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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Exeter Times-Advocate, 1931-11-19, Page 3THB MXBTER THnisDAY, m SYNOPSIS -CHAPTER VIII ** CHAPTER VI cabin into a looked three told ^Volf” the tiny glance at attempt to. Jive of this appalling a little space he .questions, What tragedy lay beneath surface Tact that she had- something, from some- “I knew you were in I saw that, down in any what wag your purposebe­ lt was falsehood from beginning to end, And by a girl. These Aurore’s work. Old too clumsy, too guile- wooden Flemish, shoe, get your THE CANADIAN SHREDDED WHEAT COMPANY, LTD. was now to be paid, out her hands to him in gestsure - of entreaty, hardened, In that mo­ whistling to had located. on BY WILLIAM BYRON MOWERY James Dorn, aerial map maker, as­ signed to a territory in the north­ ern Canadian Rockies lives alone in his camp on Titan Island. Kansas Eby, his frjend for the , ‘past six yelirs was stationed at ^Eagle Nest, two hundred miles • east. Kansas ' came over one night to a dance that the Indians /were having on the station platform. When the .midnight train pulled in he seen a girl ,come out and glance hurriedly around and then disappear into the darkness. Kansas followed liurriedly but failed to find any - ..trace of her, He told his friend ;Dorn about it and the same night Pere Bergelot, a trusty metis ar­ rived with the girl. The girl, Aurore McNain, a«ks Dorn to go to a lonely lake in search of her father and she wish­ es to accompany him. When they arrive at the cabin ■there is no sign of habitation. The earliest spring flowers were out, a riot of colour everywhere, and the air was tinged with their subtle fragrance* Dorn tramped through beds of dainty Arctic prim­ ulas and1 wake-robins and golden av­ alanche lilies. On a spruce his sharp eyes saw where a grizzly of 'hugh paw had scored the bark a couple of weeks ago to start a flow of sap; and where a snowshoe rab­ bit had girdled a 'birch sapling twelve feet above the ground, indi­ cating the depth o the winter snow. When lie was twenty steps from the cabin he noticed a furry little animal nosing about the dopr. It whirled, saw him, fled into the woods’ with a shrill kee-yee-yee of terror. A cub fox! suddenly broke, little flash of never have been cabin if human He strode on up, pulled the latch her father here, No one had been living here. The whole story about her’father and the ’breeds' and the rescue trip was a conspiracy tween her and old Bergelot. a In great spirals and dives he dropped down thousand feet. Aurore jhiin that the cabin was the centre island/ biggest of the group. Dropping the controls, he thumbed his glasses and searched the pines below. Not a sign of human habitation. If one was there it was certainly ‘weirsnuggled .away. Puzzled, he turned to Au ore, She loo had stripped oft’ her goggles ana iva» looking down into the ever­ greens as lip flew slowly over them. Suddenly she clapped her hands and She saw rather than heard her cry: ‘'There-—there it is!” * In wild excitement she leaned for­ ward and pointed. Looking along Iier finger Dorn spotted it—a cabin .nestling under four huge pines and .all but hidden .by their interlocking "branches. Picking out a cove on the island’s eastern side, he zig-zagged, down, Slit the water at a Ion: graceful as a swan alighting, and laxied into g, diagonal, the shallows. Standing on the" cockpit see the cabin a hundred in the mossy trees. Its No smoke spiral- edge, Dorn could .yards back •sdoor was closed, led from the chimney. Pie cupped his hands and shouted. 37 o one appeared. No sign of life. Until this moment he had doubt­ ed Aurore’s story, had believed someone was waiting for her and that the ’breeds was at ■<of her trouble, cabin seemingly ■®d, his opinion swerved and he be- • Sieved Sather; 3‘escue . “I’m that here the part that danger from most a minor But now, with lifeless and desert- the ca- I’ll her statements about her and fear smote him that had come too late. going ashore,” he announc- . ed, turning to Aurore, and'ad'ded, to y-esassure her, “Your dad’s probably given them the slip and left here, but I’ll make sure.” » She suggested quickly, “We’ll .both go.” He did not know what eyes might "be watching them from covert of w-oods, or what grim thing the bin might house. “.No! You’d hotter stay here. •go alone.” In the canvas folding canoe he nqiuckly paddled ashore. With the ■rifle at alert in his 'hands he started aip a faj-ht mossy path leading inland £rom the cove. Those hundred yards were a test .of nerve for Dorn. If the ’breeds .were in that cabin they were warn- :efl, and watching him. iThey would .shrewdly Wait till he was within a lew steps o.f the door and kill him ^at pointblank range. But death had brushed Dorn often in his a'ir work, and his nerves were steel wires; and a man who a dozen times has aiearly been hit by a mountain-side .as' apt to be contemptuous of a rifle bullet. ' The little island was hushed and .quiet. Squirrels still on their den trees, scratching themselves awake, .