Loading...
The Wingham Advance Times, 1931-03-05, Page 6f1Nl '1j ltam Ardvartee. pt fres. Every Thursday Morning W, Lonna Craig e ' ; Publisher Publiehed at; WINGHAM' - ONTARIO rubscript:ion rates - One year $2.00, Six months n1.00, in advance. To U. S. A. $2,50 per year. Advertising rates •us application. Wellington Mutual Fire insurance Co, Established 1$40 Risks taken on all .class of insur- ance at reasonable rates, Head Office, Guelph, Ont. ABNERCOSENS,, Agent, Wingham J. W. DODD Two doors south of Field's Butcher shop. SIRE, LIFE, ACCIDENT AND HEALTH INSURANCE AND REAL ESTATE Ct. Box 366 Phone 46 WINGRAM, ONTARIO J. W. BUSHFIEID .Barrister, Solicitor, Notary, Etc. Money to Loan Office --Meyer Block Wingham Successor to Dudley Holmes J. H. CRAWFORD Barrister, Solicitor, Notary, Etc_ Successor to R. Vanstone Wingham Ontario 3. A. MORTON BARRISTER, ETC. Wingham; Ontario DR. G. H. ROSS DENTIST n.• Office Over Isard's Store H. W. COLBORNE, M.D. Physician and Surgeon Medical Representative D. S. C. R. Successor to Dr. W. R, Hambly Phone 54 Wingham DR. ROBT. C REDMOND 11LR..C,S. (ENG.) L.R.C.P. (Load.) PHYSICIAN AND SURGEON DR. R. L. STEWART Graduate of University of Toronto, Faculty of Medicine; Licentiate of the „Ontario College of Physicians and ..5 gCo1 s. Office in. Chisholm Block Josephine Street. Phone 29 DR. G. W. HOWSON DENTIST Office over John Galbraith's Store. F. A. PARKER OSTEOPATH All Diseases Treated Office adjoining residence next to Anglican Church on Centre Street. Sundays by appointment. Osteopathy Electricity Phone 272, Hours, 9 a.m. to S o.tn. A. R. & F. E. DUVAL Licensed Drugless 1?ractitioners Chiropractic and Electro Therapy. Graduates of Canadian Chiropractic •College, Toronto, and National Col- lege, Chicago. Out of town and night calls res- ponded to, All business confidential. Phone 300, J. ALVIN FOX Registered Drugless Practitioner CHIROPRACTIC AND DRUGLESS PRACTICE ELECTRO -THERAPY Hours: '2-b, 1-8, or by appointment, Phone 19L THOMAS FELLS AUCTIONEER REAL ESTATE SOLD A thorough knowledge of Farm Stock Phone 231, Wingham RICHARD B. JACKSON AUCTIONEER Phone 613r6, Wroxeter, or address• R. R. 1, Gorrie. Sales conducted any- where, and satisfaction guaranteed. DRS. Aa J. & A. W. IRWIN IN DENTISTS Office MacDonald .Block Wingham. A. J. WALKER URNITURE AND FUNERAL SERVICE A, J. Walker icens d Putteral 'Director and ar.. tw Etttbaltiter. blffce' 1Thone :105. Res. Phone 22'4. R xirld�ttitxzle i"ttne,raf:. e ineet NGHAM A,;EIVANCE TIM) :,S of BLUE IiANC$ 4JacksQn °rcb°Y Copyright by Char! WHAT HAPPENED SO FAR Bud Lee, horse foreman of the Blue Lake ranch, convinced Bayne Trev- ors, manager, is deliberatly wrecking the property owned by Judith. San- ford, .a young woman, her cousin, Pollock Hampton, and Timothy Gray, decides to throw up his job. Judith arrives and announces she has bought Gray's share in the ranch and will run it. She discharges Trevors. The men on the ranch dislike tek- ing orders from a girl, but by subdu- ing a vicious horse and proving her thorough knowledge of ranch life, Judith wins the best of them over. Lee decides to stay. Convinced her veterinarian, Bill Crowdy, is treacherous, Judith dis- charges him, re-engaging an old friend of her father's, Doc. Tripp. Pollock Hampton, with a party of friends, comes to the ranch to stay permanently. Trevors accepts Hamp- ton's invitation to visit the ranch. Judith's messenger is held up and robbed of the monthly pay roll. Bud Lee goes to the city for more money, getting back safely with it, though his horse is killed under him. Both he and Judith see Trevor's hand in the crime, Hog cholera, hard to account for, breaks out on the ranch. Judith and Lee, investigating the scene of the holdup, climb a moun- tain, where the robber must have hid- den. A cabin in a flower -planted clearing excites Judith's admiration, It is Lee's, though he does not say. so. They are fired on from ambush, and Lee wounded. Answering the fire, they snake for the cabin. Here they find Bill Crowdy wounded. Dragging him into the building, they find he has the money taken from Judith's messenger. Beseiged in the cabin, they are compelled to stay all night. Hampton, at the ranch, becomes uneasy at Judith's long absence. With Tommy Burkitt he goes to seek her, arriving