Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 102, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 March 1920 — WHITE MAN [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WHITE MAN

By George Agnew Chamberlain

Author of “Home.” “ Through Stained Glm«.” “John Bogardua,” etc.

Copyright, 1919, The Bobbs-Merrtll Company CHAPTER VIII. — White Man announces that his work Is ended, and prep•.rations are made shipment of the material on hand. Gne rainy night Andrea allows herself to become despondent. She gives the signal asjeed on between them to summon White Man to her In case of danger, with a mixture of ridicule and comfort he coaxes tier from her despondent fit. His strong character and his Ideas of a life of usefulness are something of a revelation to Andrea used to the frivolous existence common to most “aristocrats,' and she begins to realize with a little alarm that she is beginning to care deeply for him. CHAPTER IX.—Next day Andrea is seized with a violent attack malaria and three days Man wages a desperate fight for her life. He succeeds and the Incident results In the discovery of their love for each Andrea learns that her -companion is Robert Oddman Trevor, once flyer, victim of nervous shock and Inca, pacltated for work in the air. The trip to the coast, where he met Andrea waa undertaken through necessity, and he is afraid to risk her safety In another ascent. He laughed, not silently and still not finite aloud. It was an extraordinary sound. It awoke in Andrea a chord of memory. It was not the stereotyped laughter of the stage; it was more specialized than that. Then she remembered. His was not the laugh of an Individual; it was the clipped, staccato, maddeningly deliberate, “Ha! Hal Ha!—Ha 1 Ha! Ha 1” of chorus and

conspirators In the “Ballo in Maschera.” “I ask you, who could have imagined it?” he continued; then, his voice thickening to a sinister Intensity, he added, “I could, d your soft carcass. Women 1 Fair women! Ha IHa I Ha I Dreams of fair women! GarrrJ Spawn of hell I Pestilence that sleep by day and lurk in the shadows of night and wine. Damnation of the filthy byways of the world, parading in the sweet likeness of God!” Andrea suddenly looked up, straight into his blazing eyes. “You yourself are speaking,” she said In a clear voice. “I am a woman, weak, miserable —never so miserable as in this awful night—but I’m not a coward. I can forgive not you but what you say, for you cried out just now from a hell infinitely deeper than mine.” The blaze of light in MacCloster’s eyes died to a brooding glow. There was something In Andrea's face, some Illumination of the clean soul within her, that spoke with a sure voice, louder, more persuasively than words. “The gifts that women may bring in their hands,” he said with a whispering sigh, “love, tenderness and honor, rest to the anchored soul! I. Mac-

Gloster, had the world at my feet for a single night. Drunk with adulation, drunk with wine, I went out to seek the gifts that~women bring in their hands.” His voice dropped to a bitter, half-flippant note of self-mocking. “Smallpox and worse In a single night Ha! Ha! Ha!”

The laugh rang out full-throated, ' thunderous, terrible for the freight of rage that it carried. It rolled and echoed across the silent night like the roar of a stricken lion. Scarcely had It died to a stillness when to Andrea’s ears came a clear command, calm as the voice of an executioner, “Lie down, Andrea." Before she could quite obey a rifle spoke, there waslhe “Phut!” of a bullet as a patch of MacCloster’s shirt leaped suddenly, weirdly, from his shoulder into the air. Instantly he leaned down and with one hand picked up Andrea lightly and held her suspended between himself and the shore. “One more, Trevor I you lousy bantam!" he billowed. "One more to save me the trouble of wringing the neck\of your little chicken I” As he finished speaking, Trevor shot again. A look of vacant surprise passed over the face of the punter nearest to Andrea. He crumpled up, sank as though all his bones had suddenly melted and fell, face down, to the bottom of the boat. His pole, released, slid with a swift swish into the water. MacCloster promptly placed her on the seat beside him and gave a calm order to the remaining punters, who had paused in terror. He stood up, took the tiller between the tremendous calves of his legs aud proceeded to fill and light his pipe. “You seer’ he said quietly. “He won't ijhQQt again. How do I know? f’ll tell you. 1 ' He half seated himself, elbow on knee, the tiller under the crook of his leg. “A little brain work,” he continued conversationally. “Trevor meant lo kill a nigger, but not that one —not (he one next to you. He W’as shooting at the bow-boy and he hit the stroke oar! How do I know? Well, It's what any man would do, let alone one of the "best shots that ever drew trigger. He would pick off the crew beginning farthest from point where he needed all his nerve. Now the Bantain knows what he knew well enough before, only he knows it a d sight better, and that is that no man living can shoot in moonlight and tell where the bullet will go. “He won’t shoot again,” he finished, turning to her with a ghastly smile. “So you’re safe—safe with me. I don't ask you to love me for my looks —only for myself!” Andrea looked anywhere but at his face. “You and I know,” she said after a pause, “that I am quite safb with the man you once were.” “Here,” said MacCloster, his eyes narrowing. “It's too late to pull any of that stuff. Why didn’t you try it hack there when I was really soft?” “When you were sincere," answered Andrea, “I was sincere. You knew it; but you wouldn't have known it— it wouldn't have been true —if I had taken the chance to save my skin.” "That's so,” conceded MacCloster thoughtfully. “But if you’re not going to be persuaded to love me, will yon please tell me where I get off? What are you good for, anyway? Do you realize that I gave up a case of gin for you and that a case of gin in these troubled times is worth all of three pounds sterling?” Andrea winced. “So Pm really not worth three pounds," she said half to herself. MacCloster heard and took quick pity on the wistfulness in her voice. “Well,” he said, comfortingly, “I wouldn’t say that. Where it was a question of sentiment or a matter of having something pretty around the house a man might go further. Why, even among the blacks —” He paused, looked -calculatlngly at her and then went on: “Old-timers will tell you that there are two qualities that don’t exist in Africa at all; one is gratitude and the other is affection. 1 think they’re right about the first, but about the second, I know better. There are cases where a black likes a particular woman, and when that happens his face is marked by a peculiar look. I know It and every time I catch sight of it I’m two extra pounds in pocket.” “Why?” asked Andrea. “What do You mean?” “Why. my dear? Don’t you know!

