Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 1, Number 11, DeMotte, Jasper County, 6 October 1932 — The Everlasting Whisper [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Everlasting Whisper

By Jackson Gregory

SYNOPSIS In the California sierra Mark King, prospector, sees Andy Parker killed by Swen Brodie, Parker’s outlaw companion, both known to King. He is on his way to the home of his friend, Ben Gaynor. King and Gaynor share with Brodie and his crowd knowledge of a vast store of hidden gold. King meets Mrs. Gaynor and is impressed by her daughter Gloria’s youthful beauty. He instinctively dislikes a house visitor named Gratton. With Gloria, King rides to the village of Coloma, intending to “sound” Honeycutt. He finds Brodie with the old prospector, and animosity flares. Their ride to Coloma and their companionship for a day, draw King closer to Gloria. CHAPTER III--Continued --5--I'm dead tired, mamma,” she said impatiently. “Nothing happened. I’ll tell you tomorrow--anything I can think of. And now, good night; I’m so sleepy.” She kissed her mother and added; “I didn’t tell Mark good night--” “Mark? Already, my dear?” “He was outside with papa,” said Gloria, slipping into bed. “Will you tell him good night for me?” “He’s gone,” retorted her mother, with a certain relish. “Gone!” Gloria sat up, a very pretty picture of consternation. “Where?” “Back into the woods. Where he came from, of course.” Gloria was silent and thoughtful. Then, “Good night, mamma,” she offered again, her cheek snuggled against her pillow. “And put out the light as you go, please.” Mrs. Gaynor, accepting her dismissal though reluctantly, sighed and went out. As the door closed Gloria tossed back the covers and sprang out of bed, going again to her window. Through her mind swept a dozen vivid pictures, all of King, most of them of him out there, alone with the night and the mountains. But she saw him also as she had seen him today; riding before her, breaking the alders aside. All day she had thrilled to him. Now, more than ever, she thrilled. She wondered if he would come up with Swen Brodie; most of all she wondered when she would see him again. Next morning Gloria was mildly surprised that Gratton did not appear in the least to resent her day of adventuring with King. He was interested; but his interest seemed to be chiefly in‘“that quaint little relic of past, turbulent days, Coloma.” He had her tell him all about it; of the deserted houses, everything. Hence his curiosity in Honeycutt and Brodie, and just what happened between King and them, did not stand out alone and made no impression on Gloria. By the end of the week the guests began taking their leaves. Mr. Gratfon, having lingered longest of all, went back to his city affairs, promising to run up again when he could. Ben, leaving his oldest and most dependable timber-jack look out for the womenfolk, hastened back to the lumber camp, where he returned like a fish to water to his old pipe and old clothes and roomy boots. And Gloria was plunged deep into loneliness. She made a hundred romantic conclusions to the story, just begun, by Mark King going in the night into the Her mind was rife with speculation, having ample food for thought in all the information she had extracted from her father. She grew wildly homesick for town. A theater, dance, a ride through the park. Activity. And people. It was for her mother that she consented to remain here another week. Mrs. Gaynor declared that she must have a few more days of rest; she was worn out from a year of going eternally, entertaining or being entertained. Gloria succeeded in getting her mother to drive with her frequently to Tahoe, to call on those of their friends there who had come to the mountains so early in the season. It was after one of these absences that Jim Spalding, the old timber-jack, told Mrs. Gaynor in his abashed stammer that Mark King had showed up while they were gone. He had appeared late yesterday afternoon, coming out of the woods. Looked like he’d been roughin’ it an’ goin’ it hard, at that. Had told Jim he wanted to telephone. Had stuck around for a while gettin’ his call through; had eaten supper with Jim; had gone back into the woods just about dark. That was all Jim knowed about it. Rather, that was all that he supposed he knew until Miss Gloria was done with him. She dragged other bits of information to the surface. King had phoned her father; they had talked ten minutes; Mr. Gaynor was to telephone to the log house again tomorrow or next day. There would be a message for King; mos’ likely from Coloma. King wanted to know some thing; Ben was to find ont; King would turn up within a few days for the message. Twenty-four hours later, the telephone rang, and Gloria heard the operator saying; “Coloma calling Ben Gaynor’s residence.” “Coloma!” thought Gloria with a quickened heartbreak. Then it wouldn’t be her father, after all; it would be Mark King--But her father it was, and she was disappointed. The message, however, was for King. “Mark will show up in a day or so,” he said. “Tell him that I did as he asked; that old Honeycutt boasts that what he has hidden nobody is going to find. I think if he ever talks to

