Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 1, Number 18, DeMotte, Jasper County, 24 November 1932 — The Everlasting Whisper [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Everlasting Whisper

By Jackson Gregory

FROM THE BEGINNING In the California sierra Mark King, prospector, sees Andy Parker killed by Swen Brodie, Parker’s outlaw companion. King is on his way to the home of Ben Gaynor, King and Gaynor share with Brodie knowledge of a vast store of hidden gold. King meets Mrs. Gaynor and is impressed by her daughter Gloria’s' youthful beauty. He dislikes a house visitor named Gratton. With Gloria, King rides to Coloma, intending to "sound” Honeycutt. He finds Brodie with the old prospector, and animosity flares. King is drawn closer to Gloria. She and her mother return to San Francisco. In a spirit of adventure Gloria accompanies Gratton on a “business” trip. At Coloma she finds her father badly hurt. He gives her a message and a package for King, urging her to get them to him at once. Gloria realizes she has compromised herself by her journey with Gratton. He proposes marriage, and Gloria apparently accepts him. Gratton arranges for the marriage by a country "judge.” King, unseen by Gloria, watches the ceremony from a window. At the last moment Gloria refuses to utter the requisite "yes." King enters the room and Gloria appeals to him for protection. Gratton, dismissed, reveals his knowledge of the hidden gold and makes threats. King, heartened by Gloria’s appeal to him, urges her to marry him. Really in love with him, and seeing a way out of her dilemma, the girl consents. Gaynor’s message to King reveals the location of the treasure, and urges him to go at once and secure it. CHAPTER VI--Continued --12--A more radiantly lovely Gloria he had never looked upon. She had slept and rested; she had bathed and groomed and set herself in order. He gathered her up into his arms so that her boot-heels swung clear of the floor. “Do you know...do you guess...have you the faintest suspicion how I love you? It’s sweet of you,” he told her softly, “to get up and come down and see me off.” “Oh,” said Gloria, “I am going with you.” Not once had King dared think that she should go with him into the mountains on this quest of his. He sat and pondered and stared at her. "Don’t you want me?” asked Gloria. “Aren’t you glad, Mark?” It was not on any spur of the moment, but after long deliberation, that she had decided that she would go with him. If it were rumored that she had gone out of town with Gratton; if Gratton wanted to be ugly and feed rumor; then on top of that if she appeared within reach of a reporter without a husband, there would be talk. If it were answered that she was married to Mark King, there would be the question: “And where, my dear, is this Mark King?” From upstairs last night she had heard fragmentary outbursts from the “judge.” “Irregular; no license.” Now Gloria meant to kill the snake outright, not to allow the scotched reptile to writhe free. She was married; she was going with her husband into the wilderness on the most romantic of all honeymoons. The papers were free to make much of that.

“Of course I want you," said King slowly. “Glad? Glad that you want to come with me? Can’t you see that I am the gladdest man on earth? But--” "I have already written a message I wanted to send to a girl friend in San Francisco. I was going to have it phoned in to her. It tells her I’m --married. To you, Mark. And that we're off on the most wonderful trip together into the heart of the wild country." “God bless you,” he said heartily. But Gloria, glancing at him swiftly, saw that his eyes were clouded with perplexity. “Of course.” she said, “if you don’t want a girl along--You said last night that you weren't afraid of anything Brodie and his men could do? That they didn’t even know where to go? That they’d never know where to find you?” “Yes. And I meant it. But--” He wanted her with him; she wanted to come. Further, it pained him to think that those first glorious days should be spent with the mountains between them. He was tempted, sorely tempted...Was there really any danger, would there be danger to her? If he thought so, that there was the faintest likelihood of harm to her, he would say no, no matter what the yearning in his heart. But if they made a quick dash in and out; two days each way. not over one day at Gus Ingle’s caves? They could go in one way, come out another. They had at least a full day’s head start of any possible followers. No, in his heart he did not believe that there would be any danger to Gloria. Further, the thought struck him that she would not be altogether safe here; there was venom in Gratton. Gratton know from Gloria’s own lips that she had brought the message from her father in Coloma; hence Gratton might suspect, and Brodie after him. that Gloria was in possession of old Loony Honeycutt’s secret. Instead of seeming hazardous to take Gloria with him, it began to appear that his new responsibility of guarding her from all harm had begun already, and that he could best protect her from any possible evil by having her always with him...So with himself communed Mark King, never a man overly given to caution, but seeking now to measure chances, to set them

