The Caldwell tribune. [volume] (Caldwell, Idaho Territory [Idaho]) 1883-1928, 1894-03-03
at place called Diamond City false friends


robbed him, leaving him for dead.
And he was found, and his wounds were
all healed; all save one, and that was in
the brain. Men called him mad
He wandered through the land, preach
ing to men to drink no wine and to shun
the sight of gold. And they laughed at
him, and called him Pere Champagne.
But one day much gold was found at .
place called Reef o. Angel, and jointly
with the gold came y plague which SCARF
the face and rots the body; and Indians
died by hundreds and white men by scores,
and Pere Champagne, of all who were not
stricken down, feared nothing and did not
fee, but went among the sick and 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 feckless go?
When none was found to bury the dead
he gave them place beneath the prairie
earth-consecrated only by the tears of
fool-and for extreme JUNCTION he had but
this, God he merciful to me, a 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 it's 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 befell him at Dia-
mond City SO many moons agone. And
he prayed them, when he 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 a 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 he
sick at heart because he came pot. 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 pere! All, Nathalie"
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 a dying man
was sacred, and he could follow if he
could not lead; and there was still some
pemmican, 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 a game of solitaire to see if
they would ever reach the place called
Lonely valley. Before the cards were
dealt he made Il 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
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 rs men who go to meet q
final and a 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 lonely trail they wandered, the
spirits of lost travellers hungering in their
wake-spirits that mumbled in cedar
thickets and whimpered down the fumes
of snow. And Pretty Pierre, who knew
that evil things are exercised by mighty
conjuring, sang loudly, from a throat made
thin by forced fasting, a song with which
his mother sought to drive away the devils
of dreams that Haunted on his pillow when
child-it was the song of the Scarlet
Hunter.
And the charm sufficed; for suddenly, of
a cherries morning, they came upon a
trapper's hut in the W .lderness, where their
sufferings ceased and the sight of Shon
McGann's eyes came back. When strength
returned also they journeyed to an Indian
village where priest laDored, and him
they besought; and when spring came they
set forth to Lonely valley again, that the
woman and the smothered dead-f it
might chance so-should be put away into
peaceful graves. But thither coming, they
only saw a gray and churlish river, and
the poppet head of the mine of St. Gabriel
had vanished and she who had knelt there
ON was gone into solitudes where even Pere
Champagne's friends could not follow.
But the priest prayed humbly for the
dead and their SO swiftly summoned souls.
Gilbert Parker in the National Observer.
Following Instructions.
ssNou 6oo,. she said al she 9fOnno1