HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Exeter Times-Advocate, 1931-11-26, Page 3THE OOTK TJMBS-ADVQCM1
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| “The Silver Hawk”|
||| by WILLIAM BYRON MOWERY
SYNOPSIS
James Dorn, aerial map ma^er, as
signed to a territory in the north-
. ■era Canadian Rockies lives alone
' in his camp on Titan Island,
'Kansas Eby, his friend for the
past six years -was stationed at
.Eagle Nest, two hundred miles
«ast, Kansas came over one
might 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
* hurriedly 'but failed to find any
trace ,of her. He told his friend
■ Born about it and the same night
‘ Pere Bergelot, a trusty metis ar-
• rived with the girl.
The girl, Aurore McNain, asks
Dora to go to a lonely lake in
search of hei’ father and she wish
es to accompany him.
When “they arrive at the cabin
. there is no sign of habitation.
The girl, Aurore McNajn, asks
Dorn to take her to a lonely lake
an search of her father. When
they arrive there is' no sign of
^habitation but she tells Dorn she
’ is going to live there alone.
CHAPTER TEN
As Dorn looked down at the few
IJitiful articles and realized how ut
terly inadequate they were, a wave
■of sympathy for Aurore' surged
through him. He had been a little
antagonized by her wealth, and sym
pathy had: seemed out of place. He
liad not altogether shaken off the
effects of those poverty years when
lie had looked over stone fences in
to estates of the rich and felt his
position keenly. But now Aurora's
wealth was stripped from her. Poor
.girl, she hadn’t’even the stark ne
cessities of life!
Getting his emergency food-pac-
Iret and two extra blankets of his
■own so that she could sleep warm,
Jie took the things ashore and start-
•ed up to the cabin.
As he saw it now, Aurore was in
some desperate trouble, and had'
shrunk back from telling the truth
to him, a stranger. As a dead-
sure way of getting to this lake,
she had told him that “narrative”
About her father. .She had been
■driven to lie. And he understood
mow the cold, hard suspicion in her
eyes when she took‘ his measure as
a man. Old Bergelot had literally
given her into his hands. During
all the time she lived here hg> would
S>e her sole link with civilization.
$he was utterly dependent upon
"him for food and protection and
.all the human company she would
.-ever have.
A sudden thought struck Dorn
’hard: “Good Lord, down there in
any tent, when she was looking at
me so sharp, she was wondering \
. . . she was thinking that in a
situation like this . . . she was
afraid that I’d turn wolf!”
Conscience-stricken' for being
angry , at her, he hurried on to the
•cabin. From the threshold he saw
Aurore, still standing as he had left
her, in the middle of the first room
a forlorn and pathetic figure, but
still. unibeaten, and glorious w’ith
that sunlight now resting on her
shoulders and breast. It came to
Dorn again, with renewed force,
3iow utterly dependent she was up
on him, and how hard a blow his
anger must have been.
The pack dropped irom his hands.
At a less what to say or do he
’ stepped over to Aurore, torn be
tween a desire to comfort and yet
not frighten her. When she look
ed looked up at him, he was shock
ed by her weariness. Body and
soul, she was near exhaustion.
“Mr. Dorn, I’ve decided”—-she
Spoke with no reproach or bitter
ness, but with a stranger’s aloof-
mess, more painful to Dorn than
neither, because it seemed to push
Hum miles away from her—“that I
Should' tell you the truth about my-
se,lf before you go.” iShe said;
’“There’s nothing to ‘be done here
init what I can do. If you’ll take
A message to Dad Bergelot from
une. I’ll—I’ll be all right here.” She
tiddly frankly but coldl/: “I can’t
iorget how you spoke up and* oft
fered to bring me here and did
4>ring me here, .and; I thimk| it’s
•i)ulv for yott to ltnow*-1_f *
It was more than evident to Dora
that She did not want to tell him
iof her trouble. Slip had not ex
pected to tell ’him, but liis anger
.had made her decide to. She was
doing it to discharge an obligation;
tb close out the accounts, between
them and shut the book of their
■Acquaintanceship. Instead) of her
confidence being a source of better
‘understanding, it would be the end
■of things. Her word “go” rang
with finality. It mean “not to re-
ntura.”
