Dakota farmers' leader. (Canton, S.D.) 1890-19??, 1911-05-05

Towering into. Physically, 1t 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-jointed,
thoroughbred from head to heel.
Intellectually, he had been good
enough to go through the academy at
West Point with credit, n to grad
uate high enough in his class to be
assigned to service in the cavalry. His
standards of conduct. his ideas OF hon.
or and morality had been about The
same as those of the best third OF his
classmates. If his fellow officers in
the Philippines, during the year or
two he spent in the service, had been
asked to pick a flaw in him, which
they would have been reluctant to do,
they would have said that he seemed
to them a 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 fastidi-
GUS, for he had about all a man could
want, one would think. For three
generations they had taken wealth
for granted in the Cayley family, and
with it had come breeding, security
of social position, simplicity and ease
in making friends, both among men
n women In short, there could be
no doubt at all that up to his twenty
ninth year Fate had been ironically
kind to Philip Cayley. She had given
him no hint, no preparation for the
stunning blow that was to fall upon
him. suddenly, out of so clear a sky.
When it did fall, 1t 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.
tie man who was now soaring in those
great circles through the arctic sky,
was a chance inheritor of his name
and of his memory.
HI had set out one day at the head
of a 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 the younger officers.
He had gone out believing that no
one ever had a truer friend than he
possessed in Perry Hunter, his class
mate at West Point, his fellow officer
in the regiment, the confidant of all
his hopes and ideals.
He had come back, after a fort
nights absence, to find his name
smeared with disgrace, himself judged
and condemned, unheard, in the opin-
ion of the mess. And that was no
the worst of It. The same blow which
had deprived him of the regard of the
only people in the world who matter
ed to him, destroyed, also, root and
branch, his affection for the one man
of whom he had made an intimate.
The only feeling that it would be pos
sible for him to entertain for Perry
Hunter again must be a half-pitying,
| half-incredulous contempt. And II
that was his feeling for the man he
had trusted most and loved the most
deeply, what must be it for the rest OF
humankind? What did it matter what
they thought of him or What they did
to him? All he wanted of human so
ciety was to escape from 1t.
He fell to wondering, as he hung,
suspended, over that rosy expanse OF
fleecy fog. whether, were the thing to
do over again, he would act as he had
acted five years ago.; whether ne
would content himself with a single
disdainful denial of the monstrous
thing they charged him with; whether
he would resign again, under fire, and
go away, leaving his furnished name
for the davis to peck at.
Heretofore he had always answered
that question with a fierce afirma-
tive. Today it left him wondering.
Had he stayed, had he paid the price
that would have been necessary to
clear himself, he would have
found his wings, so much was clear.
He would never have spent those
! four years in the wilderness, working,
experimenting, taking his life in his
hands, day after day, while he master
ed the art that no man had ever mas
tered before.
He had set himself this ask because
it was the only one he knew that did
not involve contact with his fellow
beings. He must have something that
| he could work at alone Work and
solitude were two things that he had
felt an overmastering craving for. And
the possibility he had faced with a
light heart every morning-the posi-
bility Of a sudden and violent death
before night, had been no more to
him than an agreeable spice to the
days work.
1t was not until he had actually
learned to fly, nae literally shaken the
dust Of the earth from his feet and
taken to the sky as his abode, that his
wound had healed. The three months
that he had spent in this upper arctic
air, awning for 16 hours out of "a, had
Gained him. put his nerves In tune
again; given him for men n their
affairs a quiet Indifference, in place
of the smarting contempt he had been
hugging to his breast before. Three
months ago, at sight of those little
human dots crossing the glacier. he
would have wheeled aloft n gone
sailing away. Even a month g he
would hardly have hung, soaring