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The Exeter Times-Advocate, 1931-10-08, Page 3A r V S; i 4 THE EXETER TIMES-ADVOCATE thiwsday, oiwbm ’’a. <! < “The Silver Hawk BY WILLIAM BYRON MOWERY Chapter j " I air that a neve was a patch of white That momentous night, before’no bigger than his palm and glacier liis partner returned with a story' tentacles were more fingers reach- that was the thunder-whisper of a [ ing. down to tree line, he could per- .storxn to come, James Dorn, aerial map-maker, had been musing in his •’Calgary” tent, a dead pipe between Ids teeth, his quiet stern face, tie iess melancholy than was •with him. Assigned to the wildest and lest territory in the northern Cana- cllan Rockies, Dorn was glad to be living again in his native mountains rafter six years of absence, and glad that through all the spring and summer he would be flying over these magnificent ranges, charting With panorama camera the wilder ness rivers and lakes and virgin for ests Teaching north to the Yukon. ■ As he sat that night, ‘ip his Ione- Uy camp pitched under the spruces of Titan Island, an unconscious re frain was running in the. back ground of his reverie: “It is good, good, to be home .again.” A lone some wolf howl quavering down from some naked pinnacle above timber line, the sleepy call of a .grdat northern diver out on the lake, the song and laughter of the lial/Lbreed danpe over at Titan Pass Station—those and a hundred oth ers were sounds that Dorn under stood and loved; and just |by hear ing th&m' he felt solid and rooted -in once more after long absence. A home, in the sense of a human habitation or settled abode, Dorn Ixad not known since liis babyhood' /flays down in the Blackfoot Selkirks he had spent his orphaned years in various mining camps and timber crews and on the solitary fur path, jso that home to him meant nothing more tain from way. manhood, taught him its lessons, it was ines capably a part of his being. Eitting there motionless by his work table, with the electric torch Sighting up his dark wavy hair and ciark eyes and body as lean as a wolf's, Dorn was thinking -back up on that April, six years ago, wh«n 3ie slammed his last fur pack on a trading 'counter and went south to the States and took up air work. He* had thought never to return. He had known bitter hardships in. that wilderness. He had experienced to the full its 'brutal cold, someness, its insect had known hunger __ _ _ •poverty and the bleak outlook of the homeless wanderer. •But during those years of airy ad venturing—in the States, in Mexico, abroad with the regiments Etrang- ers in sun-bl.istered Syria—he han heen insensibly drawn back to .Can ada. It was his birthplace, the seat precious babyhood memories; and the thunder of its imighty name was a tocsin in his /blood. And grad ually those bitter recollections fad bed and he .came to remember only Jtlie stark beauty of the mountains: their solemn majesty, thei r pure .cliaste colours of 'blue and white ■and evergreen, .their. winds that were high wine in a man’s veins; -and those hardships, seen from the perseetive of Cities and' sunnier lands, seemed to liin‘1 to supply that /element of stern, rigorous discipline which was lacking in the pleasure bent lives ’ cf men around him. So that alght, with an education aence and a profession 'had returned to that -like a homing eagle. Ho was especially glad that he Jhad cOme bacl’ the first flush sence he had the glad surge mor th! and ways dragged slow i a Ht- usual rpck, definite than this huge moun- wilderness stretching north the Canadian National Rail- But in it lie had’ grown to it ’ had moulded him, its lone- scourges; he and constant and women at twenty- and' exper- now, Dorn wilderness three weeks ago in f April. In his ab- chiefly remembered of. spring in the February and March al- ,nd winter, grew tiresome; but with the Chipewyan IMoon- of- the- Brown- Eagle Mating oame that wonderful leap to life when warm Chinooks from the Paci fic melted- the deep snows, and ice- docked rivers let loose with a roar, land trees became soft with buds in a day, and the nights were clamor ous with wildfowl honking north-, ward. Each April of his exile Dorn, had' turned in his imagination toward his native mountains, and under alien skies lie had said to himself, longingly: “It is spring Fraser, the Peace, the He was home again at Titan Station. In his bad prospected and trapped through these neighbouring ranges and wat- cr-dogged on. their spruce-buried ^rivers; but instead of moccasin or paddle he had the wings of an eagle Slow, Since his coming three weeks ago be had charted a block of wilder- mass which a whole platoon of sur veyors could not have covered so thoroughly in three years. The work •was a daily adventure. So high in ■0 now on the Athabaska.” last,’ here at 'boyhood he f? qniglity 'pattern of the , and they no longer