“J don’t want to know, Aurore”
—he used her name deliberately,
drawing her ‘back to him after her
formal “Mr,” “That isn’t exactly
true; I do want to know, of course,
But if you. don’t want to tell. What
I said about ’solace to rememlber’—
that was rather cheap of me. And
my getting angry, when you likely
have troubles enough-----
Aurore was conscious of the
change in him, instantly she met
his apology with warmth and
friendliness. “But you had a right
to be!” she defended him against
liiimselif, “You. shouldn’t feel
shame; you took my story on trust.
But I—I lied—----”
Dorn interrupted her, AH,, to
clearly he could read "the signs of
a fearful let-down in her nervous
tension. The excitement of her es
cape, oif the air trip,' had buoyed
her up untl now, even as she spoke,
he had to reach out his arm to
steady her,
“Please,” he said firmly, “don’t
try to talk or tell me anything.
Later on. after you rest ... if you
want to then, all right. But now
you’ve got to lie down and sleep a
few hours.” And he made his ap
peal personal by adding, “I don’t
want a sick girl on my hands here,
I’ll be getting things in shape, for
you.”
She was too weary to protest,
but let him have his way. Dorn
went outside the musty smelling-
cabin to a nook in a clump of pines
and hastily lopped off ■ a few
branches to make a little , brush
lodge; and1 bringing his own warm
blankets, with liis jacket as a pil
low for Aurore. From the cabin
door he pointed it out to her,
“I thought you’d sleep better out
there,” he explained. “I’ll be nois
ing around in here. This is a wild,
lonely place, but you needn’t be
afraid of bears—or wolves.”
Aurore caught the subtle mean
ing of his words. For a moment
her dark-lashed eyes, in spite of
their clouded weariness, searched
his face wth the same keen apprais
al that he had noticed down in the
tent. But now, that suspicion of
him had dropped from them.
She said quietly: “I’m not afraid
of—of wolves, if they please won't
be angry with me again.” }
With a pine bough Dorn swish
ed down the spider webs and swept
the cabin. 'Carrying the stove out
side, he dumped out the rat and
sent it scurrying, cleaned the bunks
of their old mattresses, made Aur
ore a fresh bed of billowy spruce
twigs in the tiny room, and brought
water from the cove.
Toward midmorning lie stopped
long enough in his work to walk
over to the brush lodge and chase
away a noisy, inqujsite moose-bird.
Aurore was still asleep, her head
pillowed on her arm, her jacket
loosened at her throat. The morn
ing sunshine had crept down the
pine boles and fell in golden pools
upon the moss, and one splash of it
was creeping along her outstretch
ed arm toward her face. Very sil
ently Dorn adjusted one of the
boughs so that it would shade her
until noon,$ ..
Quite sure she would not awake,
he crouched down there and look
ed long at her. .She was sleeping
relaxed, a dreamless sleep, her vig
orous young body restoring itself
and her mind forgetting its wor
ries. That film of desperate an
xiety had already vanished, as
though here at this lake she felt
safe now, in safe haven.
As he crouched there beside Aur
ore, musing deeply and suspecting
She would tell him at least some
thing of her trouble before he 'left,'
Dorn was aware of a stirring all
around him . in the little Wildwood:
of a courtship, of an intense strug
gle for mates, of a- bustle and a hid
den quiver like a great swelling
whisper. The warblers and vlreos
and all the tiny songsters were just
back from their winter homes in
the southland and. were hot yet
paired. The’ struggle was every
where cruel and relentless—no
quarter, given, none asked—a mat
ter of beak and claw and1 fighting
heart. He watched two flame-col
oured orioles—gaudy litfle fellows
of brightest orange and ebony
black-—fall to the moss in a furious
cartwheel and continue their duel
on the ground- till one of them flut
tered away, bleeding' and stricken
and blind.
