The Salt Lake tribune. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1890-current, 1910-07-17

work of his aeroplane and prepared for
flight, He had n little difficulty get
| ting mp, owing TO the absence Of q
breeze at this point. Finally he was
obliged TO climb, with a good deal Of
labor, the icy ridge up which ho had
watched the htule party OF murderers
scrambling.
AT the crest he cast a glance around,
| looking for them, but saw no signs of
them. Then getting a favorable slant
of the wind, he mounted again into
the element he now called his own.
A heavy fog was filling up the cup
shaped valley, like a lake, and when
he had lowered through it and into the
clear. sparkling. unvexed an. above it,
he found, rolled out beneath him, as
far as he could see in every direction,
what looked, under the slanting rays
Of the sun, like a warm. fleecy, rose
colored blanket.
But, somehow, rhe return to the up
per air. even the drawing Of that great
cloud curtain across the earth, failed to
! i've back TO Cayley that mood of Sc
rene happiness which he had enjoyed
an hour before. he tried hard to re-
cover it, and his failure to do so irri,
tatcd him. In vain. he asked himself
what those little figures on the ice
could mean to him, or he 10 them. In
vain, he told himself that the thing
he had seen was nothing but picture
| "a puppet show.
He began wheeling great spiral in
the upper air, higher and higher, until
the intensity of the cold and the drum
ming of the blood in his temples warned
him to descend again.
But high or low. some invisible mag
net held him over the spot where he
had witnessed that unexplained trag-
edy; an intense curiosity that would
not let him go until he had, in some
way, accounted for the flying fate that,
so silently had overtaken the leather
clad man down there on the ice.
| Five years before Philip Cayley
would have passed for a good example
of that type of clean-limbed, clean
minded. Gkable young man which the
| best Of our civilization seems to be
Towering into. Physically, it would
have been hard to suggest an improve
ment in him. he approached so near
the ideal standards. He was fine
grained, supple, slender, small -iointed.
thorough bred from head to heel
Intellectually, he had been good
enough To go through the Academy at
West Point with credit, and to graduate
high enough in his class to be assigned
to service III the cavalry. His stan
dards of conduct. his ideas of honor
as those of the best third of his class
mates. If his fellow officers in the
Philippines, during the year OF two he
had spent In the service, had been
asked to pick flaw in him, which
they would have been reluctant to do,
they, would have said that he seemed
TO them bit too thin skinned and
rather fastidious; that was what his
chum and only intimate friend, Perry
Hunter. said about him at any rate.
| But he could afford TO be fastidious,
for he had about all man could want,
one would think, For three generations
they had taken wealth for granted i'll
come breeding. security Of social posi-
ton, simplicity and ease in making
| friends, both among men and women.
In short, there could be no doubt mt
all that up to his twenty ninth year
Fate had been ironically kind to Philip
no preparation for the stunning blow
that was to fall upon him, suddenly,
out Of so clear a sky!
When it did fall, it cut his life clean
across; SO that when he thought back
TO that time now, it seemed to HIM
that the Lieutenant Cayley of the
United States army had died over there
in the Philippines, and that he, the
man who was now soaring in those
great circles through the Arctic sky,
was chance inheritor of his name and
of his memory.
He had set out one day at the head
of small scouting party, the best
liked man in the regiment, secure in
the respect, in the almost fatherly re-
gard, of his colonel, proudly conscious
of the almost idolatrous admiration of
his men and Of the younger officers.
He had gone out believing that no one
ever had truer friend than he pos
sessed in Perry Hunter, his classmate
at West Point, his fellow.officcr in
the regiment, the confidant of all his
hopes and ideals.
lie had come back. after fortnight IS
absence, to find his name smeared with
disgrace. himself Judged and condemn
ed, unhcard, in the opinion of the mess.
And that was not the worst of it, The
same blow which had deprived him of
the regard of the only people in the
world who mattered TO him, destroyed,
also, root and branch, his affection for
the one man OF whom he had made ap