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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Wingham Advance Times, 1935-05-16, Page 30"A..CV, TtiII L �r HISTQRICAL RgVIi VV OF TIO TOWN OI 1''Y ING1IMI • v Thursday, . May 16th, 1935 Speed 11 ;alone, hardened gambler, and. Ed. Maitland, suit of a seafaring New England family, Were 'partners ixi the Yukon gold rush Of '97, They nxret on the trip north in a crowd that included Frenclny, the fisherr>an, Lucky Rose, the beautiful girl Who took a fancy to Maitland; Fallon, leader of the miner's, who resented Rose's interest hi Maitland; Brent,. old -tinge prospector; Garnet, Who gave. Maitland and Speed his outfit when he quit the trail, and Pete and his •drunken partner Owens; who was iilrowned after a brawl. Pete turned out to be a girl in disguise. Pete kill- ed a man at Skagway�--a cheat man .ager of a shell game—and months lat- er was arrested and put in jail for his murder. He got out, but while he waited for Lefty, wlio offered to help. him; to get back the nail he had been Carrying for the Mounties at Bennett —where Drew and Cathcart were sta tioned--he was recaptured by his en :erny, Fallon. But Maitland and Pete rescued, him as Fallon was about to lynch him. They made for their camp at Bennett—Pete and Maitland with the horses, by one route, Speed by another with the dogs, led by Rusty, who had come to them in a blizzard. NOW GO ON WITH THE STORY. "What did you hear, Burl;?" Speed spoke low to :prevent his voice from carrying to ,Pete, indoors. It was be- fore dawn of the second morning. Maitland told him. "Do you reckon we're both hearin' things?" Speed muttered. "It listened to me more like a louder sound way off. An echo of gunfire. Or else froze trees snapping in the thaw." Motionless, they listened again. The silence of the shadowed chasm mocked them. Speed stirred : abruptly. "You stay here, Bud, and watch with Pete. I may be gone a while, brit keep that cliff, covered with the rifle. 111 call you when I come back round it," Speed's reconnaisance took hint ov- er a wider range than he had expect- ed. When he paused, halfway down a l9fty 's1Q,$e, it was to survey a long d unobstructed view of white head- lands, shining in the dawn. In the center of one of the ravines, about two miles away, a pair of dark moving specks came into view. They were men; one of there carried what might be a.. rifle. • Very slowly, so as not to betray hiinself by a quickmovement, he sank in: the snow. The advantage of view was in his favor, since he looked down on them from above. They were too far to be recognized as anything but men, hut the image of Fallon had somehow leaped into his mind's eyes at the first dim glimpse of them. He lay along the base of a boulder, raising his head just high enough to bring the figures into view. He fired the gun once, at random in their dir- ection, and immediately covered it to prevent even a wisp of smoke from sb owing. They kept moving for an interval before the sound reached their ears. But instead of looking up in Iris gen- eral direction, they turned to stare the, other wtty..:.. Yet, inspite ,of the advantage: this gave him for ob;'servation, some vague and natixeless instinct made him back out of sight between the boulder and snow trough. This wary sense did not leave him;, but ;after lying hidden some thirty seconds,. he looked over the din again. Strange to -say, the two figures had vanished. Slowly he rose into clear view by the boulder, to tempt them to declare themselves with a bullet, The shot that did come was an ut- ter and confounding sunrise, The roar of it burst in his ears from' dire ectly behind hire! He dropped back instantly into his shelter. The bullet had flattened against the :inner side of the boulder right next to bis arm, in the same flash of time as the gun's roar. This marksman was not more than a hundred yards away! Nothing showed behind him, either. He waited for a gun muzzle to show; for .some': tremor, however slight, in the snow above. Why didn't the fel- low shoot? His ear, close to the ground, detected the crunch of run- ning feet, receding from him. He jumped up and ran to the near- by point from which the shot had seemed to come. There he found a hollow in the snow