His glance oame back. to Aurore
and he repeated, not remembering
where he had read the lines:
“And still she sleeps an azure-
lidded sleep . . .
Blissfully havened from joy and
pain.”
He reflected; “‘HaVened from
pain’—-that’s my jdb, to keep her
from worry, to see she’s safe here
till her trouble is smoothed out. If
it can be smoothed out. If it isn’t
that she—she # , Good God, I
it isn’t that I”
He watched the gentle rise and
fall vt her breast, and swept his
mind clean of the thought.
'There was a touch of the wild
young forest thing about Aurore.
She had been reared in the open,
he knew; and whatever her pres
ent trouble was, the background
of her life had been sunlit and
happy; Her lips exquisitely arch
ed and her mouth firmly tucked in
at the corners were made to laugh.
He could feel no resentment to
ward her because down in liig. tent
at Titan Pass she litul weighed him
and' wondered if he might not ‘turn
wolf,’ She had ■ foreseen then her
dependence upon him, and he had
been a stranger and she had no
knowledge of him except an old
guileless man’s praise and her own
intuitive estimate. He could not
even smile at her suspicion of a few
hours ago, for it had been a matter
of terrible moment to her. He felt,
indeed, that Aurore’s fear was a
natural and1 a very creditable thing,
and he thought- the more of her
for it,
CHAPTER IX
A Relentless Hunt
When he left Aurore, Dorn went
to the cabin for a belt-axe and set
out in search of dry wood. It was
a long, hunt—everything on the is
land was intensely alive—but at
the north end he finally discover
ed several dead jack pines. To cut
one down with that toy axe was a
tremendous job, and before he had
whacked' the tree iiRo stove wood
he vowed, to bring a bucksaw the
next time he came north. For
there would be a next time, and a
next time—through the sheer forte
of circumstances- and Dorn
thoughj; of his visits blurring into
one, continuous.
At noon, on one of his trips to
the cabin with wood, his eyes fe|l
Upon eight Dolly Varden trout,
fresh-cleaned and swathed in leav
es, lying on the block table. In
astonishment he hurried out to the
brush lodge.
Aurore was gone. 'The blankets
wc»re neatly folded; his jacket
hung on a twig; the impress of her
body was still plain on the moss.
Dorn looked all around, and, not
seeing her, whistled; and wlfeiT’-slU
answered, a strong clear whistle
from the lower end of the island,
he downed the impulse to go seek
her ouf, and went on about his
work.
On his next tirp to the cabin he
suddenly met Aurore coming
around the corner of the cabin. She,
had bathed hor fac-c and hands and
freshened u.p her hair. Her colour
i was heightened. Hee eyes laughed
i at him for sweating under the huge
load of wood, and‘ there was a purl
of happiness in her voice.
“You ought to have been along
with me, J—-Jim.” She tripped mo
mentarily over his name, but went
right on. “I was down at the south
edge where it’s open and marshy. I
found Arctic cranberries and a bed
of white strawberries that’ll be
ripe in ten days, and 'coming back
I saw a fax den and met a porcu
pine and gathered some—But look
here.”
Dorn slammed the wood against
the cabin wall and' looked into the
birchrind creel she carried. It was
full of mushrooms. He picked one
up'and eaxmined it critically. It
was big as a saucer, white on top,
with gills a suspicous wine-pick.
“What are you going to do with
those things?” he demanded.
Aurore laughed'gaily. “Why, we’ll
eat them! You needn’t foe shy.
They’re pluetus cervinus. Doesn’t
that reassure you? Now if you’ll
build me a fire in the stove, Jiim
—I’m desperately hungry and you
must bo too-—we’ll have dinner in
five minutes!”
