The Mena weekly star., 1912-04-18

TT ih her right mind or not he could not tell. lay the wonan. For a moment as nc bent concentrated. eager gage upon her he thought she might have tainted or that she might have died. In any event he reflected that she had strength snd nerve and will to have dressed herself before either of these things happened. She lay motionless under his gaze for so long that he finally made up his mind that com mon humanity required him to go to her assistance.
 He rose to his feet on the instant and saw the woman a,so lift herself rom the grass as if moved by a simi- lar impulse In his intense preoccu- patton he had forgot to observe the signs of the times. A sense of the overcast sky came to him suddenly as it did to her, but with difference. He knew what was about to happen, his experience told him much more as to the awful potentialities of the tempest than she could possibly imag- inc. She must be warned at once she must leave the canon and get up on the higher ground without delay. Ills duty was plain and yet he did it not He could not. The pressure upon him was not yet strong enough.
 A half dozen times as he watched her deliberately sitting there eating he opened his mouth to cry to her. yet he could not bring himself to it. A strange timidity oppressed him; halted him. held him back. A man cannot stay away five years from men and women and be himself with them in the twinkling of an eye. And when to that instinctive and acquired reluc. tance against which he struggled in vain, he added the assurance that whatever his message he would ha unwelcome on account of what nad gone before; he could not force him. self to go to her or even to call to her, not yet. He would keep her un- der surveillance. however, and if the worst came he could intervene in time to rescue her. He counted without his cost, his usual judgment bewil- dered. So he followed her through the trees and down the bank.
 Now he was so engrossed in her and so agitated that his caution slept, his experience was forgotten The storm in his own breast was so great that it overshadowed the storm brew ing above. Her way was easier than his and he had fallen some distance behind when suddenly there rushed upon him the fact that a frightfIl and unlocked for cloudburst was about to occur above their heads. A lightning flash and a thunder clap at last ar rested his attention. Then, but not until then, he flung everything to the winds and amid the sullen and almost continuous peals of thunder he sent cry after cry toward her which were lost in the tremendous diapason of sound that echoed and re-echoed through the rifts of the mountains.
 Wait" he cried again and again. Come up higher. Get put of the canon. You'll be drowned"
 But he had waited too long. The storm had developed too rapidly; she was too far ahead of and beneath him. She heard nothing but the sound of voice, shrill, menacing, fraught with terror for her, not a word distinguish able; scarcely to her disturbed soul even human voice, 1t seemed like the wierd cry of some wild spirit of the storm. It sounded to her over wrought nerves so utterly inhuman that she only ran the faster.
 The canon swerved and then dou- bled back, bat he knew its direction. Losing sight of her for the moment he plunged straight ahead through the trees, cutting off the bend. leaping with superhuman agility and strength over rocks and logs until he reached a point where the rift narrowed be- tween two walls and ran deeply. There and then the heavens opened and the foods came and beat into the open nav of that vast crevice and filled 1t in an instant.
 As the deluge came roaring down. bearing onward the sweepings and scourings of the mountains, he caught a glimpse of her white desperate face rising. falling, now disappearing. now coming into view again, in the foamy midst of the torrent He ran to the cliff bank and throwing aside his gun he scrambled down the wall to a cer- tain shelf of the rock over which the rising water broke thinly. Ordinarily g4 ,H i. bed. Bracing himself against jagged projection he waited praying. The canon was here so narrow that he could have leaped to the other side and yet 1t was too narrow for him to reach her if the water did not sweep her toward his feet. It was all done in a second. Fortunately projection on the other side threw the force of the torrent toward him and with it came the woman.
 She was almost spent. She had been struck by a log upheaved by some mighty wave. her hands were moving feebly, her eyes were closed. she was drowning, dying. but indomit- ably battling on. He stopped down and as surge lifted her, he threw his arm around her waist and then he braced himself against the rock to sustain the full thrust of the mighty flood. As he seized her she gave way suddenly as if after having done all that she could there was now nothing left but to trust herself to his hand and Gods. She hung dead weight on his arm in the ravening water which dragged and tore at her madly
 He was man of giant strength, ]. { tha sfrugple hafa fair fn be fnn