Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 104, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 April 1912 — The Chalice of Courage [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Chalice of Courage

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By Cyrus Ta wnsend Brady.

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SYNOPBIS. Enid Maitland, a frank, free and unspoiled young Philadelphia girl, Is taken to the Colorado mountains by her uncle, Robert Maitland. James Armstrong, Maitland’s protege, falls in love with *{®f; His persistent wooing thrills the girl, but she hesitates, and Armstrong goes east on business without a definite answer. Enid hears the story of a mining engineer, Newbold, whose wife fell oft a win and was so seriously hurt that he was compelled to shoot her to prevent her being eaten by wolves while he went for help. Kirkby. the old guide who tells the story, gives Enid a package of letters Which he says were found on the dead woman’s body. She reads the letters ana at Klrkby’s request keeps them. While bathing In mountains stream Enid is attacked by a bear, which is mysteriously ihot. A storm adds to the girl s terror. CHAPTER V (Continued). Suddenly the rolling thunder peals concentrated, balls of fire leaped out of the heavens and struck the mountains where she could actually see them. There were not words to describe the tremendous crashings which seemed to splinter the hills, to be succeeded by brief periods of silence. to be followed by louder and more terrific detonations. In one of those appalling alternations from sound to silence she heard a human cry—an answering cry to her own? It came from the hills behind her. It must proceed, she thought, from the man. She could not meet that man, although she craved human companionship as never before, she did not want his. She could jot bear it Better the wrath of Qod, the fury of the tempest. Heedless of the sharp note of warning, of appeal, in the voice ere it was Irowned by another roll of thunder, she plunged on In the darkness. The tanon narrowed here; she made her way down the ledges, leaping recklessly from rock to rock, slipping, falling, grazing now one side, now the other, hurling herself forward with white face and bruised body and torn Bands and throbbing heart that would falu burst its bonds. There was once an ancient legend, a human creature, menaced by all the furies, pitilessly pursued by every malefic spirit of earth and air; like him this sweet young girl, Innocent, lovely, erstwhile happy, fled before the storm. Then the heavens burst, and the fountains of the great deeps were broken open and with absolute litteralness the floods descended. The bursting clouds, torn asunder by the wild winds, driven by the pent-up lightning within their black and .turgid breasts, disburdened themselves. The water came down, as It did of old when God washed the .face of the world, in a flood. The narrow of the canon was filled ten, twenty, thirty feet in a moment by the cloud burst. The Mack water rolled and foamed, surging like the napids at Niagara. The body of the girl, utterly unprepared, was caught up in a moment and flung like a bolt from a catapult down the seething sea filled with the trunks of the trees and the debris of the :: mountains, tossing about humanly In the wild confusion. She struck out strongly swimming more because of the Instinct of life than for any other reason. A helpless atom in the boiling flood, growing every minute greater and greater as the angry skies disgorged themselves of their pent-up torrents upon her devoted head.

«„ CHAPTER VI. Death, Life and the Resurrection. The man was coming back from one of his rare visits to the settlements. Ahead of him he drove a train of burros who, well broken to their work, followed with docility the wise" old leader in the advance. The burros were laden with his supplies for the approaching winter. The season was late, the mountains would soon be impassable on account of the snows, indeed he chose the late season always for hi 6 buying in order that he might not be followed, and it was his habit to buy in different places at different years that his repeated and expected presence at one spot might not arouse suspicion. Intercourse with his fellow men was confined to this yearly visit to a settlement, and even that was of the briefest nature, confined always to the business in hand. Even when busy In the town he pitched a small tent In the open on the outskirts and dwelt •part. No men there in those days pried into the business of other men too closely. Curiosity was neither safe nor necessary. If be aroused transient interest or speculation it soon died away. He vanished into the mountains and as he came no more to that place, be wap soon forgotten. Withdrawing from his fellow men and avoiding their society, this man was never so satisfied as when alone in the silent hills. His heart and spirit rose with every step he made away from the main traveled roads or the more difficult mountain trails. For several days he Journeyed through the mountains, choosing the wildest and most inaccessible parts his going. Amid |he canons and saaks be threaded his way with un-