As he knelt by the sheet-iron
stove and whittled shavings, Dorn
swore softly, incoherently, to liiAi-
self. Heavens above hjilm!—what
cloud did Aurore McNain drop from
—a girl like her, in those fashion-
plate clothes, with 'that breath of
society all about her and that hunt
ed deperation in her eyes, but now
all zest and sparkle,-' pitching; in,
helping, cooking dinner, instead' of
sitting by, looking sweet. He argu
ed, “That girl knows the bush in
side out; knows it in Latin, French
and Siwash!” He swore, “She’s so
pretty that she conld be helpless
and get away with it!”
He glanced up at her as she stood
beside the rough table arranging a
bouquet of flowers and maidenhair
fern to add a touch of beauty to
their wilderness board. The proud
head and {he willowy grace oif her
body made Dorn remember Kan
sas’s words, “iA brown-eyed queen?’
and .he glanced back at the stove so
she would not turn and catch him
staring at her.
During their meal together, he
kept wondering how much Aurore
was going; to tell him nbout her-
self, Surely a hint or pvo. But she
seemed reluctant* Not once in the
last half hour had she oven allud
ed to the mysterious something
which she had fled., out of eiyilisa-
Hon to escape.
■Dora .could understand her re-
instance, ■• Que reason for it, her
trouble was probably the most in
timate thing in her life, and she
would naturally shrink from laying
it bare to a iman whom she had
known only a few hours, even
though those hours, from willy-
nilly circumstances, had meant
more between them than several
weeks of ordinary acquaintance
ship. And Dora was vaguely aware
of another reason, Either from
Bergelo.t’s ridiculous wbrdls about
his being a sword or from Aurore’s
own. estimate, she stood very much
in awe of him. There was no long
er any distrust or suspicion in her
attitude; but he caught her study
ing him surreptitiously and knew
that she thought him a stern and
severe Spartan.
With plans for her safety and
comfort running in his mind, he
asked: “How long are you going to
live here, Aurore?”
“I don’t know; I can’t say now.
But’ I expect to have to stay a
month at least.”
Dorn -merely nodded and went on
with his planning. Over their cof
fee, he fished a memo pad and pen
cil stub from his pocket and hand
ed them across- the table to her.
“You need an outfit,” he explained
as she looked at him in question.
"I’ll fetch it next trip. you’ll
make a list. I have to go in to
Edmonton shortly. 'Can start just
as well this afternoon.”
“But I won’t be a 'bother—I nev
er intended you t° do more than
bring me—you’ve done enough for
me now! Getting away from Titan
Pass meant everything to me, Jim."
“Make out your list,” he repeat
ed. “You couldn’t live here two
weeks on what you’ve got, and
you’re busli-wise enough to know
it.”
“But I haven’t any money! And
I don’t dare draw on any of my de-,
posits, or that’d estabdish a con
nection between you and me------”
Aurore stopped, as though a sud
den thought canne to her. “But
gracious! I’m not penniless. Why
didn’t I think?” .'She reached into
her jacket pocket and triumphantly
brought out the barrette he had
seen in her hair. “There! You can
sell that. It ought to bring a thou-
sa’nd; it cost three.”
Dorn pocketed the jewel thought
fully. He meant to buy her an
outfit with his own money; he had
five hundred' on hand, and that
,§.mount. would get her up comfort
ably • in ^housekeeping. But she
would need money when and if she
left this refuge, and the barrette
would supply those' funds.
“Will it be safe,” he asked, “to
sell this?”
“Yes. perfectly safe In Edmon
ton.
While Dorn smoked a cigarette
Aurore scriblbled and pondered.
She needed hie help, his protection,
and knew it, and .quietly accepted
the situation instead of: escaping
the burden of gratitude by pretend
ing she did not wish him to help
her further.
“I don’t like the idea of your
being here by yourself,” he remark
ed, pocketing her list. “Of course,
this is a lonesome place; one
cban’ee in a thousand of any In
dian or meti or bush-sneak white
happened along and seeing you;
but——•”
“I’m used to the bush, Jim. I
can take care of myself.”
