The Caldwell watchman. (Columbia, La.) 1885-1946, 1912-08-09

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draw instantly should circumstances
warrant, and he was careful so to con-
ceal himself as to give no possible OPP
portunity for her to discover his
scrutiny.
With a beating heart and eager
eyes he searched the spot. There lay
the bear and a little distance away
prone on the grass, clothed but wheth.
er In her right mind or not he could
not tell. lay the woman. For moment
as he bent concentrated, eager gaze
upon her he thought she might have
tainted or that she might have died.
In any event he reflected that she had
strength and 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 also lift herself
from the grass as If moved by a SINH.
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 az
1t did to her. but with q 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.
His duty was plain and yet he did 1t
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 instructive and acquired reluc-
lance against which he struggled in
vain, he added the assurance that
whatever his message he would be
on account Of what had
gone before; he could not force him.
self to go to her or even to call to
her. net yet. He would keep her I'M
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 1t oyershadowed 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 frightful and
unlocked for cloudburst was about to
occur above their heads. A lightning
flash and 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 riffs of the mountains.
"Wait," he cried again and again.
Come up higher. Get out 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 a
voice, shrill, menacing, fraught with
terror for her, not word distinguish
able; scarcely to her disturbed soul
even a human voice, 1t seemed like
the wierd cry Of some wild spirit OF
the storm. 1t sounded to her over
wrought nerves so utterly inhuman
that she only ran the faster.
The canon swerved and then dou.
bled back, but 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
floods came and beat into the open
nav Of that vast crevice and filed 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 Ger.
tain shelf Of the rock over which the
rising water broke thirly. Ordinarily
It was twenty feet above the creek
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 It was too narrow for him to
reach her If the water did not sweep