erring accuracy, ascending higher and higher until at last he reached the mountain aerie, the lonely hermitage, where he made his home. There he reveled in his Isolation. What had been punishment, expiation, had at last become pleasure. Civilization was bursting through the hills in every direction, railways were being pushed hither and thither, the precious metals were being discovered at various places and after them came hoards of men and with them —God save the mark —women; but his section of the country had hitherto been unvisited even by hunters, explorers, miners or pleasure seekers. He was glad, as he had grown to love the spot where he had made his home, and he had no wish to be forced, like little Joe, to move on. Once a man who loved the strife, noble or ignoble, of the madding crowd, he had grown accustomed to silence 7 habituated to solitude. Winter and summer alike be roamed the mountains, delving into every forest, exploring every hidden canyon, surmounting every inaccessible peak; no storm, no snow, no condition of wind or weather daunted him or stopped him. He had no human companionship by which to try his mettle, but nevertheless over the world of the material which lay about him he was a master as he was a man. He found some occupation, too, In the following of / old Adam’s inheritance; during the pleasant months of summer he made such garden as he could. His profession of mining engineer gave him other employment. Round about him lay treasures inestimable, precious metals abounded in the hills. He had located them, tested, analyzed, estimated the wealth that was his for the taking —It was as valueless to him as the doubloons and golden guineas were to Selkirk on bis island. Yet the knowledge that it was there gave him'an energizing sense of . potential power, unconsciously enormously flattering to his self-esteem. Sometimes he wandered to the extreme verge of the range and on clear days saw far beneath him the smoke of great cities of the plains. He could be master among men as he was a master among mountains,- if he chose. On such occasions he laughed cynically, scornfully, yet rarely did he ever give way to such emotions. A great and terrible sorrow was upon him; cherishing a great passion he had withdrawn himself from the common lot to dwell upon It From a perverted sense of expiation, in a madness of grief, horror and despair, he had made himself a prisoner to his Ideas In-the desert of the mountains. Back to bis cabin he would hasten, and there surrounded by his living memories—deathless, yet of the dead! —he would recreate the past until dejection drove him abroad on the hills to meet God if not man—or woman. Night-day, sunshine-shadow, heat-cold, storm-calm; these were his life.

Hiving disburdened his faithful animals of their packs and having seen them safely bestowed for the winter In the corral he had built near the base of the cliff upon which his rude home was situated, he took his rifle one morning for one of those lonely walks across the mountains from which he drew such comfort because he 'ancied the absence of man conduced to the nearness of God. It was a delusion as old nearly as the Christian religion. Many had made themselves hermits in the past in remorse for sin and for love toward God; this man had burie4 .himself in the wilderness in part for the first of these causes, In other part for the love of woman. In the days of swift and sudden change he had been constant to a remembrance, and abiding in his determination for five swift moving years. The world for him had stopped its progress in one brief moment five years back —the rest was silence. What had happened since then out yonder where people were mated he did not know and he did not greatly care. In his visits to the settlements he asked no questions, he bought no papers, he manifested no interest in the world; some things in him had died in one fell moment, and there had been, as yet, no resurrection. Yet life, hope, and ambition do not die, they are indeed eternal Resurgam! Life with its tremendous activities, its awful anxieties, its wearing strains, its rare triumphs, its opportunities for achievement, for service; hope with its illuminations, its encouragements, its expectations, ambition with its stimulus, its force, its power; and greatest Of all love, itself aloneall three were latent in him. In touch With a woman these had gone. Something as powerful and as human must bring them back. It was against nature that a man dowered as he should so live to himself alone. Some voice should 1 cry in his soul in its cerements of futile remorse, vain expiations and benumbing recollection; some day he should burst these grave clothes self-wound

