Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1909-02-10


ing impulse" the desire to have
home of his own, prompted the young
man to go out into the world and win
his fortune. For year he had acted
as foreman of the Allen ranch, work
ing in neighborly cooperation with
Jack Payson of Sweetwater ranch,
man of about his own age. The two
young men became the closest of COM
rades. When the fever of adventure
seized upon Lane and he became dis
satisfied with the Flooding career of a
wage Garner, Payson insisted on mort
gaging Sweetwater ranch for $4,000
and in lending Dick the money for a
years prospecting in the mountains Of
Sonora, Mexico, in search of a fabu-
lousy rich ''lost mine of the Aztecs.''
Traditions of lost mines are plentiful
in Arizona and northern Mexico. First
taken up by the Spanish invaders Of
800 years ago from the native Indians,
they have passed down to each subse-
quent influx Of white men. The direc-
tons are always vague. The inquirer
cannot pin his informant down to any
definite data. Over the mountains al
ways lies the road. Hundreds Of lives
have been sacrificed and cruelty un-
paralleled practieed upon innocent
men, women and children by gold
seekers in their lust for conquest.
Prosperous Indian villages have been
laid waste, and whole bands of adj
venturers have gone into the desert in
search of these mines, never to return.
When the time for Lanes departure
came Echo wept at the thought of los
ing for so long time the close COM
panion of her childhood and the SYM
pathetic contidant of her youthful
thoughts and aspirations. Dick, in
whom friendship for Echo had long
before ripened into conscious love, took
! her tears as evidence that she was
similarly affected toward him, and he
| allowed all the suppressed passion of
his nature full vent in a declaration of
/ love. The girl was deeply moved by
this revelation of the heart of a strong
man made tender as a WOman'S by
power centering in her own humble
self, and, being utterly without expert
ence Of the emotion even in it's prOtec-
tive form of calf love, which is the
variOloid of the genuine affection, she
imagined through sheer sympathy that
she shared his passion. SO she assent
ed with maidenly reserve TO his plea
that she promise to marry him when
he should return and provide home
for her. Her more cautious mother Sc
cured Il modification Of This pledge by
limiting the line that Echo should
wait for him to one year. If at the eX
piratiOn Of that period Lane did not
return to claim her promise or did not
write making satisfactory arrange
ments for continuance Of the eDga ge-
ment Echo was to be considered free
to marry whom she chose
Soon after Lanes departure Mrs.
Allen persuaded the colonel to send
Echo east to New England finishing
school for girls. where her mother
hoped that her budding love for Lane
| might be nipped by the frigid atmos-
phere OF intellectual culture, If not, in
deed. supplanted by q saving interest
in young men in general and perhaps
bloodcd Boston family.
The plan succeeded in part only
! The cOmpanionship of her schoolfel-
lows, her music and art lessons. her
books during the limited periods al
| lotted to serious study and rcading)
| and. above all. her attrition at recep-
tons with another order of men than
that she had known in the rough I'M
cultured west occupied her mind so
fully that poor Dick Lane who was
putting a thought of Echo Allen in
every blow of his pick. received only
the scraps of her attention
Dick had few opportunities to mail
letter and none. OF them for receiv-
Ing one. Impractical in writing. his
epistolary compositions were crude in
the extreme, being wholly confined
to bald statements of fact Had he
been as tender on paper as he was in
his words and accents when he kissed
away her tears at parting her regard
for him would have had fuel to feed
on and might have kindled into genu-
| to admit that in comparison with the
| brilliant university men with whom
she conversed Dick Lane intellectually
was as quartz to diamond
! On the other hand, she contrasted
Dick in the essential point Of manli-
ness most favorably with the mae
butterflies Of society that lowered
around her. What one OF them was
SO essentially chivalrous as the west
ern man-so modest, so self sacrific-
ing, so brave and resolute and re-
sourceful? Dick Lane, or Jack Pay
! son, for that matter, in all save the
/ adVentitious points Of education and
culture was the higher type of man
/ hood, and Jack. at least. if not poor
Dick, could hold his own in mental
ana artistic perception with the
| brightest, most cultured of Harvard
graduates.
At the end of the year she came
! hack homo Ia aU-nif DirI--c ,a41Ir,, Fpo,,,