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About Valentine Democrat. (Valentine, Neb.) 1900-1930 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 17, 1911)
STEK H4SW.ROSSER I91O &Y THE CENTURY CO /IN copf BIGHT 1010 ey THE success co 15 SYNOPSIS. ' Philip Cayley. accused of a crime of frhlch he is not guilty , resigns from the irmy in disgrace and his affection for ils friend. Lieut. Perry Hunter , turns to latred. Cayley seeks solitude , where he > erfects a flying machine. While soaring > vor the Arctic regions , he picks up a surlously shaped stick he had seen in the issassin's hand. Mounting again , he dls- iovers a yacht anchored In the bay. De- icending near the steamer , he meets a Irl on an Ice floe. He learns that the Irlte name is Jeanne Fielding and that he yacht has come north to seek sign's if her father , Captain Fielding , an arctic sxplorer. A party from the yacht is ma- Jng ' search ashore. After Cayley departs 'eanne finds that he had dropped a cu- lously-shaped stick. Captain Planck and he surviving crew of his wrecked whaler .re In hiding on the coast A giant ruf- lan named Roscoe , had murdered Field ng and his two companions , after the ex- ) lorer had revealed the location of an mormous ledge of pure gold. Roscoe then : ook command of the party. It develops hat the ruffian had committed the mur- ler witnessed by Cayley. Roscoe plans o capture the acht and escape with a > lg load of gold. Jeanne tells Fanshaw , ) \vner of the yacht , about the visit of the iky-man and shows him the stick left by ? ayley. Fanshaw declares that it Is an Eskimo throwlng-stlck , used to shoot arts. Tom Fanshaw returns from the learchlng party with a sprained ankle. * erry Hunter Is found murdered and -ayley Is accused of the crime but Jeanne > elleves him innocent. A relief party geese o flnd the searchers. Tom professes his eve for Jeanne. She rows ashore and inters an abandoned hut , and there finds ler father's diary , which discloses the e ) lorer's suspicion of Roscoe. The ruf- an returns to the hut and sees Jeanne. Te Is Intent on murder , when the sky- nan ' swoops down and the ruffian flees , 'eanne gives Cayley her father's diary o read. The yacht disappears and Ros- oe's plans to capture it are revealed , eanne's only hope Is in Cayley. The icrlousness of their situation becomes ap- > arent to Jeanne and the sky-man. Cay- ey kills a polar bear. Next he finds a : lue to the hiding place of the stores , loscoe is about to attack the girl when ie Is sent fleeing in terror by the sight pf the eky-man swooping down. Measures re taken to fortify the hut. Cayley kills a wounded polar bear and receives the Irst intimation that Roscoe possesses irearms. A fissure In the ice yields up .Hunter's body and Roscoe , finding It , re- ! noves the dead man's rifle. He discovers : hat Cayley Is a human being and not a jplrlt. The ruffian Is baffled in his plan * > murder Cayley when the latter and [ eanne take refuge In the cave where a rurlous storm keeps them Imprisoned. iThey confess their love for each other , -avley , resolving to seek the ruffian and 111 him , finds Roscoe's cave. CHAPTER XXI. Continued. Probably no apparition of the mon- Bter he expected to find there no eight of him towering expectant armed , anticipating all that Cayley toped to do , and ready to frustrate it , jcould have been so terrifying to Philip as the thing he actually saw , which fcvas nothing. At least , so far as a flrst glance into the cave would re peal , his enemy was not there. Cayley shuddered , not with fear , and yet with a sensation stronger than disgust It was as if a leopard had been standing over the deserted Jlair of a hyena. A wild beast's lair ! t was and not a human habitation. \ The floor was littered with feathers and half-gnawed bones. The rocky jwalls dripped with oil soot of his Horrible rible cooking. The foul air of the jplace was actually iridescent. But jthe real horror of it lay in the fact .that Roscoe was not there. Cayley's reasoning faculties attack- Jed that blind , irrational horror with all their force. From the condition of the fire it was evident that Roscoe ! had been gone several hours. It was Almost certain that he would return fioon. Cayley's arrival In his absence really gave him an Immense advant age. ' A man always comes unwarily 'into the place he calls home. If Roscoe - coe came back now he would have no chance at all against Cayley's quick spring and the flash of the long knife- iblade. Certainly It was reasonable to expect - pect that Roscoe would wait for an other moonrlse before setting out on any serious sort of expedition , and , If that assumption were correct , he might be returning to the cave at any moment He strode abruptly back to the cave- mouth. As he did so , however , his 'eye ' alighted on something that made him pause something so strangely out of keeping with its surroundings that "it caused him or he thought that the reason a sense of recogni- 'tion , almost