where the sniper . had lain' concealed, and the marks of his feet leading up froth below to this depression, and running away from it.' The fugitive was headed for the cabin and had left a moccasin track! There was a spreading dark pink stain in the snow where he had hid- den, and a blood trail all along this course! A wild scramble along canyon brinks and ledges brought him to the head of the jackpine gulch,and the absence of a blood trace in it assured him that he had arrived in time. Maitland stood waiting with , the carbine and with Pete close by. He motioned them to back in close to the cliff, in silence. They had caught the alarm of the shots, but had no notion of what was about to happen. After a still wait, a voice spoke ab- ruptly from around the cliff and close at hand — a husky, broken voice. "Don't shoot," it said weakly. "It's your game. I'm out of shells." Along the cliff wall and into view, covered by Speed's guns, a fur -clad and moccasined figure groped its way, twisted with agony. Maitland recog- nized at a glance the man. who had held them rep at their winter camp. He held a revolver in his right hand. The other hand cluthed at his side, and dripped blood. When he raised his head and looked at them, his eyes changed strangely from the look of a fighting animal brought to bay, to an expression of wild aston- ishment. "Pete!" he murmured, almost under his breath. "How did they find this? "They found your lead dog on the lakes," said Pete. "It brought . us here." The deepening wonder in his face was a thing to see. "The dog!" he muttered huskily. There was a chok- ing in his thoat• like a chuckle — it ' became a desperate, blood -chilling, mortally exhausted' laugh. "We've won now, kid!" he chortled in a hard elation. ."Beat the game with a danin — Siwash!" When they would have caught him,. he waNed them off again. "Get this- Pete, he mumbled thickly. "Some- thin' else=I've .got totell ye, kid. And I will. Blit—give me time—hut first—get this. The gold is—" He lost his voice and found it by sheer force of will-" saw it—just now. Two men the --gulch. In bright snow—" His voice ebbed from him. His ,dis- colored and racked face turned gray with a deathly Pallor. of weakness and stupefaction at the failure of his ton- gue and his brain to answer his twill. "The gold—" • 'vVith an agoniaed, astonished curse at his defeat, he slumped, held rigid an instant against the wall, and then with a low, lurching slide, sank down. Speed., who had taken a step to break his fall, caught him, and leaned over the still body. "He told the truthabout his last shell," Speedmused aloud. "He was tryin' to reach the cabin and his shells for 'a last' stand. But he saw our He held a revolver in his right hand, the other clutched his side. marks in the gulch. Who did he think I was at first? And where did he get that wound?" "The two men in the gulch he spoke of—" Said Maitland. "It's what I was wonderin'. I saw them, too. About four miles off from here. He must have dodged 'em. But they'll pick up his blood trail. Ip half an hour from now, they'll—" Here Speed unaccountably broke off short, spun about with a gun drawn, and in a flash had leaped round the Darrow cliff ledge out of Mait- land's sight. "Hand up!" he shouted, "or I blast you into the canyon. Throw that gun 'down!" A man with his arms raised came around the cliff ledge by which Dal- ton had approached so short a time before. Maitland was too confounded to utter a sound. He wore the .uni- AFTER FORMOSA 'QUAKE This typical scene of `rain and des. hours after northwestern Formosa. 1 ti o n was found inthe village re of had been shaken by�t i ' earthquake, t uC u ret r la,, b. t Tubunsho,, SItinehiho province, a few which snuffed out tnxore,' than 3,000 psi 6=xn,c,ai� Ida 44d, rid, injured rn01.e han 10,000. NOT A RHEUMATIC PAIN FOR 4 YEARS 70 -Year -Old Mao Praises Kruschen. A man who once suffered severely from rheumatism writes:— "For a long time I suffered with rheumatism, and at one time was laid up for about nine weeks. About five years ago 1 was advised to try Kruschen. l did so, and have contin= uecl using them ever since. Kruschen did the trick, as I have not had a rheumatic pain for over four years. 