in the scales over against the desire of his heart. King estimated they would be gone five days, and then, making due allowance for any reasonable delay, provisioned for ten. Gloria was much interested in everything, and looked out to the mountains eagerly when King had swung her up to her saddle on Blackie. the tall, soberfaced horse. King looked at her and marveled; her cheeks were roses, her eyes were Gloria’s own, wonderful and big and deep beyond fathoming. “You are not afraid that I can take care of you, are you, Gloria?” he asked. And Gloria laughed gaily, answering: “My dear Mr. Man, I am not the least little bit afraid of anything in all the world this morning!” So with the glorious day brightening all about them they turned away from the log house and into the trail which straightway King dubbed “Adventure Trail.” There were red spots in Gloria’s cheeks when they started. King sought to guess at what might be the emotions of a young girl going on with Gloria’s present emotional ad-venture--vain task of a mere man seeking to fathom those troubled feminine depths!--marking that she was a little nervous and distrait. “I know the place Gus Ingle tried to describe,” he said, “as well as I know my old hat. Or at least I’d have said so until he mentioned the third cave. I’ve been there dozens of times, too, but I’ve got to see more than two caves there yet.” “I wonder--do you suppose we’ll find it as he says?” “At least we'll see about it. And whether there be heaps and piles of red, red gold, as the tale telleth, be

sure our trip is going to be worth the two days’ ride. I’ll show you such chasms and gorges and crags as you’ve never turned those two lovely eyes of yours upon, Mrs. Gloria King.” As they journeyed King noted that Gloria displayed none of that chattering, singing, gaiety of their former rides together; he remembered, sympathetically, that she had had very little sleep last night, and that she had endured a wearisome twentyfour hours before, and that the long, nervous strain under which she had struggled must certainly have told upon her, both physically and mentally. So, believing that she would be grateful for silence, he grew silent with her. King, well before midday, reached the spot in which from the first he had planned that they would noon. He was quick to help her to dismount and noted that she came down stiffly; the eyes which she turned to him were heavy with fatigue. “Maybe I shouldn’t have let you come after all, dear.” he said contritely. “These are harder trails than we’ve ridden before, and we’ve had to keep at it steadier.” There was an effort in her smile answering him. “The last two days have been hard to get through with,” she said as she yielded to his insistence and sat down on the sun-warmed pine needles. ‘‘l am sorry I am so--so--” He did not allow her to run down the elusive word. “Nonsense,” he told her heartily. “You’ve got a right to be tired. But when you’ve had some lunch and a cup of hot coffee you’ll be tip-top again. You’ll see.” King unsaddled and tethered the horses, built his little fire and went about lunch-getting with a joy he had never known in the old accustomed routine before. Now and then he glanced toward Gloria; he could not help that. But he saw that she was lying back, her eyes closed, and while his heart went out to her he did not force his sympathy on her. She seemed to be asleep. But Gloria was not asleep. Never had her mind raced so. It was done and she was Mark King’s wife! Higher and higher loomed that fact above all other considerations. But there were other considerations; her father hurt, she did not know how badly; her mother mystified, by now perhaps informed of Gloria’s marriage; Gratton with the poison extracted from his fangs had the fangs still; Brodie somewhere, Brodie with

