American Falls press. [volume] (American Falls, Idaho) 1907-1937, 1911-08-10
PROLOGUE
A QUARTER OF A CENTURY az
FORE.

.- oo1Ai
1t blew perhaps 20 miles an hour TIL,
nerce blasts were laden with fine
snow-frozen spindrift from a white
ocean OF cold! Needles of ice sharp
er than their prototypes of steel cut
the bare flesh of those whom evil for
tune Kept abroad On such a night
bringing the blood to the ~freezins
XII The onslaught of the scream
Ing tempest drove the hapless cattle
mad with pain and terror. The thict
snow compelled them to hubble to
gether at last, and shelterless to sui
Ter. freeze. and die in the pitiless hur
ricane
Just where the foothills lose them.
selves In the prairie lay huddled a lit.
tie town or camp. Every door and win.
dow was shut and barricaded against
the searching storm.
In one OF the poorest and most mis-.
cradle shanties on the outskirts of the
town a woman waited alone. A com
mon Kerosene lamp stood on a table
before the window, set there as If In
signal.
Inc house. a mere shack which
SHOOK and quivered under the ire
mendous assaults of the storm. and
might have been blown down If 1t had
no been buttressed and protected by
heaps OF snow yet threatening to over.
whelm 1t, contained but one room. In
the corner farthest from the door
stood a tumbled, frowzy bed. A rick
ETY. chest of drawers, a kitchen table, a
rusty cook stove. a few uncertain
chairs of the plainest and cheapest
quality. were all the rest of the fur
niture. A few clothes hung from pegs
driven In the boarded wall. A saddle
In one corner. a pickax and shovel. a
heavy quirt, and a>ri1e hanging from
pegs beneath a shelf sufficiently
pointed out the avocations of the
mi
Yet she was a woman who, what
ever her outward circumstances,
showed no poverty of spirit. She
ragged up and down the room as a
prisoned tiger PAGES the narrow con-
ines of his cage. Sometimes she
paused and stopped by the window, to
rest her head beneath her hand on
the sash and peer eagerly, passion
ately, out into the falling snow. She
could see nothing, and after having
stared with increased disappointment
and further mutterings of angry
words. she would resume her rest
less backward and forward march.
Had there been any spectator when
she assumed that picturesque position
at the window, where the light, how
eve it failed to illuminate the snow,
threw her own face and person in high
relief, the observer would have been
surprised at the coarse and yet not
u~nattractive beauty of her face and
figure. She was full Tipped and deep
bosomed. tall. 1.-THE, strong. Her
cheeks were full of color, her hair
black and coarsely crisp and curly.
Her hands, which she clasped and I'M
clasped %nervously. were large and
REDEEMED by toll. but they were shape
ly nevertheless. But there was neith-
er refinement nor goodness in her
face. There were great possibilities
of evil which experience could have
and 1t had made her a hard woman.
She was perhaps twenty-five years
old, but looked older.
For hours the woman had waited in |
that hut alone. 1t had been storming
badly when she began her vigil, and
the violence of the tempest had In
creased until she feared that no hui
man soul could brave it. That she
vey much wanted some one to at
tempt it. that she very keenly. ardent
ly, longed for that. was quite evident.
Great is the power of love. Even
its counterfeit-that which passes for
It IN the eyes of the ignorant and in
experienced-may stir men and wom-
to mighty deeds. This woman
the arrival of n who fancied
a modern Perseus about to re-
lease another bound and helpless An
dromeda from a %devouring monster.
Whether the man who %fatuously
filed that role-or the boy. rather. for
he had not reached mans years or
estate-would arrive before her hus-
band, was the problem that filled the
woman's mind. In view OF the biz
sard raging, she might have wondered
whether. in ase either OF them
sought the house, they could find 1t or
each It alive. II she had stopped to
consider that phase OF the possibili-
les. she would have been profoundly
xlad had both ventured and had both
wandered on in the night until beaten
Town and mastered by the spirit OF
he storm. so that the searchers. after
Il violence had abated. might ma
hem frozen to death as many another
,oor fellow was found frozen there. 1,
For while the woman ioathed ,
md hated her drunken brute OF q nus
ANA. ret she had no affection for the
young tenderfoot who had wan
lerea out west to spend 4 summer {