Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1902-02-08

P. Oh, he is calling for help. He has been
calling for days, and 1 never guessed it.
On, never guessed"
The faces of the men remained blank.
and even the sheriff did not quite grasp
her meaning. " Who Is calling, Miss
Coyne?' he said. You do not mean
.tfes-yes-from the mountain 1t is the
Morse code-l taught him, you know-he
has been flashing those lights up and down
and calling to us for help all these nights,
and no one has needed it. See-H-E-L-P
there. do you believe it now? Oh. dear.
what shall we do-what shall we do?'
Her condition Verged upon hysteria. 1t
affected the men variously. Lem effort
grinned, as weak men sometimes do in Sc
| rious emergencies. One of the men said,
oh, pshaW." in a doubling tone, but it
was easy to see that he believed all he had
heard. Another ran off down the main
street OF the town, telling the news to all
whom he met. The sheriff was dunn
founded The girl looked from one light
to another, reading the. message as it
| flashed, and telling herself again and again
that it was her faut-all her fault!'
Your fault, Miss Coyne?" said the sher-
| If at last Just so-but how?"
"Because-because-I should have known,
l should have seen-because-Oh, they are
! up there together and something dreadful
| has happened-Oh, can you not do some
| thing? Must you all stand around help
less when perhaps-see, you can read it
for yourselves
She turned and ran into the booth and
hegdll Il WHO search tOr her code book. 1t
! did not occur to any one that her agitation
was out of proportion to the degree of in
terest which she might be supposed ordi-
nariiy TO feel for the men in the canon
They Were all too startled by the reyela-
ton of the lights to think of that
She came out, turning over the pages of
the book and tearing some of them in her
excitement She held up the alphabet
crowd following her finger as she pointed,
spelled out the meaning Of the flashes
for themselves. Many spelled aloud,
IKE children learning a lesson, and
4 the erect OF the voices ringing in unison
! at every flash was strange indeed But it
was stranger still and aWesome when a
| new word came forth-a word which opened
with the letters MAD, and then termi-
mated suddenly, leaving the crowd which
| had been spelling sturdy and the town
| in darkness. The women took upon them
selves something of the girls hysteria
| when this happened and the men went
about asking one another what the trouble
! could be and urging the necessity of doing
something.
What the something might be was not
readily apparent. 1t was ten miles to the
canyon and the way over the foothills was
| up and up. The mountain itself was a hard
| climb in summer and no one had ever at
| tempted it in winter, for drifts filled the
| passes and landSlideS often blocked the
| trail. Yet they were not people to stop
short of impossibilites. They built a great
| fire on a neighboring hill, in the hope that
| IL might De seen by the men on the noun
| tain and give them courage to hold out I'M
| til help arrived. Then they organized a re-
| lief party and before midnight dozen men
| led by Sheriff Black were halfway to the
mountains foot.
| They followed the wires straight across
| 1he nils, on the way that had been blazed
/ oy the pole planters, but on the mountain
| lISeif they were compelled to take the trail
/ Ihey tied themselves together with a long
] rope which they had brought for the pur-
/ pose, and went at it like Swiss mountain
| GERS pushing and pulling one another up the
| race OF rocks that rose sheer from where
| the landslides blocked the gulIies Through
masses of snow in which they foundered 10
| their armies, along lodges from which tine
| ice threatened to send them hurting DOWN
| ward to join the skeletons of the burros
/ lying stark In the gulCa; through forest
| where the angle of the ground dipped to
| forty-hve degrees, and where they had 10
| haul one another from tree to tree. Just
| before dawn they reached the hermit )
| seat" which is a nat rock jutting out above
| the second plateau, and here they built q
| fire, that those in the village might note
| their progress. When day broke they could
| see the pipe line which led the water from
| the falls to the canyon, covered with snow
| and Ice and cleaning like a snake in the
sunshine. They followed the pipe as long
| as they could and the roar OF the water
within guided them whenever the big tube
i dipped out of sight In snow bank. But
presently It got away from them altogether