The Savannah morning news., 1903-05-17
IContinued from Last Sundays News.)
VI.

THE WOMAN AND THE MAN.
The wagon train under the command
of Billy Knapp and Alfred, and Jim
Buckley had a very hard trip before
they were done with it. The only diff
fculty they did not encounter was
lack of water. There was too much
of that. Several times the party had
to camp in one spot for days while
the wagons were laboriously warped
across rivers of mud and quicksand,
with steep. slippery clay banks. How
little Prue stood the journey so well.
neither her father, her mother nor the
men of the party were able to divine;
but she did, and, what is more she
seemed to think it great fun. So cheer
full was she, and so sunny that the
men came to grudge each other her
company. And as for Mrs. Prue and
the doctor. who could help loving the
patient sweetness of the one, or the
pathetic, gentle, impractcable kindness
of the other?
Yes, it was a hard journey; but some
how the feeling was not entirely of joy
and relief when the stockade of
Frenchmans creek shimmered across
the broad, fiat foot hills. There they
separated. The dangers were over.
Then, to the surprise of every one,
the doctor walked up and knew just
where he wanted to go. He displayed
an unexpected familiarity with the gen.
eral topography of the hills. 1t puz-
zled Billy. And, to the Vaster aston
ishment OF both his confreres Jim sud-
denly announced, with quite unwonted
volubility that he had been intend
ing all along to start in prospecting at
the end of this trip, and that here he
meant to quit scouting and leave the
society of his brothers in arms-unless,
of course. he added, as a doubtful aft
erthought, they wanted to join him.
They profanely replied that they did
not.
Most of the men pushed on immedi-
ately to Rockerville, whittier a major
ity of the former inhabitants of
Frenchman's Creek had already emf
grated. Alfred and Billy declared to
get over in the Limestone for a big
hunt" before returning East. Prue
said good-by to them with real feel
ing, and most of them threw out their
chests and were very gruff and rude
because they were sorry 10 leave Prue
understood. They were kind-hearted
men, after all, these rough pioneers.
Billy remembered for almost two years
how she looked when she said that,
which was extraordinary for Billy He
had led so varied a life as pony
press rider, stage driver, scout Indian,
bronco-buster, hunter and trapper, that
he had little room in his memory for
anything short of bloodshed or a tri-
umph for himself.
Finally, after all the rest had gone,
Jim and the doctor made the mutually
delightful discovery that they had Sc
lected the same locality. the one for his
prospecting, the other for his scien-
40 inv fferof 20 afY
ply left his outfit in Jim's wagon, and
they all went up together
The little scientist was as excited as
child. To him the country was as a
document-a document which he had
studied thoroughly in the pocket edi-
tons. He now had it before him in
the original manuscript, open and UNI
abridged.
And indeed, even to an ordinary OBJ
server, the Black Hills are a strange
series of formations.
They run north and south at the
westernmost edge of the northern
prairie, and are, altogether, about as
large as the state of Vermont Unlike
other ranges, they possess no one ridge
that serves as a backbone to the sys-
tenn. The separate peaks rise tumultu-
ously, like the rip of seas in a tide
way, without connection. solitary, SOM
bre. Between them lie deep gorges,
dip away and away, until one catches
the breath at the grand free sweep of
them. Huge castellated dikes crop
up from the ridge tops like ramparts.
Others rise parallel in the softest YER
dure, guarding between their perpen-
dicular sides streets as narrow and
clean-cut as the alleys of a city of sky
scrapers.
Through it all. back and forth, like
the walls of labyrinth, run the brok-
en-, twisted, family defined geological
systems, which cross each other so
frequently and so vigorously that all
semblance of order is lost in the tu-
multuous upheaval Here are strata
deposited by the miocene tertiary; here
are breakings forth of metamorphic
rocks of many periods; here are the
complex results of diverse influences
and forces. Down in the south is a
great cavern-of which ninety-seven
miles and twenty-five hundred rooms
have, at this writing, been explored
which was once the interior of gey-
ser. For ages 1t spouted; for ages
more It's fluids crystallized and petri-
fed into varied and beautiful forms;
and then, finally, many layers of STRAIT
flied rock were slowly overlaid to seal
forever this dried-out, beautiful. life
less mummy OF a cave. 1t lies there
now, as it has lain through the CEN
turtles, with a single, tiny opening by
which it can be entered-a palace of
vast re-echoing halls, hung with jew
els, a horror haunted honeycomb of
unsounded depths, a solemn abode
wherein not the fainest drip of water,
not the gentlest sigh of air through the
corridors, breaks the eternal silence.
Only its mouth roars continually as
the winds rush IN or out. The Indians
assign to it the spirits of their dead
warriors, and cannot be induced to APP
proach it. Biologists rave over it, and
cannot be persuaded to come away
But this is in the latter day of rail-
roads and tenderfeet. At the time of
which this story treats, little was
known of the country. 1t was simply
a great secondhand shop, of a little
of everything in the geological line
When the party arrived at Spanish
Gulch the doctor was so eager to get
into the wonderful hills that only with
the greatest difficulty did he constrain
himself to help Jim erect a log cabin
for the accommodation of his family.
Even then he was not of much use, al
though he could at least help to lift
timbers. Jim practically did it alone,
and it took him almost a month; but
when it was done. 1t was very nice
The doctor accepted the free gift of
the scouts labor and skill quite as a
matter Of course, just as he had taken
Mo2T