about him and be once more a man and a master among men, rather than the hermit and the recluse of the solitudes. He did not allow these thoughts to come into hfs life; indeed. It is quite likely that he scarcely realized them at all yet; such possibilities did not present themselves to him. Perhaps the man was a little mad that morning, maybe he trembled on the verge of a break —upward, downward, I know not so It be away—unconsciously as he strode along the range that morning. He had been walking for some hours, and as he grew thirsty it occurred to him to descend to the level of the brook which he heard below him and of which he sometimes caught a flashing glimpse through the trees. He scrambled down the rocks and found himself in a thick grove of pine. Making his way slowly and with great difficulty through the tangle of fallen. timber which lay In every direction, the sound of a human voice, the last thing on earth to be expected in that Wilderness, smote upon the fearful hollow of his ear.

Any voice or any word then and there would have surprised him, but there was a note of awful terror in this voice, a sound of frightened appeal. The desperation in the cry left him no moment for thought, the demand was for action. The cry was not addressed to him, apparently, but to God, yet It was he who answered — sent doubtless by that Over-looking Power who works in such mysterious ways His wonder to perform! He leaped over the intervening trees to the edge of the forest where the rapid waters ran. To the right of him rose a huge rock, or cliff, in

shivering in the water, whose sensation so far as a mere man could, he thoroughly understood and appreciated, and whose modesty he fain would spare, having not forgotten to be a gentleman In five years of his own society—high test of quality, that. He climbed out upon the bank, uprooted a small tree, rolled the bear clear of the heap of woman’s clothing and marched straight ahead of him up the canon and around the bend. Thereafter, being a man, he did not faint or fall, but completely unnerved he leaned against the canon wall, dropped his gun at his feet and stood there trembling mightily, sweat bedewing his forehead, and the sweat had not come from his exertions. In one moment the whole even tenor of his life was changed. The one glimpse he had got of those white shoulders, that pallid face, that golden head raised from the water, had swept him back five years. He had seen once more in the solitude a woman. Other women he had seen at a distance and avoided in his yearly visits to the settlements. Of course, these had passed him by remotely, but (here he was brought in touch intimately with humanity. He who had taken life had saved it* A woman had sent him forth; was a woman to call him back?

He cursed himself for his weakness. He shut his eyes and summoned other memories. How long he stood there he could not have told. He was fighting a battle and it seemed to him at last that he triumphed. Presently the consciousness came to him that perhaps he had no right tp stand there idle; it may be that the woman needed him; perhaps she had fainted in the waiter;' perhaps—. He turned to-

front of him the canon bent sharply to the north, and beneath him a few rods away a speck of white gleamed above the water of a deep and still pool that he knew. There was a woman there! He had time for but the swiftest glance; he had surmised that the voioe was not that of a man’s voice instantly he heard it, and now he was sure. She stood white'breast deep in the water staring ahead of her. The next second he saw what had alarmed her —a Grizzly Bear, the largest, fiercest, most forbidding specimen be had ever seen. There were a few of those monsters still left in the range; he himself bad killed several. The woman had not seen him. He was a silent man by long habit, aocustomed to saying nothing, he said nothing now. But Instantly aiming from the hip with a wondrous skill and a perfect mastery of the weapon, and Indeed it was a short range for so huge a target, he pumped bullet after bullet from his Winchester Into the evil monarch of the mountains. The first shot did for him, but making assurance double and treblb\gare, be fired again and again. Satisfied at last that the bear was dead, and observing that be had fallen upon the clothes of the bather, he turned, descended the stream lor a few yards until he came to a place where It was easily fordable, stepped through it without a glance toward the womaa