of familiarity. The thing which so evidently did not belong to Roscoe that It seemed almost to belong to Philip himself , was a gold locket "It lay on a flat bit of rock , which seemed to serve Ros coe's purpose as a table. The objects which surrounded it an irregular piece of raw walrus hide , an over turned bottle of whale oil. with a smudgy wick in it a saljmafcer's needle and some ravellngs of canvas , together with some scraps of food all spoke so loud of Roscoe and made such a contrast with this bit of jewelry that .Cayley's . action In stooping to pick it , up was automatic. He held It In his hand a moment as tit he did not know quite what to do hvlth it , then put it In his pocket and Vent out of the cave. Only during , the moment when It had first caught his eye had It really commanded his 'attention at all. By the time he got outside of the cave he had forgotten it Two or three breaths of the clear air outside of the cave were all he .needed to revive him , physically. Butte to his surprise they did not suffice to rid him of the feeling which he re- ' 'garded ' as superstitious , namely , the Impulse to fly back to Jeanne as fast as wing could carry him. He had every reason to believe that she was safe , he told himself. She was armed with a heavy revolver , was a good shot and had plenty of nerve. She was in a place , the only avenue of access to which would give her a tremendous advantage over any in vader. So that , even supposing the worst supposing that Roscoe's ab sence were taken to mean that he had gone to make an attack on the pilot house , there could hardly be a doubt that Jeanne would kill him. His reasoning was all based on the assumption that the pilot house was inaccessible to any wingless creature except by way of the ice chimney. Even now , when his fear for the girl was amounting to a superstition of al most irresistible intensity , it did not occur to him to question that He steadied himself as best he could and crouched down in the shelter of the big rock to await Rjiscoe's return. He had hardly settled himself here when he saw something that made him shake his head impatiently , and swear a little. It was the winking glow of an aurora borealis , off to the north. Cayley gazed at the spectacle unwill ingly , but still he gazed. And , some how , though he fought the feeling des perately , It began to assume a per * sonal significance to him a signifi cance of mockery. The whole sky was quivering with vast , silent laughter. Was it because he , with his fancied cleverness and daring In finding Ros coe's lair and waiting for his return to it , was really doing precisely the thing that Roscoe would have had him do ? Were those sky-witches laughing over what was happening up at the pilot house while he sat here and waited ? No intelligence , no sane power of consecutive reasoning can resist this sort of thing definitely , and at last Cayley's power of resistance came to an end. He sprang to his feet , at , last , drip ping with sweat , in spite of the cold , caught up his bundled wings , unfurled them and took the air with a rush. Once he had jerked himself aloft to a height a little above the crest of the cliff , it was hardly more than a mat ter of seconds before he came oppo site the dome-like mound of snow which covered the pilot house. There was no light shining out of the tynnel entrance. But that was as he had expected it to be. He made It out easily enough ; and in another moment had alighted there. "Jeanne ! " he called. It was not the exertion of flight , but a sudden intolerable apprehension that made him breathless. The word had vhalted a little in his throat. Exact ly as he uttered it he saw down the tunnel , and in , the pilot house itself , a tiny spark of fire , and heard the click of steel against flint. What the spark illuminated were the fingers of a gigantic , hairy hand. Jeanne ! " he called again , and now his voice came clear enough. "Wait a minute and I'll make a light for you. " CHAPTER XXII. In the Pilot House. Cayley had been right in assuming , as he did in his conversation with Jeanne , upon the subject , that Roscoe and the other people of the Walrus had never noticed the ice chimney , nor suspected the existence of the pilot house upon the cliff-head. Also , he had followed correctly the track of Roscoe's mind in the deduction that the two latest castaways upon this land that is , Philip and Jeanne must have perished In the great storm which began on the night when he fired the hut , and continued for so many weeks that he , like them , lost all trace"of reckoning. During the storm he had lived in the cave , much as Philip and Jeanne had lived in the pilot house on the cliff ; he had , that is to say , in some purely automatic fashion , kept on ex isting. The mere momentum of a ma ture man's vitality makes it hard for him to die. But when the storm abated and milder weather came , he bestirred himself , as Cayley did , and set about digging a tunnel of his