The Warner weekly sun. (Warner, Brown Co., Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1885, 1885-03-13

80 AACA @AH @N 49,
climb into q rickety open buggy, drawn
by the meagre gray horse that had
been staked near her camp. l saw
her settle the child 1 her lap, grasp
the reins and drive slowly up the long
hill that leads out of town. At the top
of it she paused and stood up In the
buggy looking back. Her slender form
was sharply defined against the early
morning sky for a moment-I can see
it yet! Then she sank back in her seat
and presently she had passed out of
sight.
The mountains that had been wrap
ped in purple mists when they had sent
their sweet fresh breezes into the heart
of the midsummer, stood up blue and
clean against the cold, gray sky of No
vember. All day long a norther had
been roaring down from them, twisting
the bare, thorny branches of the mes
quite thickets, creaking the limbs of
tho great, isolated, olive-colored live
oaks; whistling through the dry grass
of the little prairie, striking like o solid
thing upon the shivering sides of the
shelterless, gaunt, long-horned cattle,
and sweeping with a moan into the
streets of the town. The little town
itself, all the warmth and color blown
out of it, looked deserted. for it was
Sunday, and every man was housed
with his own in the glow OF his hearth
fire.
As night fell the wind grew keener,
with suggestion of sleet upon it. The
old stage numbered in, arousing the
dogs as it passed, but presently these
dropped into stiffness again. The
lights behind the windows began early
to disappear, and m by one went out,
except in a house far down the hollow,
where the divine hour of o woman was
approaching-there only twinkled all
night the feeble rays of q lamp.
There, in the square stone Jail where
the guards watched and dozed ,.4tern-
ately in the hall below, and in the cells
above the prisoners shivered on their
scanty pallets.
Down the long hill, close upon mid
night, into the midst of this stiffness
and gloom, rode two score and more of
men. Grim, silent, and pitiless. with
faces yelled and belts bristling with
weapons, they came like phantoms
from some unknown Dark.
The heavy thud of a ~ponderous beam
upon the door of the Jail! The guards
within start to their feet. The prison
ers grasp each other in q hush Of ex-
pectation into which creeps the hope
of deliverance. Again and again the
dull sound mingles with the ever-in-
creasing roar of the wind and the crash
of splinterlng wood and a rush like
hat of doom, silent and mighty, up
the narrow stairway, with the white
and sticken guards driven on before.
Deliverance? The solid key groans in
the lock, the smoky lamp throws a
CHASTITY glare into the cold cell.
And presently energies into
tx freezing night air . long, double
file OF men whose faces are hidden but
whose clenched hands betray too well a
lack Of mercy and in the midst thereof
walked two ~bare-footed, half-naked,
shivering creatures, with the ropes al
ready knotted about their necks.
And SO silently hurries this ghostly
procession up the wind-swept hill and
across the barren heath, that not even
the watch-dogs are aroused from their
| slumhars. One old hunter. indeed
lifts his head from his pillow with the
instinct Of danger upon him rises up.
on his elbow and listens to the sough-
ing of the wind, while the glow Of the
dying hre reddens the barrel of the
rifle swung above his door, laughs con.
tentedly as he hears nothing else and
dropped back into dreamland.
Behind, the iail-doors are left wide
open, but the other prisoners, frozen
with horror, cowed back into their cells
and pray.
And out yonder the work is finished
finished remorselessly and in silence
One of the victims indeed, begs for ths
life Of his young brother, and thu
other prays that he may be sh 81. Blu
that is all. But white and cold already
before death has had time to freeze thu
blood in their veins, they ere left swing
ing to and fro in the frantic gusts D
wind, while those yelled phantoms o
the night, mount their horses and rid
swiftly back into the unknown darl
from whence they came.
The little town sleeps peacefully on
and midnight has not yet sounded.