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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Exeter Times-Advocate, 1932-03-03, Page 3■•J'- <• .Ji* THE EXETER TIMES -ADVOCATE “The Silver Hawk BY WILLIAM BYRON SYNOPSIS 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 friend for the . past six years 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. hurriedly but • trace ’ Dorn Pere rived Kansas followed failed to find any He told his friend and the same night a trusty metis ar- of her, about it Bergelot, ____ with the gin. The girl, Aurore McNain, asks Dorn to go to a lonely lake in search of her father and she wish­ es to accompany him where she remains in hiding and Dorn car­ ries supplies to her by aeroplane. Carter-Snowdon arrives, and with the help of some 'breeds is trying to locate her. Luke, the trusty old Indian, who knows her secret hiding place is captured and Dorn is trying to free him from Carter- Snowdon. Luke is rescued and finds that the ’half-breeds are closing in on Anyore’s hiding-place, Dorn stationed Luke near Aur­ ore’s cabin and as Joe Yoroslaf approaches he shot him. Aurore ’ accompanied Dorn on his trip and they were attacked by 'Carter- Snowdon’s men. but escaped for the time. 1 Ik CHAPTER XXIII Old Luke Illewahwacet saw him coming. Luke had climbed the mesa and thrown together a brush lodge at the edge of it and taken up his vigil there before dawn. Watching $ v. from hiS ambuSli thicket beside the •*4 trail, he made sure Yoroslaf came alone; and like a couchant old pan­ ther he watched the 'breed clamber­ ing up the steep, tortuous path which for countless generations had been polished by the mocassins of Luke’s primitive ancestors. Old Luke was remembering the man tied babiclie on a heavy rock for him at Dear Waters camp. Old Luke was alone now, with no hyas young fool to check his trigger-fin­ ger. Old Luke waited with stocial patience, counting Yoroslaf’s steps for him, measuring distance, wait­ ing. His rifle stea'clied and for a second did not quiver; and when .it Spoke, it spoke once. At Eaux Mortes that noon, Car­ ter-Snowdon went ashore in an ugly temper. He had thought that this week would see Aurore safely shut ■away from the world at his hunting " lodge in the Quesnal mountains; but every last hope of that seemed to have gone to smash, and her brazen taunt this morning had been insult, outrage ... j He blared .a.t ^he-guh'her and pilot, who-were" taking off their helmets - \rand goggles: “.Why in hell didn’t you two get that plane? When you first swooped down on it, before he got wise,'you could’ve . . . but you stopped! You had ’em there, right an your hand, both of ’em; and ’y ■ Gad you funked out! You’re canned! Get!" Soft-Shoe said nothing till his chief had thumped into the tent. Then he asked, rather indifferently, what had happened that morning. He heard that after the encounter with Dorn, the planes had coiiie hack east where the ’breeds had been set off. Two of these, Charlo and Narcisse, with Mo one to jitod; had not lifted a foot from The pursuit plane then fol- up north where Yoroslaf had but Yoroslaf failed to answer the them, camp, lowed gone, their pre-arranged signals, and ■devil knew where he was. The shadow of a smile, crafty wolfish, crept into Soft-Shoe’s pression when he heard that ’breeds had miserably failed to Aurore and ex_ the- find After> a moment-Tie said'to the pilot and gunner: "You two. liang around, Go up to the station if you want, to—till lie cools off. I’ll need you to-night. Probably it’ll be after midnight." The gunner asked: "What d’you mean—uncovered something new?" Soft-Shoe kept his counsel; turn­ ing awrfy, ho stopped into the tent where Carter-Snowdon sat on a cot, viciously chewing a cigar. "These came for you this morn- " Soft-Shoe said, taking two let- and a telegram from Ms pocket, had steamed them, read ed them again; and so t their effect would be. ely he waited till Carter had read the letters and the 1 page-tedegram and was pacing Then without er: ing/ tors He \ seal* wha erati don four the tent in a frenzy. n shadow on 'his cold expressionloss face, ho demanded abruptly: “IIow much Is It worth to you to thorn, knew Dellb- Bnow- MOWERY have ther by to-morrow this time?" ■CartemSnowdon