in time to drive the attack- ers off, and capturing one man, who is known as "Shorty," "Shorty" escapes from imprison- ment in the grainhouse of the ranch, to the disgust of Carson, cow fore- man, who had him in charge. Lee be- gins to feel a fondness for Judith, tho' he realizes she is 'tot his womanly ideal, Marcia Langworthy, , one of y, HamPton'sparty„ tyPical city girl, is more to his taste. The discovery is made that pig- geons, with hog cholera germs on their feet, have been liberated on the ranch. Lee P a captures stranger Dick g Donley, red-handed, with an accom- plice, a cowboy known as ".Nokea Pace". Donley has brought more pi- geons, to the ranch. At a danceg given in honor of Hampton's friends Lee appears in ev- ening dress. He is recognized by one of the party as an old acquaintance. Dave Let, once wealthy but ruined by trusting false friends, Judith, in her womanly finery makes stteh an appeel to Lee that, afoul: with bet, }te forcibly kisses her, receiving the ebuke deserved es Scribner's Sons Word is sent to Lee that Quinnion has been casting slurs on Judith's name because of the night she and Lee were together in the cabin. With Carson, Lee finds Quinnion, worsts him in a fight and makes him confess. publicly he is a liar, and agree to leave the vicinity. After the kissing incident, Judith ignores Lee, who would go away, but finds himself unable. Judith sees a Ietter to Pollock Hampton from a firm with which Trevors has been con- nected, offering to buy a large con- signment of cattle and horses at a ridiculously low figure. Hampton is addressed as "general manager" of the Blue Lake outfit. Judith is vag- uely unseasy. In her absence Hamp- ton decides to accept the offer. Lee protests strongly. He learns from Marcia Langworthy that Judith is supposed to have gone to see her lawyers at San. Francisco. A tele- gram from her orders Hampton to sell the stock at the prices offered, Lee refuses to accept the message as coming from Judith, the conviction forcing itself upon him that Trevors has kidnapped her and is holding her prisoner, 4 NOW READ ON-- which through long empty hours her 'busy' mind pieced together, bridging the 'gaps, she grasped the rest of Tre- veers' plan. This pian was a physician, sent here from soiue one of the many mining towns in the mountains, prob- ably from a camp twenty or thirty niiles away. He, too, was a Trevors hireling. Should. Judith ever accuse Trevors of having brought her here, there was another story to be told. And this man would tell it How he had been summoned here to attend a girl who had had a fall, who had wandered delirious through the moun- tains until Ruth found her; whom he had treated here, not daring at first to move her for fear of permanent shock to her reason; who could give thein no help to .establish her identity; who had a thousand absurd fears and fancies and accusations to make; who in her babling had at one time ac- cused Bayne Trevors of having forc- ibly abducted her; who at another had. cried that it was a man named Carson, a man named Lee, who had brought her here, "So," grunted the woman, for the first time removing her hard hand from the girl's shoulder, "I've got you again, tiny pretty. And this time you don't play any more little tricks on your old mother." She was gone swiftly, all but si- lently through the gloom, her form vaguely outlined against the lantern's glimmer, to bring the food and water which she, had set down when she came in. Judith drank and ate, It was only little by little, in frag- ments which she obtained during the slow days which followed, that she came to understand Trevors' scheme. And the scheme was in keeping with the ratan; so far as it was possible Bayne Trevors was still playing safe, Mad Ruth was an odd mixture of crazed ' suspicion, shrewd cunning, cruelty and madness. Perhaps very long ago—Judith came to believe that it had occurred at the time when she had gone road, for God knows what. reason—Mad Ruth had had a little daughter; The girl had bc.en lost- to her, whether through death when an infant, or some tragic accident when a young girl, Judith never knew, 13ut Roth's heart had been bound up ;in that ' baby : of hers; when madness cattle, it centeredand turned upon the return of her child, "who had run away