Qyer- with their vastness, He gauntlet of dangers- that For all . cejve the mountains awed him liked the he ran -with every flight. Dorn’s sober casts of mind1, he leap ed to a good battle; and the hoary old gijants, with their sudden storms and cloud-hidden pinnacles, freezing mists and deadly chasms gave it to him. Waiting for his partner to return all unaware of the strange story Eby was .to bring, Dorn, listened to the sound of the half-lbreed “sociable” In this out-of-the-way wilderness spot connected with civilization only jby the slender ribbon of steel, the ‘metis’ and Indians were closely de»- pqndent upon the moods of nature for food and warmth; arid the sea sons had meaning in their lives. Naive children of the mountains— there was something 'pagan in their welcome of the 'Lord Sun returning to power. They were literally dan cing the spring in, As he heard' the tise girls and the across the moonlit Titan, the eternal Dorn’s eyes faded rare smile crept over his face. He could fairly see old Pere Bergelot, the station master, sawing away an a raw -pine fiddle, and old Luke II- le-wahwacet 'beating a beargut tom tom; and hear the shuffle of moc casin and the thump of shoepack on the rough boards of the station platform. A crisp, virile ’breezs, spiked with the tang of fir /and pine, flowed down from the glaciers and high snow-fields, of Titan Range. It sent tiny wavelets lap-lapping against the island, and set the spruce need les to whispering, and rustled the papers on Dorn’s work table. He had rolled up the tent sides a coup le of feet to let the breeze in, and rolled down the inner veil of netting to keep mosquitoes out. For an hour or two during that ‘long north-’ ern twilight he had buried himself oblivion, deep in an abtruse problem of aero-dynamics, but the, quiver and stir of night life around his tent on the lake, in the towering ranges cradling it, had aroused him from'cosines and’logarithms, and he waited for Eby to return from dance. “Kansas” Eby, his friend for last six years, was over there in thick of things. Their assignments this season had separated the two of them temporarily; with four oth er birdmen Eby was stationed at Eagle Nest, two hundred miles east, while Dorn worked alone from his base here at Titan Pass. This Sat urday evening Kansas had .whipped across the mountains. To visit Dorn he said; but Dorn knew better-— the dance had .brought him. Kansas was like that. Hopping two hundred miles to an affair where “the hawk flew in and 'birdie flew out,” nothing in his estimation. It was half an hour before mid night that Dorn suddenly, heard his partner coming up the dark path. The dance was still on. He wonder ed what oil earth had pried Kansas away from it. Refilling his pipe, he remember ed that the Trans-continental east bound to Alberta foothills and Ed monton, had- gone past a short while ago. The train was a possible ex planation. Of a quiet evening it was the only thing which had po tentialities. For the dozen families at 'Titan Station life was uneventful •—placid and unrippled as a rock girt tarn; but sometimes the Trans continental, their sole link with Civ ilization, slammed open the door to the world Outside /and some strange disturbing wind blew in: some echo of the city's tumultuous beating, some aftermath of a tragedy, some bruised and battered mortal seeking oblivion and a healing peace in the old mountains. their air ■* abied plane to a perilious, dead stick landing, Jean out of the cock pit and yell “hoj-yoi at a pretty girl, ' That was Kansas. <0n their airy path of life togeth er in the last six years Pbrn and Eby had painted smokesigns on the blue (billboard of the heavens, had fought ,boll weevil palgues in the southern states with arsenic dust, had barnstormed twice across the continent, had gone abroad and flown' over the rock-hill strongholds of Jebel Hauran with the Regiment , Etrangers, had ib.een test pilots for a company where their jobs was to ascertain if planes were safe for other men to go up in—a graveyard occupation wherein they cracked up half a dosep machines apiece but cheated the grim joke that they were certain, soon or late, t<? land in a cemetery. In the glow of his electric torch hanging from the ridgepole Dorn 'finally managed to meet eyes, and the expression was such as fore. I« .asked, !E|by had got lie had never Kansas’s in them seen he thinking laughter of me- “music” coming waters of Lake unhappiness in a little and a the the the was Chapter II “A PRETTY GHOST, A SCARED GHOST As Kansas stooped through the flap-front Of the tent and sat down on the cot without saying a word, Dorn looked at him sharply. Sonne* thing had upset him. A frown wrinkled his forehead and he tap ped a cigarette with nervous fingers Kansas was a year younger than Dorn, plumper of face, a man of al together different stamp. Dorn lik ed liim chiefly for'his