own through the great drift which had blocked the entrance to his cave. The next time the moon came up , after he had completed the tunnel from the cave , he set out down the beach toward the ruins of the hut. It was not mere curiosity which attracted him , nor any lurking fear , but simply the hope of making some salvage from the wreckage of the hut , or possibly , from the bodies of his two victims , in case he was lucky enough to flnd them. He had no doubt at all that they were dead. His pleasure over the quantity and condition of the stores he found In the Ice cave compensated for his disappointment over not finding the bodies of his two latest victims. Evidently they had not even at tempted to use such shelter as the ice chamber afforded , for it showed no mark of human habitation at aft. They had probably wandered outside and died in on of the near-by drifts. Per haps he would find them some day. For the present however , the stores occupied his whole attention. Very methodically he set to work , carrying them off to his own cave. I 3,1S. . * ' * % ' l Watched Cayley's Flight to His Land ing Place. working without fatigue and without intermission working so long as the moonlight lasted. He was just setting out with his last load when , glancing skyward to see how long the light would hold , he caught a glimpse of Cayley on the wing. The sight occasioned him no return not even momentary of the old terror. He cursed a little because he had not his rifle with him ; the sky man soaring slowly and not very high , presented a mark he could almost cer tainly have hit. It was surprising , of course , to see him alive , but Roscoe , in his present state , never thought of looking to su pernatural means to account for the fact. Indeed , he was hardly more than a moment in approximating the true ex planation. There might well be , he supposed , up somewhere in the face of the cliff a cave , or shelter , of which he knew nothing , and easily acces sible to anyone who happened to pos sess a flying machine. Skirting the cliff and keeping well In its shadow , he made his way with his last load , back to his cave. Here he spent a few minutes cleaning his rifle , making sure that the mechanism of the breech was working perfectly , and filling its magazine full of car tridges. The moon was just setting , but the , sky was still bright enough to give him a good hope of making out Cay- ley'-s winged figure against it. Roscoe squatted down in the lee of the great hummock of ice , surveyed the heavens with keen , practised eyes , munching on a strip of dried walrus- meat which he had brought with him and waited very contentedly. He had not long to wait. Long be fore the moon twilight had gone out of the sky he saw in it silhouetted against it , the sight from which he had once fled with such mad terror the broad expanse of the sky man's wings. Instead of firing , he scrambled up to the top of the nearest ice hummock and from there watched Cayley'flight to his landing place. He laughed aloud when he saw that It was not in the side of the cliff , as he had feared , but quite at the crest of it where it was as accessible to a man who could climb a bit as to one with wings. He did not move from his attitude of strained attention , on the summit of a little ice hill , until he saw a faint glow of golden light diffusing itself from the mouth of the tunnel that led to the pilot house. Then , with that queer shuffling gait of his , which was neither walk nor run , he began mak ing his way Inshore , over the ice , to ward the foot of the cliff. Cayley's tunnel was not at right angles to the crest , but bore off diag onally westward. Roscoe had noted this fact , and he figured It out from the top of the promontory , which formed tbe western boundary of their strip of beach , he should be able to command a view straight into the tun nel. Also , there was at this point a precipitous trail up the cliff. No one but Roscoe would have called it a trail , but that was the way it existed in his mind. His calculation of the angle of the tunnel proved to be correct , for from his newly-gained coign of vantage , he could see straight into the pilot house Went Down Together. . * * ' * ' - " ' * * 1 ' * ' - and make out clearly enough two fig ures there. Once more he was tempted to fire , and might have yielded to the temp tation had not the light been put out before he had fairly got his eyes ad justed to the distance. It is to be remembered , always , that he knew nothing whatever of the ice chimney , and suspected no connection between the hut and the pilot house , except by the air. For anything he knew to the contrary , Jeanne might be able to fly , as well as Philip , or he to carry her with him upon his flights. Consequently , he did notsus pect , when he saw Cayley take to flight again , that this action had any reference to himself ; nor that the woman who was left alone would been on her guard against him. The moment he glimpsed the shadow