from her, but who would come back some bete." Trevors, having learned of her mad passion, had shap- ed it to his purpose. But that was not alt, Judith had been brought to the cave early Sun- day morning. Sunday afternoon there came to the cave a well-dressed matt carrying a little black hag in his hand. He talked with Ruth; he took up the lantern and came to look at Judith, r, r, 50 f� t.l ksrow you again, he Iauglt- ed, Then he went away. I n Judith spent many a long hour, ex- ploring her prison, hoping to find ,a way out. So far as she knew she had but one person to reckon with, Mad Ruth, True, Trevors had said that he'd have a man on the ledge outside day and night; Judith had never seen such a person, had never heard .his voice, and began to believe that it was a bit of bluff on Trevors' part. But she had never again been where she could look out of the cave's mouth, since Mad Ruth had her own pallet on the floor at the narrowest part of the cave where it was like the neck of a monster bottle, and al- ways at the first sound of the girl's approach, was on her feet to thrust her back. Clearly there was no way out of this place of shadows except that through which she had come. Judith sought an explanation of her. imprisonment, and after long groping she came very near the truth:• Trev- ors would work his will with Hamp- ton through Hampton's faith in him and admiration for him. And, in her absence, Hampton was the head of Blue Lake ranch. . Sunday night, hearing Mad Ruth moving cautiously, Judith raised her- self on her elbow, listening. She was confident that the woman was mov- ing toward the cave's mouth; she hop- ed wildly that Mad Ruth was tricked into believing her asleep and was go- ing out. Her shoes in her hands, her stockinged feet falling lightly, Judith. moved toward the mad woman's conch. Ruth was going out; was in fact even now slipping out of the narrow throat of the cave and to the ledge, But Judith could not see her. For a new, unexpected obstacle was in her way, Her outthrust hands touched not rock walls but heavy wooden pan- els; she knew then that the narrow neck of the cave was fitted with a heavy door and that it had been shut, fastened front without. In a sudden access of fury and despair she beat at it with her two hands, crying out bitterly; It was so dark, so inky black, and as still, save for herown outcry; as a tomb sealed and forgotten. Such darkness, smothering hope, suddenly was filled with vague terrors; for one worn-out and nervous as Judith was, the darkness seemed to harbor 'a thousand ugly things which watched her and mocked at her despair and reached out vile hands toward her. She called loudly, and for answer had the crazed laugh of Mad Ruth which floated in to her from without, but which seemed to drop down front the void above. • "Judith, Judith," the girl whispered after the first outburst, when she found that she was shaking pitifully. "You've got to do better than this; ten ashamed of you." She went back to her couch, where she sat down seeking to hold her jangling nerves in check. But, despite her intention, she sat shaking, listen- ing —pray for even the footfall of her jailer. , Thursday, IMMarch fxth, 193 Sunday passed and Sunday night, Monday and Monday night. Judith knew that she had accomplished no- thing, except perhaps to make Ruth believe that she was very much of a coward. In Ruth's mad brain that was little enough, since this did not allay her cunning watchfulness. Then Judith began to do something else, something actively, Her fingers sel- ected the largest, thickest branch from her bed of fir -boughs. It was perhaps a couple of inches in diamet- er and heavy, because it was green, Silently, cautious of a twig snapped, she began with her fingers to strip the branch, touch and pliable. Then the limb must be cut into a length which would make it a club to be used in a cramped space. She found When Ruth was with her she at- tempted in a hundred ways to gauge the woman's warped brain, to seek some way to get the better of her, to gain her trust and so to slip away,` But she was sure here was the usual cunning born of madness, and that Ruth's one idea was to beep the girl who had escaped, her once but who must never escape again. There were times when suspicion awakened itt Ruth's mind, and she broke into vio- lent rage, so that her big body shook and her eyes in the lantern -light were cruel and murderous, when Judith shrank back, attd tried to change . the woman's thoughts, 1'or more than once' had Mad Ruth creed out: "11!1 kill you! Kill you with my own hands to keep you here. 