sunlit nature On his lips, arched like a girl’s a smile constantly hovered. His eyes wore saucy and ’bold and dare-devil ish, Of nondescript Amerian ibiood, he was a most amazing mixture of iron-hearted courage and care-free gallantry. Once dowh-in California Dorn had seen him, guiding a dis- For “Jim, over at the sta- acquainted with any know of in these observed. “What “What’s up?" into trouble with some metis men over at Titan Pass. Kansas 'cleared his throat, once he was unsmiling. Abruptly, in utter seriousness, he broke out: tion, fifteen or twenty minutes ago, I saw a—it must have been a ghost Dorn, relaxed, still interested, but slightly skeptical. “It was a pretty ghost and-a scar ed ghost," Kansas added. “Not the kind a fellow’s afraid- of, but the kind that's afraid of you. I thought maybe you, being acquainted around here, might help- me .figure it opt'. “I’m not ghosts- that I mountains," Dorn was it you saw?” “You remember continental rolled ago?” •Dorn nodded. “Well, I was scahdlng down at the west end of the platform just where the cedars begin. Fact, I was standing in their shadows. Happen ed to be alone. Was awaiting for a ’breed—you know him that bush- sneak, Joe Yoroslaf—to z come out and settle a knuckle argument like he asked me, only he got icold feet when he found ’-out I had an auto matic too, and he didn’t come.,.,JR wasn’t ten, twelve yards from thei tracks, when the train stopped. U.p front ia. bunch of people got -off a minute to stretch their legs and buy trinkets from th-e kloochmans, but I was back at the Pullmans and private coaches. “There was a girl, Jim—unless I was cock-eyed and ‘seeing things —-a girl came into the vestibulet and down onto the steps and stood there a second in plain sight. I remember thinking when I first saw her ,‘My word .there’s a work of art!’ 'She was about chin high to you or me, about twenty, brown hair a brown-eyed queen! She was dress ed like a .fashion-plate girl—travel ling- suit, a black cape trimmed with white fur, big silver buckles on the littlest pumps you ever saw, a dia mond in her hair....Lord, Jinm, her outfit ’ud cost you or me a whole summer’ salary!" Kansas paused a moment, It was seldom that he spoke seriously of girls. He liked them all and loved none. Bue lie was serious now to the point of reverence. I-Ie went on: “At first I thought she had just come out for a breath, of air. But that was iny mistake. If I know what girl 1 half Jim, with eyes sure fore s-he jumped—" Dorn stiffened, / chair and forgot to ed? You mean train?” “Jumped And sas asseverated, the shadows like a. wore, streaming back from shoulders ....... she damned near seemed to be flying Once'she got into the cedars Where she couldn’t be noticed she hid there on the other side of a laurel bush from me till the train picked up and went on. “I stood there.......Jim, I almost could have reached through that laurel and touched- her..,.t .stood there, I did, like a wooden Indian, so absolutely thunderstruck I could n’t budge. It must have been two or three minutes before the train pulled out and my brain began hit ting on all twelve again. Then I thought, “Maybe she’s in some trouble and I can give her a lift’, I made a noise go’s not to surprise her and anltled around that laurel clump. when the Trans in, short time that only was. steps ‘scared’ means was scared. It took me a split-wink to dee she she hovered there on the her hand up to her throat, her wide, looking all around to /be no one was watching her, be- a little > smoke. > jumpedshe in his “Junup- off the Kan-running- She flitted into that cape she her Jim; “How she slipped away from me I don’t know, it JopX gesjjj ippssl* bl© a girl could’ do it—-neat as she did, I just saw one flutter of white —no sticks ci’acjsixig, no leaves nxs- tling—just one glimpse of white cm deeper jp the shadows, and she was gone. ** I ran after hex’ jibe a fellow chasing a will-o'-the-wisp, Crasy thing to do, but j couldn’t help it; she just seemed to draw me. I scoured all through those cedars trying to find her, Went back to the platform and looked around. Even went up to the chalet to see if a guest had stopped off. She wasn’t anywhere. She just simply, vanished, and that was the size of. it! It was over with so quick, I couldn’t find hide nor hair of her afterwards, It all seemed so crazy impossible.......to tell you the Lord’s truth, Jim, I don’t know whether I was ‘seeing things, or whether’ it really happened. But if I did im agine it—" He looked at Dorn appealingly. The strain of flying sometimes play ed queer tricks with the ’best of pi lots, and T<ansas was plainly ner vous about himself. He had pome to his partner instinctively for rea ssurance. Deliberate and philoso phic, Do was always his anchor, his granite mountain. Dorn took him firmly in hand: “Dont talk up that ’imagination’ or it’ll shoot your nerve, You saw a