^sliped back into their holes, when they glimpsed 'him.' Kinglets and siskins were busy hunting break­ fast; A; foolhen hopped; Upon a branch overhead, so tame that he could have reached up and touched Jier with his rifle as he passed by. There whs practically t no under­ growth; Dorn could vistas under t’he great Ids mountain roaming come upon. so mossy wood stwo inches thick carpeted, the ground, padded the rocks, mantled the ugliness of the down-timber. Over everything it spread its lux­ uriant velvet, and even reached.1 up ilib pines to their first branches* Eestoons of a gray mist-like moss jtu.ug from thh trees, and third kind here and there <nishion-like domes on the long In all never wilci- A "green plushy sphagnum inches see- for trees, he had a little Still a grew in ground* All Dorn’s tension That keen-scented wilderness would playing abound the beings were inside. stepped in. His glance went first to the bunk, then swept around' the room. He saw a doorway second room, walked over, inside. No one was there. The simply was deserted. And the sur­ rounding woods and the whole is­ land had that intangible feel, that peaceful silence, of human abandon­ ment. Hurrying back to the plane, Dorn told Aurore what he had found, took her ashore and up the path, and then began to look for telltale signs. What first aroused his curiosity was the cabin itself. It was a com fortable affair, not at all like the usual prospector small home-than (month or two. double tiers of between with .stamped moss, the ibeargut panes had rotted away. .Besides a red-rusty stove, it had a fireplace where on chill evenings a man might indulge his primitive love of gazing into leaping flames. There were shelves for grub pails, and niches in the walls; .a settee, chairs, hall tree, ana other pieces of furniture, all handmade of unjbark- edi wood. Dorn thought, dogmatically: “No prospector’s camp is this. And no Indian or meti built it, either. It was built 'by a white man who liked his comfort and was willing to work for it. He signs lived great ers had invaded the cabin and spun their large webs from the. rafters. A “seveb-thbusand-l'oot rat,” which had built its nest in the stove, was timidly peeping out of the .draft in­ take at the two I human intruders. There was moss on the door-step rock—green and undisturbed. The paths leading away had sprung up the had the that Dorn’s camp; more like a a shack built for a It’s avails were in ■split-logs, filled in clay and It had five windows, though glanced about for detailed which might indicate who had here and when. A number of black-and-golden woods spid- her in hasn’t with violets. Both bunks, in in the large and small rooms, spruce-tip mattresses; but needles, were so old and sere they crumbled to dust in fingers. “Aurore!” He whirled to astonishment. “This caibin been used in several .years!” ' lAuryre heard him, ibut as one walking in a dream. She was glid­ ing about the cabin in eager, wide- eyed rapture; standing on tip-toe at the shelves, peeping into the niches, her eyes a-sparkle; laughing but with a strange 1 catch in her voice, as she glanced at herself in a cracked olclz mirror. ' Dorn had been astounded by her pointing out the cabin half an hour t ago. The absurd thought had flash­ ed across his mind that she once had lived here. He had pushed it aside then, ias impossible. No Indians ever hunted in this region; only a ‘few prospectors1 had penetrated it. But impossible or not, absurd or not, he knew Aurore had lived here. For even as he watched her she flit­ ted over to a niche above the bunk and drew out an old pig-skin book of trout flies and gut leaders' brittle aS glass with age. “Good Lord!” he breathed to him­ self, remembering how her if Inger had gone unerringly up across his map. riel* Here! On another, ihg still at the signs of neglect, she whs puzzled by the plain evidence of cabin’s unocqupancy, she showed the slightest concern in finding father gone. A truth gradually dawned upon Dorn as he stood watching From her strange actions and cabin's deserted lonliness there one and only one conclusion draw. Ho did not want to believe it, but sheer1 facts compeiledi him. "Aurore had never expected to find “She’s travelled the old Car­ trail! iShe’s lived here, the heels of that discovery a dozen times more amaz- Aurore was not looking not the not her her. the was to “Afraid That I’d Turn o From, the doorway of ' room Aurore happened to ' Dorn and marked, the expression on his features; and stopped suddenly ' in her rapt eagerness, andi stood ’ looking at him, stock-still, frighten- 1 en, realizing that he had seen thro’ ’ the deception, and that the inevit- ' able fiddler She held a humble ' Dorn’s face • meat he could think of nothing but * that he had been tricked. 