the horrible face. She shivered and stirred restlessly, and King, who saw everything, thought that she had dreamed a bad dream. But lunch was ready; he came to her with plate and cup. And again Gloria did her best to smile gratefully. “You are so good to me, Mark,” she said. Her eyes were thoughtful; would he always be good to her? Even when--but she was too weary to think. “I want to learn how to be good to you, wife of mine.” he said very gently. “That is all on earth I ask. Just to make you happy.” “You love me so much, Mark?” she asked, as one who wondered at what she had read in his low voice and glimpsed in his eyes. “Gloria," he told her gently, “I don’t understand this thing they call love yet; it is too new, too wonderful. But I do know that in all the world there is nothing else that matters.” She looked at him long and curiously. “You would do anything you could to make me happy? Anything, Mark?” “I pray with all my heart and soul that I always may!” Gloria seemed to rest through the noon hour and to brighten. When she saw him the second time look at the sun she got up from the ground and said: “Time to go on? I’m ready. And after that banquet I feel all me again!” He laughed and went off after the horses, singing at the top of his voice. She stood very still, looking off after him, her brows puckering into a shadowy frown. Oh, if she could only read herself as he allowed her to read him; if she could only be as sure of Gloria as she was of Mark; if she could only look deep into her heart as she looked into his. Did she love Mark King? She had thrilled to him as she had thrilled to no other man; but that had been in the springtime. Twice then she had been sure that she loved him. But that was so long ago. And now that she had allowed him to carry her out of the quicksands? What now? Oh, if she had only let him go on alone this morning; if she had remained where she could rest and think and thus come to see clearly, even into her own troubled heart.

They came about four o’clock to a small meadow. Stopping in the open, sitting sideways in the saddle, he waited for her. Gloria drew rein and looked at him with large eyes across the twenty paces separating them. “I can’t go any further,” she said bleakly. “I’m tired out!” He was quick to see a gathering of tears, and swung down from his horse and went to her with long strides, his own eyes filled with concern. “Poor little kidlet," he said humbly. “I’ve let you do yourself up..." And it was his duty, his privilege, and no one’s else in the world, to shelter her, to stand between her and all hardship. In a moment, he was unrolling a pack, making a temporary couch for her and commanding her lovingly just to lie down and look up at the treetops above her, and rest while he staked out the horses. Gloria threw herself face down on the blankets. She did not know what possessed her; she fought for repression, hiding her face from him. Out of a hideously stern world a black spirit had leaped upon her; it clutched at her throat, it dragged at her heart. She was so nervous that now and again a fierce tremor shook her from head to foot. Dusk gathered while King worked over his fire. The aroma of boiling coffee rose, crept through the air, blended with the aromas of the woods. He set out his dishes upon a flattopped rock, replenished his fire, threw on some fresh-cut green cedar boughs for their delightful fragrance, and went to call Gloria. Gloria, too tired bodily and mentally to wage a winning battle against those black vapors which flock so frequently about luckless youth, had suffered and yielded and gone down in misery. Hers was a state of overwrought nerves which forbade clear thinking, which distorted and warped and magnified. “A cup of coffee and a bit of supper,” King said gently. “You’ll feel a lot better.” She rose wearily and followed him, saying absently; “I am not hungry. It was good of you to go to all of this trouble. I am afraid I am not much of a camper.” “Tuckered out,” he thought. “Clean tuckered out.” And finally when she pushed her cup away and let her two hands drop into her lap he gathered the dishes and carried them away to the nearest pool to wash them. When he came back to her in the hush of the first hour of night, he thought that he understood her need for silence, and spoke only ly and briefly. “And now.” he said, taking up his short-handled ax, “I am going to make for my lady-love the finest couch for tranquil, restful sleep that mortal ever had.” As he strode away toward a grove of firs he was lost to her eyes before he had gone a hundred paces. He worked swiftly, grudging every minute away from her. And then he stopped, sat down upon a log and filled his pipe with slow fingers. He'd force himself to smoke one pipe before he went back to her, thinking that she would be grateful for a few moments alone. (TO BE CONTINUED.)

“Have You the Faintest Suspicion How I Love You?”