The Mena weekly star., 1897-12-01
H Swift Uengeance.
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MARCHING for simile you would Hume to centipede--a giant centipede "a monstrous centipede, winding its way down the mountain, twisting around a point here and twinkling its thousands of long pine legs in the sun light as it leaped across a canyon there, crawling for protection at times under the everhlsa: erhlsa:sss q sss ing shelf Of rock and again pausing at the crest of sharply inclined hin before plunging over and down into the valley below. where the mill and the box factory and the rail- road trains waited. Sometimes it's legs were long and stiltlike in appearance md that was when it spanned the can yon with the river and the stage track nt it's bottom, and sometimes those legs were mere stubs and accomplished no other purpose than to brace the trough in proper position as 1t burrowed along m excavated shelf of the mountain, working its writhing way down, down, down. Here and there smaller trough fed it with water stolen from the creek, the stream being tapped half mile above, so that despite spillage and leak age and other subtraction there should always be enough of the liquid lubri- cant running in the Hume to make the passage of lumber easy and expe- ditious.
 "Sandy's" was midway of the climb. ssSandy's" was little white ranchhouse built alongside the stage road. The T ha road and there was no back door, for the other end of the house was good 30 feet above the dipping side of the hill. It was five miles to the top of the noun tain where Sandy himself supervised the logging work, and so his daughter Becky was alone in the ranchhouse for long terms-"for a week at stretch" ," us she would express it. Sandy seldom stretched it beyond week, for he had some notion of the drear lonesomeness of life in that isolated house and made 1t his pleasant duty to come down every Saturday night with Sam Harl1ins, the stage driver, and accompany him up the hill on Mondays. And through the week he made frequent trips down the almost vertical side of the hill and climbed laboriously back again after having frightened for a time not only the life of the 13-year-old girl, but also his own. In winter when there was no possibility of using the Hume because Of the fabulous depths of snow the fore man and his little daughter went down to the city where the railroad and the mill and the box factory were, to hiber- nate and to enable Becky to go to chool
 Sandy induced the company to cgt into the house the telephone which ran down the mountain as a consort to the Hume. So that, after considering all things, Becky was provided for with decent comfort and managed the mea- gerly patronized post office and teie- phoned to the headquarters of the com pany the hour of Sam Harkins' arrival and of his departure, and made dinner for the stage driver and performed the other functions peculiarto handy half way house.
 Mir. Chong Go Kwee's common desig- nation was Bad Jim, and the appellation fitted him to a nicety on seven days of the week. He was husky villain, who could get more muscle into the work of tugging timber than any three other Chinamen at the top of the mountain. but he possessed the mystery of evolv- ing Chinese gin apparently out of noth- ingnesss like wizard, and of drinking himself into fierce moods which meant trouble To whomsoever should cross his path. Sandy discharged Chope sevsral