the observatory. He did not dig in the snow ; he simply packed it , gradually enlarging the space from a section the size of the pilot house door to a space at the cliff's edge wide enough for the full spread of his wings. Jeanne was watching on the beach when he made his first flight from this aerie , and , In spite of her con fidence In his powers , she endured a horrible moment or two. For he came hurtling down , head first at an angle Df 60 degrees ; and he had traversed two-thirds of the distance to the beach before his line deflected outward and began curving up toward the hori zontal. When she saw that he was safe , : hat he had really done the thing he lad said he could , she dropped down apon a bear-skin , which was spread Defore the hut , and shut her eyes , for vhat she had seen had turned her a jit giddy. That feeling passed in a moment 3he opened her eyes and lay , stretch- Jd at full length , upon the bear-skin , vatching him as he wheeled and lipped , then towered aloft again In .hat fading violet sky , supremely nasterful , majestically dominant of ; he unstable element he had con- luered. She sat up suddenly , erect , upon he bear skin , with the realization that t was nearly dark. Their hours of [ aylight were getting very scanty low. Today's allowance was gone , al- hough it was not yet three in the aft ernoon. She looked aloft for Cayley , but : ould not see him. Then , the next aoment , she heard the whine of the Jr through his rigging , and he sailed [ own on a long slant and alighted be- ide her. He got clear of his planes with an inaccountable air of haste , and held iut both hands to help her rise. "What do we do with sentinels who o to sleep on duty ? " he questioned rith a laugh. "I wasn't asleep , " she said contrite- " 7 , "but it was just about as bad. I , -as thinking " She paused there , hen added , "about you. Whaf s the entence of the court ? " Already he had his wings folded up nd was handing them to hf- CTO BS CONTINU ]