anybody it will be to me, and I’ll run in and see him whenever I get a chance to get over here. And tell King that --that--Oh, I guess that’s all; better let me have a word with your mother.” Ben Gaynor was never the man for successful subterfuge, especially with his daughter; she could read every look in his eye, every twitch of his mouth, and now, over many miles of country telephone lines, she knew that her beloved old humbug of a male parent was “holding out on her." Realizing that a father at the end of a long-distance line was possessed of a certain strategic advantage presenting more difficulties than a mother at hand, she said lightly; “All right, papa. I’ll call her. Be sure you take good care of yourself. Bydie." She relinquished the telephone instrument to her mother and stood waiting. She could hear the buzzing of her father’s voice, but no distinct word. Her mother said “Yes?" and “Yes.” and “Yes, Ben.” And then: “Oh, Ben! I don’t understand.” And then her mother’s voice sharpened, cut into something Gaynor was saying: “I can’t say anything like that! It is as though we suspected him of being underhanded. And--” Such scraps of talk were baffling, and Gloria, with scant patience for the baffling, moved up and down restlessly. When her mother had clicked up the receiver, Gloria followed her and demanded to be told. In five min-

utes her daughter knew Gaynor had said. King was to be told that Gratton, instead of going straight to San Francisco, had gone down to Placerville, and next had turned up at Coloma; that he had spent three days there; that he had gonife several times to Honeycutt’s shanty, and had been seen, more than once, with Swen Brodie. “It’s an outrage.” cried Mrs. Gaynor, ’’to retail all that to Mark King. What business of his is it if Mr. Grafton does go to Colomo, or anywhere else? We are going back to San Francisco tomorrow!” “Why, mamma! After papa has trusted to us to see that his message is delivered!” Gloria looked shocked, incredulous. “Surely--” So they waited for Mark King to come again out of the forest. But the day passed and still he did not come. The next day dragged by; King did not come. By nightfall the look in eyes had altered, and a stubborn expression played havoc with the tenderer curves of her mouth. She resented at this late date King’s way of going; not only had he not told her good-by, he had left no word with her father for her. She sat smiling over a letter received some days ago from Gratton--after she had retrieved the letter from a heap of crumpled papers in her bedroom waste-paper basket. She wrote a long, dashingly composed answer. Two days later she said to her mother, out of a long silence over the coffee cups: “Let’s go back to San Francisco. This stupid place gets on my nerves.” “Why, of course, dear,” agreed Mrs. Gaynor. That day they left Jim Spalding in charge and departed for Truckee to catch a train for San Francisco. Mrs. Gaynor dutifully intrusted to Spalding her husband’s message for Mark King. That is to say, that portion of the message which she considered important. Three or four weeks passed before Mark King and Gloria met again. Weeks of busy gaiety on her part, of steady, persistent seeking on his. Now again Gloria and her mother and Ben were at the log house in the mountains, this time with a fresh set of guests. Only one of the former flock had been invited: Mr. Gratton. King came the day after the guests arrived. For a talk with Ben. Gloria gave him a bright little nod, friendly enough but casual, and resumed her lively chatter with her friends. King went off with Gaynor. That night King betook himself to smoke upon the porch; Gloria, slipping out from a dance, felt the little thrill that would not down when she found him there. In their two chairs, the faint fragrances from her gown and hair blown across his face by the night for them his pipe hastily laid aside--they sat talking softly or in a pleasant silence. The next morning--the matter seemed to arrange itself with little