'ro keep yott mine, mine, mine!" The woman carried no weapon but after leer two hands had once gripped the girl's Shoulders, shaking her, Ju- dith knewthat e Ruth :needed no wea- pon, Xters was a strength greater than Trevora greater than two nen, 5. If Mad Ruth saw fit to ` hill Judith gntents with her two hands, she could do it, Mad Ruth, Lighting the Lantern, Had Dropped a Good Match. a bit of stone, hard granite,which had scaled from the walls and which had a rough edge. With this, working many a quiet hour, she at last cut in two the fir -bough: She lifted it, in her hands, to feel the weight of it, before she thrust it under the bed to lie hid- den there against possible need. Poor thing as it was, she felt no longer utterly defenseless, Once Mad Ruth, lighting the lan- tern, had dropped a good match. When she had gone, Judith secured it hastily, hiding. it as if it were gold. She knew that now and then. Mad Ruth went down the cliffs to the cabin across" 'the chasm. Always at night and at the darkest hour. When she heard her go, Judith rose swiftly and went to the heavy door. Always she found it locked; her shaking at it hardly budged the heavy timbers. But though she could not see it, she studied it with her fingers •until she had a picture of it inher mind. A picture that only increased her hope- lessness. Barehanded she could never hope to break it down or push it aside. And above it and below, all on each side, were the solid walls of stone. She no longer knew what day it was: She scarcely knew if it were day or night. But, setting herself some- thing to do so that she would not go mad, mad as Mad Ruth, she secured for herself another weapon. Another bit of stone which her groping fin- gers had found and hidden with her club; a jagged ugly rock half the size of a man head. :Sonia little scraps of bread and .meat, hoarded from her Scanty meals, she hid in her blouse, "If I could stun her, just stun her," she got into the way of whispering to herself. "Not kill her -outright— just stun her—" At last, seeing that she must work her own salvation with the crude weapons given her, Judith told her- self that she could wait no longer. Another day and another and she would he weak from the confinement and poor food and nervous, wakeful hours. She must act while the strength was in her. And, if 'Trey - ors had spoken the truth, if there were a man to deal with outside -- well, she must shut her .mind to that until she came to it. Mad Ruth was gone again, and Ju- dith stood by the thick door, her heart beating furiously while she waited, It seemed to her eager im- patience that Ruth would never conte back. Then after a long, long time she heard a liittle. scraping sound up- on the rock ledge outside, the sound of a quick step. And then, before she heard the snarling, ttgly voice she had heard once and had never forgot. ten, she 'knew that this time she had waited too long; that it was not Rttth cotnin . Ottegroan--attd there might be oth- ers. She stepped back to her bed, hid the two weapons and waited. She must make no mistakes now. The door was Tung open. Outside it was dark, pitch-dark. But evident- ly the man entering had no fear of being seen. He threw down a bundle of dry fagots, and set fire to them, The blaze,leaping up, casting g waV- enng gleams to where Judith stood, showed her .plainly the twisted ttgl y face of Quinnion, his red-ritmn;ed eyes peering at her, filled with evil delight. "The better to see you by, my dear!" was Quinnion's word of greet- ing. Judith made no answer, She drew a little farther back into the shadows, a little closer to the things she had hidden among the fir- branches, "Ho," sheered Quinnion, his mood from the first plain enough to read in the glimpses of his face and in the added harshness of his voice. "Tiinid little fawn, huh? Hy G -d, a man would say from the bluff you put up that it was all a dneatn about findin' you an' the han'some.Lee in the cabin together! Stan' off