The Rice belt journal. (Welsh, Calcasieu Parish, La.) 1900-19??, 1907-07-19
CHAPTER Xxx.
The Picture in the Sky.

The Picture in the Sky.
If something Of the peace of tn
night silence came to him as he rode
he counted it only the peace of SUI
render and despair He knew nov
that he had been cheated of all hi
great lOng-nurSed hopes of some supe
rior exaltatiOn. Nor this clly; for HI
had sinned unforgiyably and incurred
perdition. He who had tasted, PRAYED
and endured, waiting for his Witness
for the spreading of the heavens anC
the glory of the open vision, had over
reached himself and was cast down.
When at last he slowed his horse tc
a walk, it was the spring of the day
The moon had gone, and over on his
left soft grayneSs began to show
above the line of the hills. The light
grew until it glowed with the fire of
Opals; through the treetOps ran little
stirs of wakefulness, and all about
him were faint, furtive rustlings and
whispers of the new day. Then in
this glOritied dusk of the dawn a
squirrel lOOsed his bark of alarm, a
crested jay screamed in answer, and
he knew his hour Of atonement was
come.
He pressed forward again toward
the desert, eager to be on with il.
The page with the wash of blood
across it seemed to take on a new
yiyidness in the stronger light. Under
the stain, the letters of the words
were magnitied before his mind
And as ye would that men shouId
do to you" 1t seemed to him that
the blood through which they came
heated the words so that they burned
his eyes.
An hour after daybreak the trail led
him down out of the hills by a little
Watercourse to the edge of the desert
Along the sides of this the chaparral
grew thickly, and the spring by which
he halted made little spot of green
at the edge of the gray. But out in
front of him was the infinite stretch Of
death, far sweeps of wind-furroWed
sand burning under a sun made sullen
red by the clouds Of fine dust in the
air. Sparsely over the dull surface
grew the few shrubs that could SIR.
viye the heat and dryness,-stunted
things of burr, spine. thorn
or saw-edged leaf all bent one WAYS
by the sand blown against them
Oristling cactus and crouching mes.
quite bushes.
In the vast open of the blue above
Vulture wheeled with sinister alert.
hess; and far out among the dwarfed
growing things a coyote skulked know.
ngly. The weird, phantom-like beau.
y OF 1t stole upon him, torn as he was
While he looked over the dry, fiat
caches. 1t was good place to die
n, this lifeless waste languishing I'm.
er an angry SUM-
AT last he gave his horse water. tied
ne brldlerein to the horn of the sad.
lie, headed him back over the trail TO
ne valley and turned him loose. Then
tier long look toward the saving
reen OF the hills, he started off
lrough the yielding sand, his face
mite and haggard but hard.set, He
'as already weakening by fasting and
'ss OF sleep, and the heat and dryness
BON told upon him as the chill was
armed from the morning air.
When ne had walked an hour he
III ne must stop, at least to rest. He !
oked back to see how far he had !
'me' He was disappointed by the !
7arness OF the hills; they seemed but {
stones throw away. If delirium I
me now he would probably wander 1
lex to the water.
lie walked another hour, then i
rned, and was again Disappointed a
was such a little distance; vet he o
lew now he must be too far out To
III MS way back when the madness S
me. So it was with little sigh of t
ntentment that he lay down to rest t
to take what might come. a
lie was quite broken. Not since tbo n
lg-gone night on the river-hat across Fl
I'm NauVoo had tears wet his ewes b
lt they fell now, and from sheer b
lpless grief he wept. And then for a
hrst time in two days he PRAYED "
IS time the prayer of the pubIi. W
H. Y
GOD be merciful to me, a sinner" el
JVer and over he said the words g
oklngly, watering the hot sands
a his tears. When the paroxvsm az
passed, it left him, weak and
me, still family crying his PRAYER p'
o the sand, 20 God, be merciful IN "
, a sinner" CT