1 “Well,” he said in cold level voice, “it’s some solace to remember that I didn’t quite swallow that story of yours.” He would not move; it was Aur­ ore w.ho came to him. She came up very close, slowly, and with visible effort made herseslf look up to meet his eyes. “Yes, I lied,” she confessed, with no pretence or evasion. “lit was shameful and wicked. >But I had to lie. You’d never have brought me if I had told you the------1 don’t believe you would have, and I did­ n’t dare take chances,” She was penitent, and afraid 'of his anger. Dorn gave her credit for penitence, and as she stood there so very near thought it her not to ticular, to f ish charms. ward that even in her great need of him Aurore would not cheapen her­ self by doing' that. “Because I was a girl,” she went on, “you took what I said on trust. It hurt me, hurt worse than my hav- I ing to lie. And I’ll never forget ' how you spoke up, without a single | thought of the trouble and danger ,to you, and said you’d go. That was like a stab- “Don’t bother about having trick­ ed me; I erased myself from this equation,” 'Dorn interrupted, in curt I tones which betrayed that he had not, not entirely. “If you'll tell me what’s next, I’ll set about it and then get out of the road.” “What’; tile road ... I . ... ” Aurore ed by his words. ’ he understood this situation ' and he spoke what he thought: “You came up.to this lake to meet somebody. He evidently hasn’t ar­ rived yet. I’ll see to making you comfortable hero before I go.” “But I didn’t expect to meet any­ body----she started to deny. “What? You didn’t expect—what “I was trying to get away—-away from somebody.” For a moment or two Dorn could merely stare at Aurore, doubting if he had heard her aright. The first rays of the morning sun, slanting in through a window, just touched her head and turned her hair to shim­ mering brownish golden, and Dorn stared at that sunsheen and then at her eyas. Even in his amazement he could not fail to notice the can­ dour in what she said, the sincerity in her voice. She was speaking the truth, and the truth staggered Dorn, Not to meet but to get away from somebody^ Not to join a man here in this mossy wildwood of great ' pines and go into his possession. That was her 'plain meaning. All Dorn’s elaborate structure of restraint upon himself and of jeal­ ousy against the man he thought he was delivering her to fell to the ground. He was -silent, trying to encompass this new revelation. Aur­ ore mistook the'cause of his silence, and she asked him resitantly: “Do you think my—my coming here Is just a—foolish caprice?” “Good Lord, no!” He had a swift memory of the fear in her eyes when she stood under the electric torch of his tent, and his words sprang out spontaneously, Then he added more seriously: “No, of course I don’t think that. You had some real reason. You say, not to meet some­ body!” He wanted her to repeat those words. “No one is coming here. I fled. From , . * trouble. I escaped to Dad Bergelot’s. He persuaded mo to corn© across to yon because you? an avaitor—you could take mo away quickly, and leave no trail.” To himself Dorn was repeating: “Yon fled, that’s why to see you you wanted n’t date stop even to change clothes —till you came to my tent.” As though to confirm his thoughts, ho asked Aurore, “You were afraid of him, face upturned, he still more creditable of try, in any smallest par­ sway him with her girl- . He 'remembered; after­ ofnext . . . You—out don’t understand seemed bewilder- But Dorn thought now, From trouble, Then you didn’t want anyone at Titan Pass—'because to disappear* You did- being followed? “I was in dread. of that. ’A hundred questions were gallop- ing through Darn’s mnd. What was this pursuit she dreaded? Whom had she fled from? How had she known about this, cabin so well that she couid guide him to it up across two hundred miles of wilderness as straight as the flight of a teal en travers? this mere fled from body? He said some dread tent, ’’But in coming to this lake?” “To hide. To*1 find , sanct­ uary. I’m going to. live here.” “Live here? Yom—alone?” “Yes, alone,” It seemed so incredible to Dorn that a girl should alone in the heart wilderness that for forgot those other “If you really mean, it it can be possible you mean that, why didn’t you tell me yoiir intentions down in my tent? I’d have made you up an outfit—camp stuff and food-— from my things. How on earth do you expect . , . nothing but a por­ cupine could find a fheal in this cabin!” “Dad Bergelot put a pack for me in your airplahe. That’s why he stayed behind when you came back to me at the tent.” Dorn started. “Hmmph! While you were tricking me you did the thing up brown!” He was a more than a little mortified at being taken in so neatly, details were Bergelot was less; an old “Well, I’ll go down and pack,” he said, and turned -on his heel and left her. He did