(Continued Next Week)
FRACTURES THIGH
Mrs. John Tilley, of Mitchell, who
is in her eightieth year met with an
unfortunate, accident recently. She
was getting ready to go out with
her sister Miss Myra Hutchinson
when she slipped on the floor in
her home and in the fall fractured
her thigh. ’ .
HAY. TOWNSHH*
1’IONEER PASSES
Another pioneer and well known
resident of Hay Township passed
away at his home on the Blue Water
Highway in the person of Regis N.
Depomme, aged 82 years. Deceased
had lived all his life in that sec
tion, and knew all apout the hard
ships of pioneel’ lifei and. was well
and favorably known. He was a
man -of sterling character and was
highly respected by all who knew
him. Although well up in years,
he was. out and around assisting
with the work on the farm until ten
days before his death. He was
twice married, and is survived by
his widow and the following chil
dren by his first marriage: Araian(L
John and Ernest Denomme, of Hay
Township; Maxim Denome of Toron
to and George Denomme of the
West; Mrs. Chas. D. Bedard, of Hay
Township; Mrs. Geo. Jeffrey, Mrs.
Albert ’Bedard and Mrs. Melvin Ov
erholt, of Stanley Township. The
funeral took place in St. Peter’s R.
C. cemetery, Drysdale, Rev. Father
L. Marchand officiating.
fake skcitotos
(CommuwicstibR In Farmer's
Advocate)
For some years the .country has
been Infested by high pressure sales
men trying to induce the farmers to
buy stocks and royalties. Ip
cases they have prevailed upon hold
ers of gilt-edged securities to ex
change them for deeded royalties,
on the promise that one was always
sure of getting something each
month. That may ibe mere or Jess
true accept that it is now so littm
that it is not worth while. For ex
ample, on an investment of $1,400
the dividends have dropped, in on?*
case, from $13.79 a month to $1.93
in the short space of four months.
In the same instance a California
well was included which, it was
promised, would-get $9 a month,
On making inquiries, when no divi
dend was forthcoming from, it, I was
told by one salesman that the well
was capped for ninety days, Now,
however, one hundred and twenty
days have passed without any re
sult. I would like to issue a warn
ing to the farmers of the province
and advise them, when these slick
salesmen invade their premises, to
show them the door.
These gentry are not out in the
interests of the public .but for what
they can make out of it. So let the
public take warning before it is too
late. 'Thousands of dollars of hard
earned money are lost every year in
this way and sometimes it repre
sents the saving of a lifetime and,
one is left upon the charity of the
world.
Huron County, READER,
Dull Pains Around Her Heart
Shortness of Breath
Price 50c a box
Mrs. H. Warren, 107 Ferguson Ave. N., Hamilton.
Ont., writes:—“For some time I had pains around
my heart. I was so short of breath I could hardly
go up stairs, and could not get any sleep at night.
A friend had told me about Milbum’s Heart and
Nerve Pills, so I thought I would give them a trial.
I am thankful I did for after taking three boxes I
felt like a different person; can sleep soundly all
night,, and do all my own work now.”Sold at all drug and general stores, or mailed direct
on receipt of price by The T. Milburn Co., Ltd.,
Toronto, Ont.
The DOMINION of CANADA
1931 NATIONAL SERVICE LOAN
X
$150,000,000 5% Bonds
5-Year Bonds—Maturing November 15, 1936—price 99
10-Year Bonds—Maturing November 15, 1941—price 99
BANK OF MONTREAL, at any of
its Branches throughout the Dominion, is
prepared to execute, without charge, purchases
of bonds in the above issue.
Full details and information will be gladly
furnished at any office of the Bank.
Established 1317
TOTAL ASSETS IN EXCESS OF ^750,000,000
Exeter Branch. T. S. WOODS, Manager