Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1902-05-14

burden, using the un1requented ways,
and crying to the few folk who did
meet me that the woman had the
plague, and would they lend me the
shelter of their house, as ours had
! fallen. And so in time we came to
the place where the rope dangled
from the precipice. and after Nais had
been drawn up to the safety of the
Sacred Mountain, / put my leg in the
loop of the rope and followed her.
Now came what was the keenest
anxiety of all. We took the girl and
, laid her on a bed in one of the houses,
and there in the lit room for the first
| was drawn and pale. Her eyes were
| closed, but SO thin and transparent
| had grown the lids that one could al
most see the brown of the pupils be-
meath them. Her hair had grown to
! inordinate thickness and length, and
| lay as cushion behind and beside her
| head.
| There was no flicker of breath;
there was none of that pulsing of the
body which denotes life; but still she
had not the appearance of ordinary
death. The Nais l had placed nine
| long years before to rest in the hol-
! low of the stone was a fine grown
woman, full-bosomed and well-boned
The Nais that remained for me was
half her weight. The old Nais it would
have puzzled me to carry for an hour;
this was no burden to impede grown
man.
| In other ways too she had altered
The nails of her fingers had grown to
such a great length that they were
| twisted in spirals, and the fingers
themselves and her hands were so
waXy and transparent that the bony
core upon which they were built
| showed itself beneath the flesh in
plain dull outline. Her clay-cold lips
were SO white that one sighed to re-
member the full beauty of their car
mine. Her shoulders and neck had
lost their comely curves, and made
bony hollows now in which the dust
OF entombment lodged black and
thickly.
Reverentiy I set about preparing
those things which if all went well
would restore her. 1 heated water and
filled bath and tinctured it heavily
with those essences of the life of
beasts which the priests extract and
store against times of urgent need
and sickness. laid her chin-deep in
this bath, and sat beside it to watch,
maintaining that bath at a constant
blood heat.
An hour 1 watched; two hours I
watched; three hours-and yet she
showed no flicker of life. The heat
of her body given her by the bath was
the same as the heat of my own. But
in the feel of her skin when l stroked
it with my hand there was something
lacking still. Only when our Lord the
Sun rose for his day did 1 break off
my watching, while l said the neces-
sary prayer which is prescribed, and
quickly returned again to the gloom
of the house.
1t is hard to take note of small
changes which occur with infinite slow
ness when one is all the while on the
tense watch, and, high-strung though
my senses were, I think there must
have been some indica ton of return
ing life shown before 1 was keen
enough to notice it. For of a sudden.
as gazed, l saw faint ripping on the
surface of the water of the bath Gods!
would it come back again to my love
at last-this life, this wakefulness?
The ripple died out as it had come,
and stopped my head nearer to the
bath to try if 1 could see some faint
heaving of her bosom, some small
twitching of the limbs. No, she lay
there still without even a futter of
movement. But is I watched, surely
1t seemed to my aching eyes that some
tinge was beginning to warm that
blank whiteness of skin?
How l filled myself with that sight.
The color was returning to her again
beyond doubt. Once more the dried
blood was becoming fluid and begin
ming again to course in it's old chan
nels. Her hair floated out in the LIQUID
of the bath like some brown tangle of
the ocean weed, and ever and again it
twitched and eddied to some impulse
which in itself was too small for the
eye to see.
She had slept for nine long years,
and 1 knew that the Weakening could
be none of the suddenest. Indeed, it
came by its own gradations and with
infinite slowness, and / did not dare
do more to hasten it. Further drugs
might very we'll stop eternally what
| those which had been used already ha d
begun. So 1 sat motionless where 1
was, and watched the color come back,