The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1896-01-09
His voice sounded hollow like an echo

His voice sounded hollow like an echo.
She looked up at him vacanuy.
There was the same terror in her eyes
that shown IN Tangy's glazing pupils.
There was only one difference One
was living, the other dead.
White caps" she answered monot-
onously. They have beaten her to
death"
"Why?"
Because you were her lover"
81, her lover cried Darlington, and
then boy that he was he fell 70 weeping
for the very pity of it
Her tower, her lover.
And so that was the reason they had
beaten her 20 death Little Tangy, so
sweet, so pure, so good. that he had left
her because Of that purity and goodness,
left her to this horrible death at the
hands of fiends in human shape.
Poor little Tangy, who had blushed
at his kisses.
Once he had kissed her on her fair
neck where the fluffy curls nestled, and
her flesh ad turned crimson at the
touch of his lips. He turned back her
gown coarse, but white as her soul, TO
see the place his lips had pressed, and
there were the marks OF the whip, great,
cruel, ugly gashes, that had cut deep
into her soft flesh and freed the soul
from her suffering body.
AT the sight. his tears dried UP, and
he dug his nails deep into his clenched
palms.
The brutes; the ignorant brutes," he
cried. "Oh, God, curse them, curse
thernr'
HUSH said the woman. Hush"
They will hear you. What are you
against so many? Be still"
He gazed at her dazedly across Tan
gys dead body sitting there whispering
TO him ito hush" 10 be STILL in her
soft southern brogue, when Tangy's
poor bruised body, her glazed eyes and
her cruel gashes called on him for ven
geance.
He rose from his knees and paced the
narrow floor, wringing his hands after
the manner of women, torturing his
heart and brain with the thought Of her
suffering.
He saw il ALL
The poor girl, alone, awakened from
her sleep by the sound OF the slow
tramp, tramp of many feet outside.
Then these human brutes, filing into
the room, their white cows showing
only their eyes, the eyes of demons,
and Tangy, his Tangy, standing before
them, weeping. stricken with fear, call
ing on God to help her, since there was
no human aid.
And these great, strong men had beat
en- her, beaten her to death. She must
have fallen, first on her knees, with the
weight of their blows, then forward on
her face, where they had continued to
beat her until she died, calling for mer-
cy with her last breath.
And this, not among savages, but in
the very heart of what KentuckjanS
call Gods country
And what of the woman who crouch
ed beside her?
She had come to the dead for protec-
ton.
Shame was branded upon her, yet
she had escaped; and Tangy was dead.
Oh, human justice!
She was right, this woman. What
was he against so many?
He was poweriess, utterly powerless.
He knelt again beside the dead girl,
hea1ttbroken. and took one of her bruis-
ed hads between his own.
AS he raised it to his lips, his head
dropped forward close TO Tangy's face
and he sank upon the floor unconscious
And the woman, In whose ears sound
ed always the slow tramp, tramp of the
relentless white caps, bent her white
face again upon her knees and awaited
her fate in hopeless terror.
ZOE ANDERSON NORRIS.
Wichita, Jan. s, 1896.