all you d --n please; I've come to tame you, you little beauty. of the big innocent eyes!" Not drunk; no, Quinnion was never drunk. But, as he came a step closer, the heavy air of the cave grew heavier. with the whisky he carried, whisky enough to stimulate the evil within hint, not to quench it. "Stand back!" cried Judith, with a sharp intake of breath, "I want to talk with you, Chris Quinnion." "So you know who I ant, do you? Well, much good it'll do you." "I know who you are and what you are," she told hire defiantly, suddenly sick of her long hours of playing baby, knowing at the moment less fear than hatred and loathing. "Lis- ten to me; Bayne Trevors has come out in the open at last; he has made. his big play and is going to lose out on it. Your one chance now is to let me go and to go yourself. Go fast and far, Chris Quinnion. For when the law knows the sort Bayne Trevo- ors is and how you have worked hand and glove with him, it will know just how, much his word was worth when he swore you were with him when father was killed! Coward and cur and murderer'!" Quinnion laughed at her. "Little pussy -cat," he jeened. "You have claws, have you? And you spit and growl, do you? Want me to let you go back to that swaggering lover of yours, do you? Back to Lee—" "That's enough, Quinnion," she said sharply. "Is it?" He laughed at her again, and again came on toward her, the red -rimmed evil of his eyes driving quick fear at last into her. "Enough? Why, curse you and curse him, I haven't begun yet! When I'm through with you I'll go fast enough. -And he can have you then an' d—n welcome to him!" "Stop!" cried Judith. His laughter did not reach her ears now, but as he kicked the fire at his foot and the flames leaped and show- ed his face, she read the laughter in his soul; read it through the gleam- ing eyes, the twisted mouth which showed the teeth at one side in a hor- rible leer. His long amus thrust out before him, he came on. "Oh, my G—d!" cried Judith. "My G—d Then suddenly she was silent. She thought that she .bad known the ut- termost of fear and now for the first time did she fully know what terror was. His strength. was many times her strength; lis brutality was un- bounded, she was alone with him. There was no one to call to, not .even Ruth, the mad woman. She was shaking now, shaking so that she could barely stand. Quinnion came on, his long arms out, She felt the strength die out of her body, grew for a moment blind and< dizzy and sick. She tried again to call out to hint, to plead with him, But her voice stuck in her throat. He was gloating over her, . a look strangely like Mad Ruth's in his eyes Good G—d! He was like Mad Ruth; the same eyes, the same long, power - ltd arms, the same look of cunning! In a flash there came to her a suspi- cion which was near certainty: this man was blood of Mad Ruth's blood, bone of her bone; her son, aiid, like her, tainted with madness. He shot out a long arra, his hand barely brushing her shoulder. She shrank back. He stood, content to pause'a moment, to gloat further over ber, "You little beauty," he said, pant- ing, "You little white and pink and brown beauty!" Judith had shuddered when . he touched her, .Lint a strange thing had happened to her. His touch had ang ered her so that she almost forgot to be afraid, angered her so that the loathing was gone in white hot hat- red giving her back her old stnength. , Now,though he liad the brutal for- ce of a strong man, Quinnion did not. have the swiftness of movement of ail alert, desperate girl, Before he could grasp her lnotive she leaped to- ward him and toward the bed of fir. boughs, found the rugged stone, and lifting it high above her head flung it full into his face. The ratan stagger- ed back, crying out in throaty harsh- ness, a cry g of blind rage, But he did not fall, did not pause more than a brief instant. A little, ,dazed, withhis blood. it t eyes, he lunged toward her. She had found the club now and strrtek with all her might, again beating into tin face and again and again, He sought to grapple with her and she beat hixnt back. She saw his hand go to his, hip and heard hint curse her, and she - leaped' in on biro and, panting with the blow, struck again. He flung un his aria. She struck once more. Talt- ing the