ward the bend which concealed him from her and then he stopped. Had he any right to intrude upon her privacy? He must of necessity be an unwelcome visitor to her; he had surprised her at a frightful disadvantage, he knew instinctively, although the fault was none of his, although he had saved her jlfe thereby, that she would hold him" and him alone responsible for the outrage to her modesty, and although he had seen little at first glance and had resolutely kept Ms eyes away, the mere consciousness of her absolute helplessness appealed to him—to what was best and noblest in him, too. He must go to her; yet stay, she might not yet be clothed, in which event—. But no, she must be dressed, or dead, by this time, and in either case be would have a duty to discharge. It devolved upon him to make sure of her safety; he was in a certain Bense responsible for it, until she got back to her friends, wherever they might be; but be persuaded himself that otherwise he did not want to see her again, that lie did not wish to know anything about her future; that he did not care whether it was well or ill with her; and it was only stern obligation which drove him. toward her —oh. fond and foolish man! He compromised with fIHBS at last by climbing the ridge>|HM|had shut off a view of the pool. jnplkIng down at the plaoe so mevKHwUe

to him. He was prepared to withdraw instantly should circumstances warrant, and he was careful so to conceal himself as to give no possible op.portunity for her to discover his scrutiny. With a beating heart and eager eyes he searched the spot There lay the bear and a little distance away prone on the grass, clothed but whether in her right mind or not he could not tell, lay the woman. For a moment as he bent a concentrated, eager gaze upon her he thought she might have fainted or that she might have died. In any event he reflected that she had strength and nerve and will to have dressed herself before either of these things happened. She lay motionless under his gaze for so long that he finally made up his mind that common humanity required him to go to her assistance. He rose to his feet on the Instant and saw the woman also lift herself from the grass as if moved by a similar Impulse. In his intense preoccupation he had forgot to observe the signs of the times. A sense of the overcast Sky came to him suddenly as it did to her, but with a difference. He knew what was about to happen, his experience told him niuch more as to the awful potentialities of the tempest than she could possibly Imagine. She must be warned at once, she must leave the canon and get up on the higher ground without delay. His duty was plain and yet he did it not He could n6t. The pressure upon him was not yet strong enough. . A half dozen times as he watched her deliberately sitting there eating, he opened his mouth to cry to her, yet he could not bring himself to It A strange timidity oppressed him; halted him, held him back. A man cannot stay away five years from men and women and be himself with them in the twinkling of an eye. And whei) to that instinctive and acquired reluct tance against which he struggled in vain, he added the assurance that whatever his. message he would be unwelcome on account of what had gone before; he could force himself to go to her or even to call to her, not yet. He would keep her under surveillance, however, and If the worst came he could Intervene in time to rescue her. He counted without fils cost, his usual judgment bewildered. -So he followed her through the trees and down the bank. Now he was so engrossed In her And so hgitated that his caution slept, his experience was forgotten. The storm in his own breast was so great that It overshadowed the storm brewing above. Her way was easier than., his and he bad fallen some distance behind when suddenly there rushed upon him the fact that a frightful and unlooked for cloudburst was about to occur above their heads. A lightning flash and a thunder clap at last arrested his attention. Then, but not until then, he flung everything to the winds and amid the sullen and almost continuous peals of thunder he sent cry alter cry toward her which were lost in the tremendous diapason of sound echoed and re-echoed through the rifts of the mountains. “Wait," he cried again and again, "Come up higher, Get out of the canon. You’ll be drowned.”

But he had waited too long. The storm had developed too rapidly; she was too far ahead of and beneath him. She heard nothing but the sound of a voice, thrill, menacing, fraught with terror for her, not a word distinguishable; scarcely to her disturbed soul even a human voice, it seemed like the wierd cry of some wild spirit of the storm. It sounded to her overwrought nerves so utterly Inhuman that she only ran the faster. The canon swerved and' then doubled back,’ but he knew its*direction. Losing sight of her for the moment he plunged straight ahead through the trees, cutting off the bend, leaping with superhuman agility and strength over rocks and logs until he reached a point where the rift narrowed between two walls and ran deeply. There and then the heavens opened and the floods came and beat into the open maw of that vast crevice and filled It in an instant. As the deluge came roaring down, bearing onward the sweepings and semirings of the mountains, he caught a glimpse of her white desperate face rising, falling, now disappearing, now coming into view again, in the foamy midst of the torrent He ran to the cliff bank and throwing aside Ms gun he scrambled down the wall to a certain Shelf of the rock over which the rising water broke thinly. Ordinarily it was twenty feet above the creek bed. Bracing himself against a jagged projection he waited praying. The canon was here so narrow that he could have leaped to the other side and yet it was too narrow for Mm to reach her if the water did not sweep her toward Ms feet It was all done In a second. Fortunately a projection on the other side throw the force of the

