Fairhaven herald. [volume] (Fairhaven, Wash.) 1890-????, 1892-06-02

| flee, but went among the sick gud dying,
and did those deeds which gold cannot
| buy, and prayed those prayers which were
never sold. And who can count how high
the prayers of the feckiess 20?
When none was found to bury the dead
he gave them place beneath the prairie
| earth-consecrated only by the tears of a
f00l-and for extreme JUNCTION he had but
this, God be merciful to me, sinner"
And Pretty Pierre the gambler and Shon
McGann the miner, who Travelled west
ward, came upon this desperate battlefield,
and saw how Pere Champagne dared the
elements of scOurge and death, and they
paused and labored with him-to save
where saving was granted of heaven, and
to bury when the reaper reaped and would
not stay his hand. At last the plague
ceased, because winter stretched its wings
out swiftly DER the plains from rigid
ranges in the west. And then Pere Cham
payne fell i'll again.
And this last great sickness cured his
Madness and he remembered whence he
had come and what befelI him at Dia-
mond City so many moons agone. And
he prayed them, when ne knew his
time was come, that they would go to
Lonely valley and tell his story to the
woman whom he loved; and say that
he was going to strange but pleasant
land, and that there he would await her
coming, And he begged them that they
would go at once, that she might know,
and not strain her eyes to blindness and be
sick at heart because he came not And
he told them her name, and drew the COW
erlet up about his head and seemed to
sleep, but he walked between the day and
dark and gently cried: 1.-The snow is heavy
on the mountain-and-the valley is be-
low. Gardez! mon PEREZ All, Nathalier'
And they buried him between the dark
and dawn.
Though winds were fierce and travel
full Of peril, they kept their word and
passed along wide steppes of snow until
they entered passes of the mountains, and
again into the plains, and at last one day,
when frost was shaking like shreds of
faintest silver through the air, Shon
McGann's sight fed. But he would not
turn back. A promise to dying man
was sacred, and he could follow il he
could not lead and there was still some
/ penn mican, and there were martens in the
woods and wandering deer that good
! spirits hunted into the way of the needy;
and Pretty Pierre's finger along the gun
] was sure
Pretty Pierre did not tell Shon McGann
] that for many days they Travelled woods
where no sunshine entered, where no trail
had ever been nor foot of man had trod-
that they had lost their way. Nor did he
make his comrade know that one night he
sat and played game Of solitaire to see il
| they would ever reach the place called
| Lonely valley. Before the cards were
dealt he made sign upon his breast and
/ forehead. Three times he played and
three times he counted victory, and before
three suns had come and gone they climbed
a hill that perched over Lonely valley.
| And of what they saw and their hearts
felt we know.
| And when they turned their faces east
ward they were as men who go to meet q
| final and conquering enemy; but they
had kept their honor with the man upon
! whose grave tree Shon McGann had carved
beneath his name these words, "a Brother
| Of Aaron"
| Upon a lonely trail they wandered, the
spirits of lost travellers hungering in theil
wake-spirits that mumbled in cedar
thickets and whimpered down the fume,
of snow. And Pretty Pierre, who knew
that evil things are exercised by mighty
conjuring, sang loudly, from throat mad,
thin by forced fasting, a song with which
his mother sought to drive away the devil
Of dreams that Haunted on his pillow wheI
a child-it was the song of the Scarlet
Hunter.
And the charm sufficed; for suddenly, o.
a cherries morning, they came upon
trapper's hut in the wilderness where thei
sufferings ceased and the sight of Shoi
McGann's eyes came back. When strength
returned also they journeyed to an Indian
village where a priest labored, and hin
they besought; and when spring came the,
set forth to Lonely valley again, that tn
woman and the smothered dead--if i
might chance so-should be put away int
peaceful graves But thither coming, the
only saw gray and churlish river, an
the poppet head of the mine of st. Gabrie
had vanished and she who had knelt there
on was gone into solitudes where even Per
Champagne's friends could not follow.
But the priest prayed humbiy for tn
dead and their so swiftly summoned souls
I -{filbeft Parker in the National 0h9ervei