Didn't Trevor tell you that I*m—l’m In trade?" “Hf said,” answered Andrea, “that you were engaged in some horrible business, but .that he couldn't conceive of any reason-why he should tell me what it was. I was very curious then, but now I really don’t care." “Finicking, crowing prude!” exclaimed MacCloster, his mind on Trevor. “Why, it’s the most legitimate hundred per cent little business that ever crawled out of a big brain. If It wasn’t for me this whole back country would run short of wives." “You mean you buy and sell women?" asked Andrea. "No, not exactly,” answered MacCloster. "I raise them. I’m the legal possessor of a hundred and eighty-two, or five, or six, wives. Can’t just remember.”

“Oh!” gasped Andrea, crouching still farther into her corner. “There you go," said MacCloster, calmly. “Don’t let your imagination run away with you, my dear. I said I’m the legal possessor and I mean just that. But what's the use of talking. You’ll see.” All through the night and well into the next day the bout traveled steadily upstream. MacCloster yawned prodigiously three or four times, but never gave up the tiller to a “boy.” In the early morning they entered a long rench U)? on both sides by flat plains. MncCloafei stood erect and his eyes made the circuit of the horizon. “Nothing,” he said. “If he could have beaten us to this our name would have been Dennis. He’s given up his favorite little spotted hen. Flap your wings and say good-by." Andrea’s heart, already low, sank a lot lower. Not once through the night had she closed her eyes and she knew now that she had been hoping and praying that the first gleatn of morning would find Trevor, the avenger, on the bank. She could not know, as did MacCloster, that an impassable forest of unbroken thorn Stretched for miles between the two camps. There wafl just one open road to MacCloster’s — the river—and on that no other boat could equal the speed of his own. “Say.” said MacCloster, moved by a sudden thought, “is there anyone that would give a lot of money for you?” Andrea’s brows drew together in honest valuation of what was left of her old self. “I don’t knowj" she said meekly. “Perhaps not now." “What would he give for you?" MacCloster asked, jerking his beard over his shoulder. “He said he wouldn’t give three pounds,” answered Andrea in a still, small voice. She began to cry. MacCloster’s eyes grew round with fright. “Oh, come now,” he protested. “Here you've been hours without even thinking of that d d old trick. Stop it!" he roared suddenly. "Stop it OF Hl mash your head In."

“I wish you would,” sobbed AhdrSi and cried harder than ever. MacCloster rolled his eyes heavenward as though he Implored aid. “Listen,” he said, talking into the sky. “Listen and I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Are you listening?” “Yes,” gasped Andrea. “Well,” said MacCloster. “You’ve been a lot of trouble to me and a big loss. You can’t expect a dry man to forget a whole case of schnapps. Now I’m going to let you write him a note and If you can get him to give three cases of gin for you, why he can have you, d n him.” Andrea stopped crying, sat up straight and dabbed her eyes with her very dirty fingers, but there was a strange, set look in her face that made MacCloster doubt her sudden cure. “Will you do it?” he asked. “Never,” said Andrea. “You’re queer, like all of them,” he commented musingly. “But somehow the suggestion stopped you crying.” “What on earth is that?” asked Andrea, her eyes fixed far ahead on an enormous pale-yellow dome that looked as If all the haystacks in the world had been gathered Into one. “That,” said MacCloster, his vast chest swelling in equally immeasurable pride, “is my caia, my hut.” “I think there is something the matter with my eyes,” said Andrea. “What I see isn’t possible.” “Oh, yes it is,” said MacCloster. “That’s my hut; eighty feet high, one hundred and twenty feet across and ’most a hundred yards’ dash around.” “But how did you build It?” asked Andrea, absorbed in spite of her misery. “Well,” replied MacCloster, ‘Tm modest. I don’t mind admitting that God did the building; I just came along and put on the roof. Trevor ever show you any mafuta trees?” “Yes, they are wonderful,” said Andrea, understanding beginning to dawn in her eyes. “That hut of mine,” said MacCloster, “is nothing but the biggest, roundest, widest mafuta tree in the world, trimmed a bit and thatched over.” Half an hour later they made a landing. “Want me to carry you again,” asked MacCloster with a leer, “oryou walk?”- — “TU walk,” said Andrea, going suddenly white with sickening recqliectfom ~- —- (TO BE CONTINUED.)

Trevor Shot Again.