torrent toward him and with It came the woman. - —:?-^js^ She was almost spent. She had been struck by a log upheaved by some mighty wave, her hands were moving feebly, her eyes were closed, she was drowning, dying, but indomitably battling on. H,e stooped down and as a surge lifted her, he threw his arm around her waist and then he braced himself against the rock to sustain the full thrust of the mighty flood. As he seized, her she gave way suddenly, as If after having done all that she could there was noV nothing left hut to trust herself to his hand and God’s. She hung a dead weight on his arm in the ravening watefr which dragged and tore at her madly. He was a man of giant strength, but the struggle bade fair to be too much even for him. It seemed as If the mountain behind him was giving way. _He set his teeth, he tried desperately to hold on, he thrust out his right hand, holding her with the other one, and clawed at the dripping rock in vain. In a moment the torrent mastered him and when it did so it seized him with fury and threw him like a stone from a sling into the seething vortex of the ’mid-stream. But in all this he did not, or would not, release her. Such was the swiftness of the motion with which they were swept downward that he had little need to swim, his only effort was to keep his head above water and to Jkeep from being dashed against the logs that tumbled end over end or whirled sideways, or were jammed into clusters only to burst out on every hand. He struggled furiously to keep himself from being overwhelmed in the seething madness, and what was harder, to keep the lifeless woman in Sis arms from being stricken or wrenched away. He knew that below the narrows where the canon widened' the water would subside, the awful’ fury of the rain would presently cease. If he could steer clear of the rocks in the broad be might win to land with her. The chances against him were thousands to nothing. But what are chances in the eyes of God! The man in his solitude had not forgotten to pray, his habits stood him in good stead now. He petitioned shortly, brokenly, in brief unspoken words as he battled through the long dragging seconds.

Fighting, clinging, struggling, praying, -he was swept on. Heavier and heavier the woman dragged in an unconscious heap. It would have been easier for him if he had let her go; she would never know and he could then escape. The idea never once occurred to him. He had indeed withdrawn from his kind, but when one depended upon him all the old appeal of weak humanity awoke quick response in the bosom of the strong. He would die with the stranger rather than yield her to the torrent or admit himself beaten and give up the fight. So the conscious and the unconscious struggled through the narrow of the canon. Presently with the rush and hurl of a bullet from the mouth of a gun, they found themselves in a shallow lake through which the waters still rushed mightily, breaking over rocks, digging away shallow-rooted trees, leaping, biting, snarling, tearing at the big walls spread Sway on either side. He had husbanded some of his strength for this final effort, thlß last chance of escape. Below them at the other end of this open the walls came together again. There the descent was sharper than before and the water ran tb the opening with racing speed. Once again i n the torrent and they would be swept to death in spite of all Shifting his grasp to the woman’s hair, now unbound, he held her with one band and swam hard with the other. The current still ran swiftly but with no gigantic upheaving waves as before. It was more easy to avoid floating timber and debris, and on one side where the ground sloped somewhat gently the quick water flowed more slowly. He struck out desperately for it, forcing himself away from the main stream into the shallows and ever dragging the woman. Wa§ it hours or minutes or seconds after that he gained the battle and neared the shore at the-lowest edge? (TO BB CONTINUED.)

He Caught a Glimpse of Her White, Desperate Face.