1 am nearly 70 years of age, and feeling fine, and always able for my day's work --thanks to K.ruschen."-A. S. •Kruschen dissolves away those needle -pointed crystals of uric acid which are the cause of all rheumatic troubles. It will also flush these dis- solved crystals clean out, of the sys- tem. Then if, you keep up "the little daily dose," excess uric acidwill nev- er•fornn. again. Ex -GOVERNOR'S KIN VANISHES Alice Colguitt, 17, high school grad- uate, and granddaughter of a former Texas governor, who left her. Wash- ington, DC., home eight days ago and has disappeared after writing her mo- ther from Alexandria, Va., five days later, that she "wanted to be left en- tirely alone." form of the Mounted Police. There are no braver men than the Canadian Northwest Mounted, but they are neither immortal nor imperv- ious to the menace of two .45 six- shooters -at blank range. Speed emptied the mounty's holster and kicked the gun behind him into the snow. "This only makes it worse for you," said the officer. "I demand that you and your partner surrender to arrest." Here was just the vicious turn of fate that Speed had feared, with an extra twist to make it worse. After evading the suspicion of Cathcart, who had mistaken Dalton for a Si - wish, were they now, by a climate of irony, to be charged with the murder of 'Dalton himself?" "This looks compromisin', I'll con- cede," he said. "But you boys is ,on the wrong track. While you're stalk - in' us, the real game is likely beatin' to cover.. There's two more men in these mountains, and they're worth trailin'." "Where did you see them?" the of- ficer asked, without belief. • Speed pointed his gun. "Four miles that way." "You saw me and an officer who trailed wth me, perhaps, though, we didn't come from that direction. You've got our distance and bearings twisted. If you have a hope of setting kis; on a false trail, you can drop it. 1'The game's up for both of you. Should you refuse to return our guns and have heard the warrant, you'll be hunted down to a finish." Speed picked up the, police revolv- ers, emptied them and threw them in- to the chasm. "It's a difference of opinion that makes gariiblin'," he said. "Get me two lengths of rawhide, Bud." The request brought Maitland ottt of a trance. "Don't do it,S peed," he said quickly. "Let the Law straighten this out. Investigations will. • clear us cif what they suspect." "You've got delusions about the. Law, Bud. I can't argue with your. I airier got no.words but a low-down gambler's lingo, and it don't just 'fit with what I'm tryin' to show. But. I've got a ininch, and I'm Askin' you; now, if ever' you ,trusted a pardner's word, to take mine when I say your ain't fixed to deal with ;the Law. Lat- er maybe --not now." Maitland was moved by the appeal, but not by its logic. His eyes were. wet when he spoke. "We've reached that junction,` Speed,' you, once talk- ed of; God knows I'll never have a truer partner. You know that if this charge were made against your alone,. and there was no other way out than the one your say, .I'd travel any road to help you. lint to escape by using force against the police isn't just a crime that would outlaw us for life, it's a needless crime, 'We'd be giving them the teal case against us that thy PEER'S LOVE NOTES AROUSE DERISION Passionate letters from lord Rev- elstoke (1), youthful scion of the great banking house of Baring Broth- ers, London, to Angela Joyce (2), beauty contest winner .and film act- ress, once prosaically christened Ivy Dawkins, were read to a crowded court in London recently as the act-• ress sued the peer for breach of pro- mise. Lord Revelstoke claims he was a minor when he wrote the letters to the' "stip.remest, superbest, sublirnest girl in the world." haven't got. That isn't all. We could not take Pete over that route, and I can't leave her to face this alone." Pete .would ' have spoken, but Speed's brooding look at her chceked the words. "How do you figure it?" "I don't know," said Pete, unhap- pily. "I feel that Bud's right though when he says you'd give the .Law a case." "You're an ornery young- pair of cubs," Speed muttered . . . "Reckon you can't help it, contin' from where you do. Now it's the same junction, turned backwards, and I can ,be just as damned ornery." He pressed back the gun Hammers, tensely watched by the police officer who had followed his argument with a fateful interest. Speed's eyes; how- ever, strayed to a long pendent spruce cone on a tree near the ledge. With- out aiming, he fired..