whirled on him, "How much is it worth? That’s a hell of a ques-—-"He stopped, for he saw that the detective had at last discovered something swift and cer­ tain, and was haggling for a price. He swallowed hard, and snapped; "You're working for me, Salary! If you know anything, spit it out," Tito detective said coldly: "What I know will cost you thirty thous­ and dollars, You'll give me a check for it. You won't stop payment on the check afterward; I know too much, gee?" He disregarded Car- temSnowdon’s clinched (fist, he paid no attention to the infamy flung at him, Picking the letters and tele­ grams from the ground, he present­ ed them like an ultimatum to Car­ ter-Snowdon, and added; out the lip; you know up against; you’ve got and a week from now's offering you your only 'breeds are loafing at fellow Dorn can .fight you off your feet, If you don’t come across, I take the night train to Edmonton. If you write that check, to-morrow morning by this time ..." When he walked out of the tent Soft-Shoe had the check in his bill­ fold. It was payable only on .condi­ tion that he found Aurore McNain within the time he himself had specified, but that did not worry him, for ho had made sure lie could carry out his end before venturing to employer. He was had not raised the teen thousand on But on the whole he was pretty well pleased. He had gone in the tent poor and come out with a small for­ tune, and it was sweet additional satisfaction to know that Dorn, who had thrashed him twice and spikeo one scheme after another and' beat­ en him roundly at his own game, would be ironed out flat within a matter of hours and that Aurore McNain would be delivered to the man who had just paid thirty thou­ sand “Lets cut what you're to get her, too late I'm chance. The camp; that of the bargain double-cross his sorry that ho ante ten or f!f_ Carter-Snowdon. dollars .for her. CHAPTER XXIV A Mirror of the Future hour after he swam away fromAn those two hostile plane®, Dorn look­ ed under his keel and saw a ‘punch- bowl’ lake, hardly bigger than a tarn, lying blue and hidden and in­ viting in the heart of a cup..shaped mountain. Tn tight spirals he drop­ ped down upon it and lit in the centre. 'Sitting on a pontoon, kicking their heels against it, Aurore and Dorn ate the trout sandwiches she had brought, and opened a can of erbSwurst from his emergency kit; and Dorn scooped up a tin cup of the sparkling water and placed it between them. Afterwards Aurore took his bino- cularSjA.nd from the pontoon tip she turned tltom all around "the punch­ bowl. As lie- sat against a strut, looking at Aurore’s slim, beautiful figure so starkly outlined against the blue water, old Luke’s words about her being the strong children were Dorn’s mind. And yet he could think of Aurore as a mother, simply could not imagine all that wild-born freedom of hers turned to maternal tenderness. She seemed a creature never to be caught and trammelled, an incarnation of spring and of the pure chaste spirit of the moutains. Reflecting impersonally,w Dorn thought: "Aurore likes the same things I do, our outlooks run in ’(tomrnon, she’s mountain-bred, so am I. We’d have infinitely more to build on than the mere physical at­ traction between man and woman.” But he checked his thoughts sharply remembering the four unfathomable years of her life and what she had told him that evening of the storm. Aurore must have felt liis eyes on her s;o Steadily, fotr she said: “If you’ll come up here with me, Jim, I’ll show you several things worth looking at. And we ought to name this lake, Jim." On bowl steep feet boarded with lichens, its face crack­ ed and seamed with the frost -of in„ numerable winters. Above it a mass of steel-blue glacier ice, flowing a few feet a year, thrust its tentacles over the escarpment and periodical­ ly sent icebergs thundering into the lake below. Halfway up the rock at a place so sheer it looked as though a fly would have trouble sticking there, an old mountain goat, a patch or purest white, sat pl’acidly oft his haunches, turning Ms telescopic eyes down at the airplane, letting the breeze blow through his whis­ kers find rustle his shaggy dewlan. On above old Billy a band of mother running the south side of the punch- a stupendous rock