of Cayley's wings against the stars he began making his way , cau tiously , over the crusted snow , toward the pilot house. The door was closed , but there was a light shining out through a crack beneath it. It was a glass door , but something had been hung over the glass so that he could not see into the interior. Both Jeanne and Philip had made the mistake of assuming that the only way of access to the pilot house , ex cept to Philip with his wings , was the Ice chimney. It was a natural mis take enough one that almost any but a practised mountaineer would have made. Furthermore they had no reason either of them for anticipating an at tack upon the pilot house while Philip was gone. They had been living here , now for weeks , in unbroken security. So , though the girl obeyed Philip's in- junctfon Jliterally jmd scrupulously , she did it without Ine' lTghtesT'sense of personal danger , and indeed she would hardly have had room for such an emotion even if there had been a much more reasonable ground for it. She was sitting beside the oil stove , in one of the farther corners of the room. The chimney hole was in the corresponding corner. The revolver lay on the table in the middle of the room , a few paces behind her. The pilot house door was directly in line with it , and almost exactly behind her back. The door was hinged to swing inward. When it burst open she attributed the fact to no other agency than the wind. She laid down the red-bound book upon the bench beside her and rose , rather deliberately , before she turned round. As she did so Roscoe sprang for ward to the table and seized the re volver. Her failure to turn imme diately had given him the second he needed to take in the strategic possi bilities of the room. His rifle was a clumsy weapon in close quarters. So , as he sprang for ward , he dropped it and made for the revolver instead. It only needed a glance at the girl to convince him that she was unarmed. Quite deliber ately he broke open the breech of the revolver and satisfied himself that it was loaded. Then he looked up again , blinking at the girl. It was no wonder that Carlson and Rose had mistaken her for the ghost of the man their leader murdered. She looked like her father as a woman may resemble a man , and her white ness , her fineness , her delicacy all in creased rather than diminished the credibility of the idea that she was in fact his spirit. The hand which held the revolver dropped nervously at his side. He swallowed hard , and wrung his cruel lips with his other great hand. It was then that the girl looked up into his face. It was then she uttere'd her first cry. For she saw that he did not mean to kill her. Suddenly Jeanne's eyes detached themselves from his face. A look of sudden alarm came into them , and she raised her hand to her throat , as though she were choking. She was looking past Roscoe , and straight down the snow tunnel. "Philip ! " she cried , "take care ; he's here. " The snow tunnel was empty , and for aught she knew , her lover's body might be lying mangled in the mon ster's cave. She had thought of that ; before she tried the trick. But , even if that were so , that cry of hers- might lead the monster to steal one uneasy glance at the door behind him ; and even that would give her time enough. If he had not killed Philip , but sim ply eluded him , he vrou-ld turn in stantly. That was what he did. He sprang round with a suddenness which bespoke - * spoke a perfectly genuine , commonsense - sense alarm. And then he found himself - n self in darkness. a He understood at once that he had been tricked. Without wasting the time to turn back and look at Jeanne , he a sprang toward the pilot house door. He thought she meant to attempt to rush by him , gain the snow-tunnel and throw herself over the crest of the cliff. He had not misread the sud den loathing he had seen In her when they met his face. In the open doorway he wheeled n nh got ahead of him that time. He laughed - _ ed aloud into the darkness , and then spoke to her , with a vile , jocular fa miliarity. r But he got no answer , in words or a otherwise. There was no outcry , no t stifled sobbing. Nothing at all but c sigh and whine of the wind. He moved forward , groping in the to dark , but stopped when he felt the pressure of the table across his thighs. a He could do nothing without a light. He would re-light the candle , first of all , and then he would flnd her. n He took a bit of flint , a nail and a a rope of tow from his pocket He struck a spark , but it failed to kindle the tow. It was at that Instant that Philip alighted. Philip sprang clear of his planesr left them as they were there at the tunnel mouth , and -walked steadily up toward the pilot house door. Roscoe , on hearing his voice the first time- , had dropped the arti cles which encymhered his hands and groped on the table for the revolver. Before he could put his hand on It Cayley spoke the second time. At that , wanting no weapon , confi