- The cone fell,. clipped from the branch, and before it reached the snow, four quick bul- lets had broken it to fragments. The remaining shells blazed at these pieces as they spun down the slope. The outlaw waited, listening, till the last echo died out of the canyon. Slowly then, he looked at the guns, rubbed a spot from one of the clean blue barrels. They were still smok- ing when he handed them to the pol- ice officer. "Well, go ahead and read your warrent about our supposed shootin' of this man," said Speed, i.ndicatinV Dalton's. body. "We have a warrant for your ar- rest," said the mounty, "but not for killing that man. Since you're sur- rendered, I want you to understand that we don't railroad men, or even arrest them, on merely presumptive charges. We had a brush with this fugitive_" nodding toward Dalton, "down the creek. It's more than pos- •sible he was wounded by one of our guns. The inquest will show. My warrant is to arrest you and your partner for the murder of a Siwash on Lake Lebarge, on or about the twentieth of last November. The na- tive's body was disposed of through. a hole in the ice, and has been recov- ered since the thaw." Speed's eyes sought those of his partner and Pete, who looked dumb- founded. "Your own warrant?" he demanded. "Mine would be sufficient. This one happens to be signed by Cathcart of the Mounted Police." 'Well, I'm a son of a—!" Speed Mumbled to the hollow chasm with a note of. doom. At the same moment, a clatter in the jackpine gulch swung their atten-,. tion to that quarter. In these echoing surprises they had completely forgot- ten Rusty. Now a slinking wolfish head nosed round the cliff and cow- eed back at sightof the fallen body. From behindthe cliff, the. strident, excited, harshly familiar voice of Corporal Cathcart twanged like an un tuned banjo: "Get this malamute, Burke. It's the "wolf" that gave us the blood trail. "The Siwash's lead. dog!!" It did not take the Mounties long to get things in shape for the trip down to headquarters. Pete was dele- gated to serve breakfast while the of- ficers disposed of Dalton's body in a crude grave near the mountain hide- out. At last they, started, Speed, closely guarded, gave them no cause for concern. He was meeting the law unafraid. (Continued Next Week) Professional Directory J. W. BUSHFIELD Barrister, Solicitor, Notary, Etc. Money to Loan. Office — Meyer Block, Wingham Successor to Dudley Holmes. H. W. COLBORNE, M.D. PHYSICIAN AND SURGEON Medical Representative D. S. C. R. Phone 54. Wingham A. R. & F. E. DUVAL CHIROtPRA.CTORS CHIROPRACTIC and ELECTRO THERAPY North Street — Wingham. Telephone 300. minidosoionstd R. S. HETHERINGTON BARRISTER and SOLICITOR Office — Morton Block. Telephone No. 66 Dr. Robt. C. REDMOND M.R.C.S. (England) L.R.C.P. (London) PHYSICIAN AND SURGEON F. A. PARKER OSTEOPATH All Diseases Treated. Office adjoining residence next to Anglican Church on Centre St. , Sunday by appointment. Osteopathy, Electricity Phone 272. Hours, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. ' J. H. CRAWFORD Barrister, Solicitor, Notary, Etc. Successor to R. Vanstone. Wingham Ontario DR. W. M. CONNELL PHYSICIAN AND SURGEON Phone 19, J. ALVIN FOX Licensed Drugless Practitioner CHIROPRACTIC - DRUGLESS THERAPY - RADIONIC EQUIPMENT, Hours by Appointment. Phone 191. Wingham Business Directory ADVERTISE IN THE ADVANCE -TIMES THOMAS FELLS AUCTIONEER REAL ESTATE SOLD A Thorough knowledge of Farm Stock: Phone 231, Wingham. IWellington Mutual Fire Insurance Co. Established 1840. Risks taken on all classes of insur- anee at reasonable rates. Head Office, Guelph, Ont. ABNER COSENS, Agent. W itxgharrr.' It Will Pay You to Have An EXPERT AUCTIONEER to Conduct your sale. See T. R. BENNTT At The Royal Service Station: Phone 174W. HARRY FRY Furniture and Funeral Service C. L. CLARK Licensed Embalmer and Ftneeral Director Ambulance Service. Phones: Day 117. Night 109. THOMAS E. SMALY. LICENSED AUCTIONEER 20 Years' Experience in Farm Stock and Impienefts. Moderate Prices. Phone 8211