not mean to be abrupt. So many bewildering questions were pulling at him, so many vistas had suddenly opened up and new sen­ sations tumbled in upon him, that he was somewhat confused, and act­ ed without thinking. As he went down the path Dorn •noted, .but subconsciously, that who­ ever had built this cabin had chos­ en a superb wilderness location. The island was free from the scourge of mosquitoes and brule flies. The fun­ nel-shaped contour of the north and south passes meant a stiff surface breeze every day, blowing the in­ sects away. Through- rifts in the trees he caught glimpses of the Silver1 Hawk ahead. A gray smoke was curling up from the cold lake waters. Where shad and mayfly kissed the surface, trout were leaping in silver flashes. Water birds—duck and cinnamon teal and white wavies and a host of others—'Were flickering back and forth across the lake. Eight hundred yards out he Saw the antlers and flat head of a moose swimming lei­ surely toward the cove. Having browsed the night before on a bush­ el or two of frosty twigs high up in the moutains, the animal was re­ turning to the island for the day to escape the insect pests. In the fusilege cubby Dorn found the bundle of camp things which Bergelot had secreted there for Aurore. Lifting it out, he smiled wryly at the thoroughness of her tricking him. His smile faded when lie unbuck­ led the canvas and saw the pathetic meagreness of the outfit. A skillet, a couple of pans ,a hair comib, some fishing tackle, an H. B. belt-axe, two worn blankets, food to last a week or ten days at most—that was (Continued Next Weak) How did you get breakfast so quickly?" “Why, I’m serving Shredded Wheat, of course. I just take the biscuits from the package and serve them with cream or milk; sometimes I add fresh or stewed fruits. If you’d like a hot breakfast I can prepare it in a jiffy: Shredded Wheat crisped in the oven while I heat some milk to pour over it. Oh, I’m a friend of Shredded Wheat! It’s ready cooked, ready to serve; and it’s just as delicious and nourishing for lunch as for breakfast. SHREDDED WITH ALL THE BRAN OF THE WHOLE WHEAT CENTRALIA (Intended for last week.) The monthly meeting of the M.S. was held in the basement of the United Church on Tuesday, No­ vember 10th. With the use of a hymn, Mrs. W. Isaac, leader, open­ ed the meeting and all repeated the Loi’d’s Prayer. Thie Scripture les­ son from Galatians 6th chapter was read- by Mrs. Essery*. The devoitioual leaflet was read by Mrs. R. Smith. Missionary papers were read by Mrs. G. Hicks and Mrs. A. Isaac. Hymn. W. The talk on Study Book was given by Mrs. A. Isaac, closed with president. Mr. and Harold and ed at Ripley on the Mrs. Mr. DIED IN MITCHELL all. wife her year, at Mitchell in her 7Sth was born in Darlington In IS85 with her first Will. Mitchell they moved 'Mary Grace Jewell, beloved of Robert McLaren, died home in Deceased County, husband to Mitchell where Mr. Hill died the same year. In 189 5 Mrs. Hill was married to Robert McLaren. Be­ sides her husband she is survived by two sons and a. daughter. HURON COUNTY HAS DECREASE IN CRIME Statistics Show 90 Fewer Convic­ tions’ During Past Year; Juvenile , Crime Dess Contrary to the general belief that depression and unemployment increases crime figures just releas­ ed by County Magistrate Reid for the federal year ending .September 30th last prove pit st the contrary. In Huron county during the period there wet© 394 convictions for of­ fences of all lcinlds, as compared with 493 for the same period a year ago. Summary convictions were 287, as compared with 383; convictions for indictable offences, 64 as com­ pared with 60, a slight increase, While the number of convictions' in juvenile court decreased from 50 to 42. There were but 37 convictions under the Liquor Control Act ill thisT Canada Temperance Act comity during the 12 months. The figures for a year ago are not available, but it is known a marked decrease, had been recorded.. The report has been forwarded to Ottawa. The meeting was benediction' by the G. F. Penwarden, Lorne Hicks visit- Siunday. Assem- “dollar attena- Conference of Pentacostal biles of Canada condemns day” services, at which each ant is expected to contribute this amount. (Makes those who can’t afford it feel dolorous. . R. E. PICKARD C. V. PICKARD Exeter, Ont. Representing at 60 freedom from money troubles leisure for sports and travel. . . contentment in tlie sunset years of life . . . these are rewards brought within your reach by The Great-West Prosperity Policy Example: Man, age 25, deposits $313.50 annually. At age 60 he draws an income of $100 every month for life or a guaranteed lump sum of $14,300—plus substantial accumulated profits. In the event of early death, his family is amply protected. The policy also affords numerous other appealing features. Make sure of your future—-NOW! 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