blow full across the .:face,_ Quinnion reeled back, stumbled at an uneven spot in the rock floor, ban anced almost failing. . Only a moment he held. time. But there was a chance to Dass him in. the narrow wary, and she took her chance, her heart beating wildly. And as she shot by she struck again. She. heard hint after her, shouting' curses, stumbling a little, coming on. The door was open, thank God, the door was open! She shot through. If she could but take time to close itl'. But there was no time for that; he was almost at her steels. And outside - was the ledge and the dizzy climb, down. If she slipped, if site fell, well, it would be just a clean death and noth- ing more. Quinnion was but a few steps behind her. He had not fired. Had he perhaps dropped his gun back. there in the darkness? Or was he so sure of taking her, alive and strug- gling, into his arms in another mo- nient, She was on the ledge, :it was dark, pitch-dark. But she found a hand hold, threw herself flat down and thrust her feet out over the ledge, less afraid of what lay below than what came on behind her. She was gripping the ledge now with her hands, already torn and bleeding, her feet swinging, seeking a foothold Quinnion was jest there, above hes,. She must move her Ithnds so' that he could not reach her. It seemed an eternity that she hung there, seeking a place, somewhere to set her feet. She found it, another lesser ledge which she had almost missed, and knew that this way she had clambered upward with Bayne Trevors. If she could only find another step and an- other before Quinnion came upon:: her! She held her club in her teeth;: she must not let that go. Quinnion was over the ledge, fol- lowing her. She heard his heavy breathing, heard him cursing her. again. She was going so slowly, so slowly, and Quinnion would know the way better than she. Quinnion would make better time in the dark. ` She moved along this lower ledge. At each instant she wondered if it were to be her last, if she were go- ing to fall, if a swift drop through the darkness would be the end of. life. Suddenly there was scarce room in the girl's breast for hatred of Chris" Z Quinnion, so. filled was it with the ove of life. She wanted to seethe sun come' up again, she wanted the sweet breath of the dawn in her nos- trils, the beauty of a sunlit world in her eyes. She thought of Bud Lee. Clinging to the rocks, hanging on desperately, taking a score of desper- - ate :chances momentarily, she made her way on and down. She found scant handhold and, almost falling, dropped her club, heard it strike, and strike again.- Black as the night was, its gloom was less than that of the cavern to which Judith had grown ac- customed; little by little she began to make out the broken surface of the cliffs. The chasm below was a pool of ink; above there were the. little stars; in the eastern sky, low down, was a promise of the rising moon. The surge of quickening hope carne into her heart. Had she hurt Quin - tion more than she had guessed? For,. slowly as she made her hazardous way down, it seemed to her that he carne even more slowly, Could she but once get down into the gorge be- low, could she slipalong the along' the course of the racing stream, she might run and the sound of her steps would be lost even to her own ears, in the sound of the water; thesight of her flying body would be lost to• Quinnion's eyes. Then site heard hits laughing above her, Laughing, with a snarl and a curse in his laugh, and something of ntaliciotts triumph. Was he so cer- tain of her then? "Ruth!" called Quinnion. '-"Oh, Rutin The girl's gestin' away. Goin'' down the. roots. • Head her off at the bottom." sthadfound, Judith h , because her fate.. was good to her, the long slanting crack in the wall of rock up which she had come that day with Bayne Trevors, There was still danger of a fall, but the danger was less nowee, than it had been ten• seconds ago. She could move more swiftly no and confidence had begun to cotne to her that she could elude 'Quinnion. But . now, suddenly, she heard Mad R'unt's voice screatni!tg a shrill answer to Quint -nail's shout; knew that Ruth had been in het cabin across the gorge andwasrunning ruinn to ' t at nterce t bet g P la the e foot of the cliffs. (Continued next v-cek.