Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1898-05-19
TIE OLD SILVER TRAIL.
81 MARY {. SncNEY.
toOpyrishs 1896. by J. B. rlppineo.s Co,
CHAPTER XII

time TO leave the Colorado world. Dav
oy day the sky was of an intense, ex-
quisite blue, the heat at midday on
Pressive. although at morning and even
ing there was the chill in the air that
called for fires. The hills had turned to
-duller browns, splashed here and there
with touch of red, more often with the
dark disks of dead sunfowers bent low
on their shriveled stems. Behind them
the mountains had caught misty blue
that changed to rich Iapis-lazuli in the
shadows, fading all day long to paler
tints, until with the going down of the
sun they seemed to SILVER and turn blue
again with the cold. The quaking asps
Haunted in lines of Pickering yellow
flame up every gulch, a flame that daily
burned more low; and down by the
creek the cottonwoods, erstwhiI4
clothed in palest yellows and faded
greens, were leayed all over with SHIN
mering bits of bronze just touchedwith
gold where the sunshine played. Even
in the blossom-time of summer there
had not been SO much of brightness
nor of beauty; but withal Windy Gulch
looked only a shade more dull and
lifeless than it had been before, it's old
weather-beaten face borrowing new
'ugliness from contrast with the evanes.
cent glory of its background.
Harvey Neil, bolstered up with many
pillows in his bed at the Palace hotel,
looked out at the small segment of land
scape to be seen between the Topped
back curtains of his window, with an
eapathetic disgust for it all that hardly
took shape of words even in his
thoughts. He had been i'll of that form
Of typhus known as mountain fever, and
the doctor, in order to give him all pos
sible attention, had induced the young
man to allow himself to be brought here
from his cabin at the mine. Here he had
been for nearly three weeks now, his
perceptions for most of the time dulled
beyond heed for anything outside of the
hot discomfort of his bed and the grow
ing grievance of over-much beef tea;
but now he was fast mending, the pro-
test of his appetite taking form in an
intense desire for varied and generally
tGbooed forms of refreshment, while
other interests of life were gradually
reawakening.
lie had made his nurse move the bed
nearer the window, that he might look
out; but there was little of entertain
ment to be derived there. The room
was at the back of the house, overlook
ing the creek, and a few struggling cab
ms, their back yards abruptly sloping
to the stream, while behind them
showed the dreary sequence of bare,
barn-like buildings housing the aban-
doned process of treating ores, each adj
dition in the line a little lower and
smaller than its predecessor, so that the
whole wore an air of having been drawn
out like a cunning continuance of Chi
nese boxes. Beyond the mill were the
tree-fringed tops of the hills hedging
the creek where the Tomtown road
crept along by it's side; and many a.
time, as he looked, it had seemed to
Neil as though the old mill had dis
solved to nothingness, so clear before
his staring eyes was the shaded vista
of roadway where a young girl in a
broad-brimmed hat and dainty mus
lin gown seemed forever looking at
him in smiling greeting.
To-day, however, he was hardly
thinking of the Tomtown road or even
of Dorothy Meredith; hardly thinking
. of anything beyond the soul-sickening
WEAKNESS of this environment which
held for him nothing that at the mo-
ment he was willing to reckon good,
He was so tired of it all; so heaIt-
sick; so homesick. He had spared his
mother knowledge of his sickness, sit
ting up in bed now and then to pencil
her brief scrawls for which he apollo
gized on special pleas of haste; but
now, living here alone in the dreary
little hotel chamber, he felt himself
fairly starving for her sympathy, her
encompassing love. He longed to go
away, to be at home, to forget Windy
Gulch, the Tomtown road-everything.
His mind was so weary of traversing
over and over the same treadmill round
of thought, thoughts which began AMI
ended with her, Dorothy Meredith.
Why should he keep alive n memory
which could hold for him nothing of
sweetness that was not swallowed up
in chagrin? 1t was time he learned the
LESION of forgetting; but here, where
everything served to recall her, it was
impossible. He must get away. He
would tell the doctor so when he came
again.
He turned restlessly on the pillow, lis
tening to the nurses returning step,
with an invalid's peevish fretfulness
that she stayed so long away. There
was no sound in the house save the
faint clatter of dishes in the distant
kitchen. where preparations for sup
per were evidently going on. Outside
sounded the faint systole and diastole
of some far-away engine and the reg
ular dull munching of the stamp-mill
on its endless hard pabulum; while
every now and then, as though feeling
bound to rouse the place from its
sleepy lethargy, a tame magpie down
the street would vent its whole roper
stoire of speech in series of shrill hal
zoos, like a telephone girl gone mad.
Just so, Neil remembered, this mis-
cradle bird had been screaming when
he had looked his last upon Dorothy
Meredith, when she was coming out OF
the hotel door in her black gown. SEEM
ing like the ghost of the girl whose
viId-rose loneliness had been clasped
TO his heart but the day before. They
were taking her dead to Orodelphia to
be made ready for the long journey east,
and in company with her fathers at
torney, who had come to her at once
upon learning of the awful tragedy.
the girl was just entering the carriage
that was to follow the hearse down
the Canyon road.