dent that he needed none , his great arms aching for the feel of the sky man's flesh beneath their grasp , he moved a step nearer the door and waited. He saw Philip cross the hreshold. unseeing suspecting , apparently. nothing ; saw him , at last , within hand's reach. Just as he touched him he uttered a sobbing oath , and his great hand fal tered , for Philip's knife had struck through , clean to the hilt , and just below the heart. The effect of the shock was only momentary. With a yell of rage , he sprang upon Cayley , crowded him back against the wall , tore at him blindly , Hike a wild beast , and finally getting Philip's right fore-arm fairly in the grip of both hands , he snapped it like a pipestem. In a moment Cayley got round be hind him and with the crook of his good arm round Roscoe's neck , he suc ceeded In forcing him to release his grip and in throwing him heavily. As he lay , his body projected through the doorway , out into the tunnel. * rvt Philip left him huddled there , and went back to the table. He found an < * steel beneath his - - " " " handhutt was""a"full minute before he could summon his courage to strike a light , for the inferences from Ros- coo's presence here in the pilot house began to crowd upon him nojv , grim and horrible. But he struck a spark at last , lighted a candle and looked around. The reaction of relief turned him , for a moment , giddy , as the glance about the room convinced him that what he feared worst had not happen ed. But another thought occurred to him , almost at once , when he saw the cover had been removed from the \ top of the ice chimney. In his mind , of course , that repre sented the way Roscoe had come. What , If Jeanne , unable for some rea son to defend herself , had chosen , as the lesser evil , to flng herself over the cliff from the tunnel mouth ? The moment he thought of that he went out Into the tunnel , stepping over Roscoe's body to do so. He went to the edge and looked over , but it was too dark to see. The light of the au rora which still blazed in the sky , daz zled his eyes , without lighting the surface of the world below. He must go down there , in order to be sure. He had not stopped to furl his planes when he alighted , and they had wedged themselves sideways into the tunnel , still extended and so ready for flight in an emergency. He righted them and slipped his arms through the loops that awaited them. He stood for a moment , test ing the right wing tentatively. There was a play about it that he did not un derstand. So far as he could see noth ing was broken. The fact that it was his own arm did nqt occur to him. He was just -turning to dive off the cliff-head wh n , suddenly , he saw the great form -of the man he had sup posed to be dead , rise and rush upon turn. turn.Philip's Philip's knife had , indeed , inflicted a mortal wound , but a man of Roscoe's physique lets go of life slowly. He was bleeding to death , internally , but the process was , probably , retarded by his huddlqd position as he lay there in the runner. So be had lain still and awaited his chance. Cayley was standing quite at the edge of the cliff , and the man's momentum carried him over. HIa clutching hands grasped Cayley's shoulders , and they went down to gether. over 600 feet of empty space. For Cayley the space was all too little. As they went over he thought that he and his gigantic enemy were going down to death together. Instinctive ly . , and much quicker than a man can think , he swept his great-fantail for ward and flung himself back in an at tempt * to correct the balance destroyed by the great weight that was clinging to his shoulders. They were , of course , bound to go down. Neither his strength nor the area of his planes was sufficient to support . them both in the air. But in the position into which he had flung himself they would go down a little more slowly. He would gain , perhaps , precious second more. But he did not waste even an in finitesimal moment in any struggle against the force of gravity. Twlc"e , with all his might , he sent his left fist crashing against the face , the staring , horrible face , 'that con fronted his own. But still that con vulsive , dying grasp held fast They were now more than a bare 200 feet above the ice. With a su preme effort , an effort whose sudden ness availed it better than its strength , he wrenched himself free and the great weight dropped off. Another ef fort , the instantaneous exertion of every ounce of force he possessed , cor rected ( the sudden change of balance and prevented him from falling , like the ] great , inert mass he had just cast off. Trembling , exhausted , he managed blunder around In a half-circle. slanted down inland and stumbled to * landing on the beach , not 50 yards from the ice-clad ruins of the hut. As he did so , the thought was in his mind that during his struggle in tha air with Roscoe. he had heard a cry , which neither he nor his antagonist had uttered. ( TO BE CONTINUED. )