wall rose from the water, two thousand high, It's outcroppings were ff But the skittish mountain exploded, and blindly obeyed ages_old instinct that to seek crags where enemies could not seven Bighorns, whose summer coats harmonized with the grayish brown of the rock, gazed down from a ledge. lOver them circled a golden eagle intent upon a tiny iamb. But none of the band looked up; it was never their habit; th? enemies they feared always came from below,- Dorn cupped his hands and shout­ ed, As his voice went crashing UP against the rock, old Billy merely shook his head and blaated and dar- up an do battle with him; horn to ed the maker of that noise to come horn, sheep their, rocky follow was to escape danger, they leaped up the precipitous cliff. In awed admiration Dorn and Aurora WU'tCllQCl them 5$igz agging back and forth against that sheer rock wall, climbing, climbing, fleet and sure, till they came out upon the top and whipped oyer a hogback 'and vanished. Only one old ram stayed behind as sentinel. Walking boldly out up­ on a jutting knob he stood there against the sky, looking down as though gazing as his own reflection in the mirrory lake two thousand feet below. Aurore claped her hands and ex­ claimed, "Jim, there's our name— ‘The Bighorn’s Looking Glass’!" and Dorn gravely -entered the name in his log as eminently fitting and proper. With the afternoon and the long northern twilight ahead of them be­ fore they dared return home, Dorn and Aurore went ashore in the can­ oe to the spruceclothed northern slope of the punch-bowl, game trial that led along a moun­ tainside torrent they started climb­ ing, with no special purpose, no ty­ rannical goal, content merely to be wandering in a place of their mu­ tual discovery where no numan foot had ever trod. In 'Xne buckrusb near lake level a family of cinnamon bears were grunting and digging for fern roots, amiably .cuffing one another’ with somewhat resounding sove pats. Through a screen of boughs Aurore- pointed ahead, and looKing along, her arm Dorn saw a bright reddisn fox reading the water out of his brush. A frightened deer glanced up a across the torrent and out along the hillside, and the cause of its fright, a huge grizzly, * came lumbering along the trial. Dorn handed his rifle to Auore and heaved a rocs at the bear, and it ambled aside with a blood-curdling snarl. On higher they saw a lynx lying on a stone flipping trout out of a cauldron pool. The path now was* lined with tufts of white wool where mountain goats have ventured down for wood plants, In the deerbrush above timber line a cow moose and her ungainly calf were, pasturing, feeding in circles so that when, they lay down in the centre of their web a man or wolf or grizzly following their tracks would have to pass to windward and give them warning. In a- slideway of gray trap-rock just below the pinnacle they came upon a pica oi’ "little chief hare/’j and sat ‘for half an hour watching him at liis summer haying-making. The little mountain hermit, solitary denizen of rock jumbles, would cut a few blades of them on sun, and carrying led deep where the grizzly could not pry him out as giiam-Siam did to his little cousin the ground-squirrel and to his big brother the hoary marmot. He would .sit up at times when a hawk flew over, and utter his plain­ tive cheep-cheep-cheep, ready to spring into his den If the hawk ered. Aurore touched Dorn’s arm said: "Jim, he doesn’t seem to any mate or kith or kin in the world His life must be awfully bleak, mere primitive existence, as ancient anil lonely as tliefse hills. A few hours of summer sunshine, a. little hay­ making, then his long lark winter sleep." “Bleak—that’s what it is, Aur­ ore," Dorn anwered, with an odd quality in his voice. “A few hours of sunshine—like to-day-—then the long Dark again." Aurore looked at him, a quick, hurt glance;’’and Dorn apologized: "I won’t twist your words like that again. I won’t again at all." They climbed rock slideway, nose and the firn above it, and came out on the pinnacle top, a flat area- the size of a mere table .standing bare and gaunt above the eternal snows—a lookout so lofty that Dorn remarked with a laugh: "Here must be where Satan sat when he viewed the world, past and present, Aurore. A man can see almost any­ thing from here—except his future.’ | Aurore said: “I’ll show you that, (Jim, before we go home today. At least, I’ll show you a picture of what your future—Our future—may be/’ "You’ll what?" He thought that surely she was jesting., but Aurore’s eyes were wide and serious, and there was no hint of jest in her voice as she added: "That’s what I’ll .do, dim. I can’t show you now. * reach home to-night ask me now. ■ But before wo Don't at her oddly. "Our she mean that her any way bound up grass and spread flat stones to dry in the those already cured he was back into his burrow that . under heavy bounlders hov- and have mention the—Dark on over the trap- crossed a glacier Dorn looked future" —- did future was in with Ms? The words puzzled him, but he refrained from questioning her. A little later be took out his big- oculars and swept _the sky tor leag­ ues around tor a’glimpse of thoso two enemy planes. But he could see no threat on the horizon was his morrow There thought between and tried to plan ahead. All along in this struggle he had been com­ pelled to act on the defensive. IJe had had to guess or discover tne enemy schemes and then spike them. It put him at a hard disadvantage; he felt like the legendary Sarcee who could merely escape tomahawks thrown at him without being free to return them. Looking ahead now, lie saw only one potentiality of danger—'that letter and map which old Bergelot had in his possession, A man as guileless and innocent as Bergelot should not be mixed up in this mix­ ed struggle. Luke called him an old Clumsy-Foot, and the name was about right. He had left Aurore’s clothes hanging almost in plain sight in liis .cabin; he had twice started across to visit Dorn on the island and Dorn had to wave him Furthermore, he was an old Aurore’s; her father had that station-master was like the ttay and Aurore’s-—•whatever to- might bring. on that pinnacle Dorn over the whole .situation himself and his enemies; job. just the man to dig that and make use of own wish Ddrn had message— back. friend of got him Soft-Shoe up a fact it. Against his entrusted to him that forced to it by the greater danger of Aurore being left in that wild­ Dr. Wood’s Norway Pine Syrup erness alone and defenseless. pern decided* "But now old Luke fa ata* tioned up there. Now Kansas knows where she is. When I get back to Titan Pass, I’ll destroy that map and’ letter," Beside him on the. tiny plateau Aurora was lying full-length, sun­ ning herself, gazing up at the blue ♦/acuity above her. The 'thought came to Dorn that he ought to- he* thankful for having known Aurore and having had her companionship and above all else for having gain* ed the complete and utter trust of a girl like her. That trust, expressed in all Aurore’s words and acts, vest* ed on him like a touch of an accol­ ade—.something to be proud otr something that enabled him. Almost unconsciously, in the sil­ ence of their eyrie solitude, he grop­ ed for Auro re’s hand, and it slipped into his; and as he sat gazing out over the mountains below, her near­ ness was a benediction. Back at the plane, Dorn carefully inspected the Silver Hawk and ad­ justed the super-ciharger. There was still one marvel of his kingdom which he wanted to show Aurore-- the most wonderful of them all. The air was right for it, his engine had hummed like a song all morning, he was fairly light on the gas by this; time. Aurore was mightily puzzled at him for wrapping her in two wairm blankets and tucking a small canvas fly all about her till she was swath­ ed like a papoose. Dorn looked wise at her insistent questions. He mere- ly said; "I maybe shouldn’t take you through all this, but you’re a little mountaineer and you’ll stand it brave enough and it’ll be over with before it can do you any harm." For himself he drew on an extra pair ;of gloves, got out a pair of glazed goggles and donned heavy fur-collared coat which Luke had worn on the up-trip. Taxiing twice around the Look­ ing-Glass to heat the motor thor­ oughly, he took off, climbed out of the amphitheatre and began circl­ ing in long, ever-rising spirals. (Continued next week) oij- tlie old Was Worried Over Her Children’s Coughs Mrs. C. W. 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