flesh-end-blood girl, of course. Your account does sound crazy, but there’s some sane explanation to it. Are you sure she didn’t get back in to that coach without you seeing her?” “I’m dead sure! Didn’t I tell you she hid1 there arm’s-reach from me all the time the train was pulling out? It was half a mile down the track, rumbling through that ava lanche shed, before I budged. And I saw her that glimpse of her white, afterwards." “Hmmph!” Dorn grunted. “And you say she was scared. How could you be certain of that—.thirty feet from her?” “There was a light in the vesti bule. And Lord, Jim—her attitude her actions, the way she flew into those shadows, and' then slipped away from me!" “She have any baggage?” “Not a powder pu/ff!" “Anybody else get off?” “Not a soul. I’d -have heard if they had. A passenger’s an event over there;’’ Dorn frowned. Except tor a coujF le of trifling points, such as seeing the colour of a girl’s .eyes at thirty feet away, lx© no longer had’ the slightest doubt that the incident has happened exactly as Kansas related it, And yet the whole thing seemed little preposterous. Why should a city girl, without bag or baggage, evidently rich—why unde? heaven should she get off at a lit tle mountain jump-down, at mid night, alone? He knew the wilder ness around there as he knew the: lines of his palm, There were no mines thereabouts, uo hunting lodg es she could be bound for, no Vill age within sixty miles—nothing tout the tiny isolated cluster of a dozen xnetis cabins,, a few Indian tepees, the H.B. store, and a six-roprix ho tel to which she had not gone. On the very face of it Kansas was right about her being frightened of anyone seeing hey. otherwise she would have gone off on the lighted platform. That was the queerest an gle of the whole business—hex* lay ing Into the shadows, hiding there, vanishing! (Continued next week) INJURED IN ACCIDENT When Mr. Wm. Murray, of Bay- field, was returing home from De troit, late one night he met a car with very bright lights near Bort Huron. He was approaching a cul vert at the time and being blinded by the lights failed to see the side of the culvert. The car was thrown in the ditch and Mr. Murray lay there for three hours before he was able to get help when he was re moved to Bort Huron hospital. He has been removed to his home where he is suffering from severe cuts. PERTH PIWSKYTEJHAIi The Autumn Rally of th© Perth. Presbyterlal of the United Church, held this year at Kirkton attracted, a large number of delegates, Mr©* McAlpin© presided in the chair dur ing the morning and afternoon ses sions; Mrs. H Kirk, Mount Pleas ant, and Mrs. Whittxeia 3wlt?er, of Woodham, took the opening exer cises and the several secretaries including the following,, gave their reports; Mrs. w- E. campibelh Brat ford Finance; Mrs, Moore, Kirkton Christian stewardship; Mi's. Mal colm, Associate Helpers; Mra«U A. Bali, st, Mary©, literature Sales; Mrs. F» R. Dale, st. Marys Temper ance accompanied by pageantry pre sented by Mrs, W. G. Anderson, Mrs, QUve Moore and Mrs. 3R. H. Datimer. ’The speakers of the day were Miss Elizabeth MacKenzle, missionary of Portugese west Africa and Miss Grace Patterson, of Kharva, Central India, both of whom gave illumin ating word pictures of the work be ing carx’ied in these far-off lands. Others taking part in the lengthy program were Mrs. Robbins, of Lis- towel, Mesdames McIntosh, Camp bell, Grant and Morris, of Stratford Mrs. W, P. Law, Seaforth, president of Huron Presbyterial and Miss A. M. Rennie, of New Hamburg. SMART—McKUJjOP Rev. James Stuart Smart, B. A„ Ph.D., pastor of the Presbyterian Church, Ailsa Craig and Miss Chris tine /McKillop, of Brampton were quietly married x’ecently in Knox Chapel, Toronto. Rev. Mr. Smart was recently inducted as pastor of the church in Ailsa Craig. After a short honeymoon, the young couple will return to the manse. Inflammation of the Bladder r and Kidney Trouble Mrs, George W. Adrian, Secretan, Sask., writes:—, “Early last spring I was taken very Bick With inflame matron of the, bladder and kidney trouble, and a bad attack of constipation. I tried different remedies, but they seemed to do me no good. I then got a box of Doan's Kidney Pills and can truthfully say they gave me wonderful relief, and I cannot recommend them) too highly to all those suffering from bladder ot kidney trouble.” Prioe 50o. a box at all druggists and dealers, mailed direct on receipt of price by The T. Milburn) Co., Limited, Toronto, Ont. i JUST IN AND ON OUR FLOOR A 3-minute test of the new Rogers Super heterodyne Radio, ev6n under only ^average77 conditions, will amaze you. Sharper selectivity . . . finer tone fidelity . . . the only 77 Superhet77 with Rogers Fully-Guaranteed Tubes. Arrange for this free test now. Inspect this handsome Lowboy Model. COMPLETE WITH 8 ROGERS FULLY-GUARANTEED TUBES W. J. BEER Main Street,Exeter, Ont.