help from either--they were to have a ride together. They would take their lunch. When they said good night Gloria impulsively gave him her two hands; he remembered how she had done that the first time he had seen her. Her face was lifted up to his; in the starlight he saw her eyes shining softly, gloriously; he saw her mouth, the lips barely apart. For an instant his hands shut down hard on hers; he felt the faint pressure of her own in return. When they heard her mother in the doorway calling, “Gloria, where are you?” they started apart. Gloria whispered, “Good night, Mark," and then calling, “Here I am, mamma, just cooling off,” she went skipping down the porch, slipped her arm about her mother, and carried her back into the house. Before the new day was fairly come they met in the fringe of pines. Again they shook hands; again for an instant they stood as they had stood last night. They were tremblingly close to the first kiss. Suddenly Gloria, with her color high and her eyes hidden under lashes which King marveled at, lashes laid tenderly against her cheeks, pulled her hands out of his and began drawing on her gantlets. Gravely, as though here were a rite to be approached solemnly, he lifted her into the saddle. They turned their horses and rode up the ridge among the trees. He promised to show her his latest temporary camp. They came to it before noon at an altitude of well above seven thousand feet. In a grassy open space they left their horses; King carried their lunch bundle and they went on on foot. King made a fire where already there was a little heap of charred coals against a blackened rock, and they made coffee and cooked bacon. Gloria used a stick which he had pointed for her to turn the bacon. They took turns with the one cup. “What was it like up on the cliff tops?” King did not know; he had not yet been up there. And would it take long to climb them? Not over an hour, he estimated; if she wasn’t tired? It was decided that King would have his postprandial smoke up there; where they could sit and look out "across the top of the world.” As they climbed they came into a current of rushing air. Higher up the wind strengthened. Gloria’s hair was whipped out from under her turban; it blew across her face; a strand of it fluttered across King’s eyes, brushed his lips. He gave her his hand up a steep place down which they sent a cascade of disintegrating stone. When they came to the top Gloria dropped down, panting, though they had stopped many times on the way. King gave her a drink from his canteen; she merely thanked him with her eyes. But in ten minutes she had rested nd was on her feet, her slim body leaning against the wind. He stood by her and they looked out across the mountains. She gasped at the bigness of it; it spoke of the vastness of the world and of the world’s primitive savagery. It threatened with its spires as cruel as bared fangs, and yet it beckoned and invited with its blue distances. Gloria, her thoughts confused by conflicting instincts, inspired and awed, drew closer to King. “--But to be out here alone!” The utter, utter loneliness of it. She looked at him with new, curious eyes. “Doesn’t it bear down on you; don’t you feel at times that the loneliness--?” He understood. ‘‘I am used to it, you know. I have never known what it was out here to feel lonely. Until--” She waited on him to finish, her eyes on his. Until--? "Until after our first ride together,” he said. Again she understood. And now she looked away hastily and her cheeks reddened. He was about to tell her that he loved her; his eyes had told her; his lips were shaping to the words “I love you'!” And she was suddenly conscious of a wild flutter in her heart ; she was trembling as though terrified. Other men had told her “I love you.” Many times and in many ways--smiling, with a laugh, with a sigh--whispering the words or saying them half sternly. And she had always been gay and ready; a little thrilled, perhaps, as by a chance strain of music. But now--she could hardly breathe. Now she was frightened. “Look!” Gloria started and, forgetful of the strange conflict of emotions within her, clutched at his sleeve. “A man--here--” “Swen Brodie!” muttered King angrily. Brodie had just clambered up the ridge and came into view only when his head and bulky shoulders were upthrust beyond a boulder. Gloria was suddenly afraid with a new sort of fear. “Take me away!” she gasped. And then, with a terrified look over her shoulder: “Oh, he is terrible!” “Steady, Gloria,” said King in a low voice. “I’ll take you away. But we needn’t hurry. He won’t hurt you.” And, to further soothe her, he added: “He’d be afraid to shoot, were he minded to. The noise of the gun, you know. And he doesn’t know how many there are with us, or how close they are. Come, we’ll go this way.” He turned his back square on Brodie and with his hand firm on Gloria’s arm led her along the ridge. They passed about a wind-worn rock, and Gloria looked back, hoping that it had hidden them already from Brodie; she saw his head over the top of it, felt upon her the eyes which she could not see, lost as they were under his hatbrim, and hurried on. She ran ahead now with King hastening his step to overtake her. (TO BE CONTINUED.)

“But to Be Out Here Alone!” The Utter, Utter Loneliness of It.