The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1894-11-09
CHAPTER Xx-CoNrINUEp
TCoPYRIGHr. 1921

SIZE hesitated a moment-then she
said:
''Send cipher dispatch at once to
G. G. at St LOUIS, to NJ. NJ. at Chicago
and c. C. at Davenport. Four thou
sand guns at Leavenworth left unpro-
tected by a withdrawal of troops;
Kansas City on the first at nine o'clock
a. m; impress G.. G. with swiftness;
twelve hundred men here now: can
hold everything; get answer from G. &.
at once; watch Memphis papers for
movements of gunboat"
Here the young woman made another
pause. In his impotence, Calicot got
up impulsively and strobe about the
little room. He was shut up helplessly
in a living tomb and events, in what
now seemed like another world, were
marrying on to some kind of disaster.
He Gained himself by powerful men,
tai effort. "Well," he said, what do
you see now?"
'They are close together at the in
strument. They are sending dis
patch"
After some delay, there was evidently
an answer received from Hendricks,
for the girl began again, slowly
reading from the written page what
appeared to be instructions. Very lit
tie OF it was ineligible to Calicot, but
blind as it was he tried to impress it
upon his memory for after reflection
He heard her saying: Twill take gun
boat and seize arms; council here on
Lo OE4h. r,,olyn oil iYe4r,,ofinnS
form to that date"
Day after day, as the girl revealed in
broken sentences the communications
that were made from the cave to the
cottage, the bulk of the information
began to arrange itself in his mind
around certain well-defined points.
The conspiracy, he now saw, extended
over the whole United States! 1t had
taken in men in official positions. Its
in the railway service and in the tel
egraph offices. 1t must have vast forces
all ready to mass and the brain of the
movement was hidden away safely I'M
derground. AS the magnitude and
method of the plan were slowly COM
pretended, he asked himself: What is
the government doing? Can it be pos
sible that the world has not yet dis
covered the two exits to this strong
hold?-and then he tried to forecast
the result when the exits were discov-
cred. Hendricks cannot be dislodged,
he said, even by engineers, who would
have to tunnel a mountain. He can
only be sealed up and starved to death,
and in any such attempt what unknown
exits may he not have. He recalled
the mysterious magazine in the south
western wall of the rotunda with its
wooden doors and its sign of danger.
Was this magazine? Might not that
impression have been created to keep
secret an unknown exit until an emer-
gency occurred? He had heard La
port speak of the magazine. He would
talk to the old man about it.
His imagination pictured a long
chasm leading to some unsupported
region of country with its exit hidden
in the mountains. He foresaw in
his fancy besieging army encamping
over mine or fallen upon by sudden
force that sprang up as if by magic in
its rear-and then disappeared, and he
began to ask himself if this conspiracy
had not gathered into. its ranks most
of the malign forces of civilization
which under the names of nihilism and
anarchy seek mainly to destroy.
Intolerable as these reflections were
to a man compelled to see the progress
of all this diabolism and prevented
or liffinp
a finger, there were other considera-
lions that were even more poignant.
Here was an innocent and intelligent
girl who. with her father, would be in
yolved in the inevitable catastrophe
or thrown into the hands of Fenning,
and Calicot had grown to have pro-
found sympathy for her. Lieut.. Stock
ing. as he well knew, had with his i'm
pulsive temperament developed still
stronger interest in her, and Stocking
by his very nature could not be de-
pended on to assist him.
In turning over these perplexities in
his mind he was aware of an undis-
turbed conviction hiding away in his
nature, that the normal intelligence
and moral force ought in some way to
be able to circumvent all this mischief.
But how?
Some kind of a vague scheme OF es-
cape for Stocking and Miss Laport,
through what he conceived to be the
secret exit of the magazine, shaped It
self in his mind, and then he got hold
of Laport one day after comforting
with the old mans daughter. The
three were eating their breakfast to-
gether when Calicot approached the
subject of the magazine guardedly,
with the one purpose of finding out. II
possible, what Laport knew about it.
To his establishment he knew all about
it. He had surveyed it. 1t was an enor-
nous pocket in the southwest wall OF
the rotunda, its mouth facing the
northeastern direction of the cave, and
il had no other outlet. Calicot felt
his vague hopes all vanish as heard
this, but Laport went on talking un-
suspiciously. 1T is" said he, "a peril
Gus piece OF business and 1 told Hen
bricks so at the start, but he never
could see it in that light. He has an
enormous amount of powder, fixed am
,uunition and other explosives stored