The Lee County journal. (Leesburg, Ga.) 1904-19??, 1909-01-01

/ WHICH AufbW walker 70 tue ET0un0
and tumbled the frightened cattle
down the mountainside, the earth
quake of 1857 had not yet attained its
/ maximum intensity. Its victims were
not to escape so soon. The grinding
| and rocking passed into mere traM-
bling, and Walker rose to his feM
with a great sense Of relief. B1t
hardly had he picked up his gun
when the earth began once more TO
sway and bump. There was roar
in the air like thunder, and down the
valley he saw coming huge waves,
before which the trees dipped sudden
ly and the stampeding cattle dropped
as IL shot.
The next moment there was a bump
which threw him into the air, and a
rending crash which made his heart
stand STILL Then with wrench the
solid earth parted, and mighty draft
OF air sucked him like leaf into the
black abyss.
In a moment of great terror one acts
in afpurely instructive way AS a
drowning man clutches at straw,
so Ngse WaIkEr. swept into the Dos
ON of the eartAyby an almost incon-
ceivable catastrophe, dropped his gun
and clutched out wildly.
His hands encountered tangle of
roots perhaps the roots of that same
broad oak beneath which, but a few
moments before, he had sat at his
ease. At the touch he grappled with
them desperately, while the sand-laden
wind swept past him into the bowels
of the earth.
In spite Of the falling dirt and the
tornado of wind which beat down up
on him, Walker chung to his hold with
the insane strength of man who fac
es sudden death
It was but moment. but in that
moment great range OF mountains
was split in twain, split to great
depth. OF all the human beings in
that :Iand, one maf.'was caught in the
throe iof nature, sucked into the gulf
which ,Sawned at that mofAent across
thfee hundred miles Of mountains. To
that one man the moment s4amedsam
age.
Deep into that crack swept the
winds of heaven. 1t yawned it's widS
estSand closeti!
The inruSh yOf air past Nelse Walk
er Suddenly ceased then, as the part
led earth, came together again, the
air which had rushed in was as quick
ly expelled. MAa mighty bellows,
miles in length, had been suddenly
closed from its. .uttermost, the effect
could not have been more irresistible.
,h,lkeS .leafSNnce moro Nelse Walker
was blown. Upward bEYthe blast. ms
hands were torn from their clutch
on the oak roots, and the next mo-
ment he was hurled past the mouth of
the bottomless hole and shot out into
the light of day.
How he came there he did not know,
but when Nelse Walker recovered his
his sense of locality, he was still
clinging to a tahgle of roots-yet on
second thought he. realized that they
were not ,;foots, but branches. @s'He
was in the top of a tree, About him
the limbs We're still rocking and wav-
ing, and smothered bumps still shook
the tree, as If mighty ak was being
laid to its roots.
A faintness seized upon the man
who had been the toy and sport Of
the lenients Realization Of his pre-
dicament and of his escape rushed in
upon him, and he nearly fell He
clambered feebly down the tree and
dropped to the trembling earth. in
faint.
The breath of the cool afternoon
breeze awakened him, and he felt
about instinetively for his gun. TEvn
1T came to him that his gun was far
down in the bottom of the earth. He
rose. Before him lay the long fur
row of the earthquake, still smoking
with the dust which rose from it's new.
cleft depths. Into this he. had. .drop-
ped, and from it he had been hurled
like a feather.
Small wonder, then, that NeIse
Walker was dazed, and wandered far
before he reached the station at Fort
TETON. Nor was there much which
was familiar there to bring him from
his dream.
The adobe buildings of the stages
houses lay crumbled in ruins, branch
es strewed the ground, and frantic
horses stampeded about in the corrals.
When the station-keeper heard
Walkers story, he thought that fear
had turned his head Bpt a search
for the lost gun on tie following DAY
brought him to the brink Of 'thStN8w-
full chasm which had swallowed it.
The erosion and floods of forty-seya