The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-10-13


 S< A ND it's all mine-thank God,
 "A The last fee is paid"
 4 A She stood in the low door of the Httie shack in the canyon, tall, eirlish figure and looked out over slightly prospect of natural meadow and ultimate mountains. Near by the beauti- ful little garden patch smiled at her in all shades of loving green; for it was her hand that led the water in the ir- rlgating ditches from the tiny spring above.
 The shack was backed up against one of the canyons walls to have advantage of the dugout feature. The friendly sod ran down over 1t for both roof and walls, and above that shelter nothing was be- tween 1t and God but an occasional bird s wing; for no clouds ever came into the sky at Little Rest.
 Lydia Danby had started for New Mex ico three years before, with her hus- band and child, to take up a homestead claim. This journey, was a sequence of failures, mistakes, calamities-a sequence which had had it's beginning in her we'd ding itself, and had closed in that crude, sordid little western railroad town where Danby had relaxed his feeble hold on life and left her widow of 23, alone, with almost no money, and the child.
 Reason and common sense-as well as letters from home-advised widowed Ly- dia to turn back. But mighty craving to own some spot on earth which she could call home, a sick revolt from the thought of bringing up the child in that surrounding where it had been born, these nerved her to persist. Thrift, industry, the honest. kindly help of good neigh bors, the generous favor of a masculine and largely a bachelor community, had made her prosperity. Today saw her with little bunch of p cows, a patch of garden, which she tended, and whose produce she could sell without leaving the ranch, the child Norah in abound ing health and well-being, and the pros pect seemed to smile.
 Lydia looked about upon it all, then glanced backward into the soft obscurity of the room behind her where the child lay sleeping.
 For Gods sake!"
 It was a hoarse, husky sound, scarce above a whisper and it reached Lydia s ears seemingly from the back of the house. Not for nothing had she lived there three years upon this edge-this de- batable border land-of civilization. She neither screamed nor started wildly but with whtened face and eyes that ques- toned intently drew inward from the doorway and moved slowly toward the lt- tie kitchen whence the voice had seemed to come.
 As she went she was aware that a sound like heavy berathing grew more and more audible to her. When her eyes had become accustomed to the dim light of the little room she made out a face at the tiny side window-a young face it was, well featured, but haggard, drawn, marked with long, red blaze athwart one temple, where a bullet had grazed but recently. and lit by a pair of hunted eyes which gleamed with dark intensity.
 She saw instantly how the intruder had crept up to the little shack under cover of the rocks and irregularities that ap- preached it on the side. "What-what is it?' she asked whisperingly.
 "Water-a drink of water first" came the quick answer. She moved to the water bucket. his famished eyes following her in a way that brought lump into her throat.
 She would have filled for him an ordi- nary cup; but. That" he uttered indi- eating with his eyes only big tin meas ure, and at the word and the look that went with t the tears sprang into her own blue eyes. She held the great cup to o-him, and as she watched him drink the heart In her tender breast utterly melted, and she wiped the piteous tears from her face
 "Than.1 ycu-tharlS you" he said as he
 
 clear to her that it was not the water alone to which his gratitude answered. Are you alone?" sinister query had .here been anythink in the desperate young face that could threaten; the question of a robber, a fugitive-a lover Lydia felt instinctively that it was not the first, and though she knew it for the second she answered with the quick, tremulous in terest she might have given the third of these three
 Pm alone. I live here alone with my child. l am a widow
 But may not somebody-?" he began.
 She interrupted comprehendingly. wait, I will look,' and with eager caution she crept back to the door, stepped through it and out into the brilliant sunlight, which made beaten gold of her thick growing hair, scanning the canyon first up and then down. scrutinizing the upper line of it's walls where they lay sharp against the blue sky, searching every trail, interrogating every bit of shadow In all that her eye commanded there was no sign of human life. She hurried back to the face at the little window.
 There is nobody in sight" she told him. But stay there-I will come to you
 Again, as she turned from him to make