The Mena weekly star., 1912-04-11

since morning. and the nervous shock and strain through which she had gone had reduced her to pitlable condition.
 Her luncheon had fortunately es. caped unharmed. In a big pocket of her short skirt there was a small flask of whiskey, which her Uncle Robert had required her to take with her. She felt sick and faint, but she knew that she must eat If she was to make the journey. difficult as 1t might prove, back to the camp. She forced herself to take the first mouthful of bread and meat she had brought with her, but when she mad tasted she needed no further incentive, she ate to the last crumb; she thought this was the time she needed stimulants, too, and mingling the cold water from the brook with a little of the ardent spirit from the flask, she drank. Some Of the chill had worn off, some of the fatigue had gone.
 She rose to her feet and started down the canon; her bloody sweater still lay on the ground with other things of which she was needless. It had grown colder, but she realized that the climb down the canon would put her stagnant blood in circulation and all would be we'll.
 Before she began the descent of the pass, she cast one long glance back ward whither the man had gone. Whence came he, who was he, what had he seen, where was he now? She thanked God for his interference in one breath and hated him for his presence in the other.
 The whole sky was now black with drifting clouds, lightning flashed above her head, muttered peals of thunder, territically ominous, rocked through the silent hills. The noise was low and subdued, but almost continuous. With a singular and uneasy feeling that she was being observed, she started down the canon. plunging des- perately through the trees, leaping the brook from side to side where 1t mar rowed, seeking ever the easiest way. She struggled on. panting with sud den inexplicable terror almost as bad as that which had overwhelmed her an hour before-and growing more intense every moment, to such tragic pass had the day and its happenings brought her.
 Poor girl. awful experience really was to be hers that day. The fates sported with her-bodily fear, out ragged modesty, mental anguish and now the terror of the storm.
 The clouds seemed to sink lower, until they almost closed about her. Long gray ghostly arms reached out toward her It grew darker and dark. CT in the depths of the canon. She screamed aIoud-in vain.
 Suddenly the rolling thunder peals concentrated, balls of fire leaped out of the heavens and struck the noun tains where she could actually see them. There were not words to de- scribe the tremendous crashings which seemed to splinter the hills, to be succeeded by brief periods of si- lence. to be followed by louder and more terrific detonations.
 In one of those appalling alterna- tions from sound to silence she heard a human cry-an answering cry to her own? It came from the hills be- hind her. It must proceed. she thought. from the man. She could not meet that man. although she craved human companionship as never before, she did not want his. She could not bear 1t Better the wrath of God. the fury of the tempest.
 Heedless of the sharp note of warn-' ing. of appeal, in the voice ere it was drowned by another roll of thunder. she plunged on in the darkness. The canon narrowed here; she made her way down the lodges, leaping reck- lessly from rock to rock, slipping, falling, grazing now one side, now the other, hurling herself forward with white face and bruised body and torn hands and throbbing heart that would fain burst it's bonds. There was once an ancient legend, a human creature, menaced by all the furies, pitilessly pursued by every malefic spirit of earth and air; like him this sweet young girl, innocent. lovely. erstwhile happy, fed before the storm.
 Then the heavens burst, and the fountains of the great deeps were broken open and with absolute lit teralness the floods descended. The bursting clouds. torn asunder by the wild winds, driven by the pent-up lightning within their black and turgid breasts, disburdened themselves. The water came down, as it did of old when God washed the face of the world in flood. The narrow of the canon was filled ten, twenty. thirty feet in a moment by the cloud burst. The black water rolled and foamed, surging like the rapids at Niagara.
 The body of the girl, utterly unpre- pared, was caught up in moment and flung like bolt from a catapult down the seething sea filled with the trunks of the trees and the debris of the mountains, tossing about humanly in the wild confusion. She struck out strongly swimming more because of the instinct of life than for any other reason. A helpless atom in the boil ing flood, growing every minute great CT and greater as the angry skies dis gorged themselves of their pent-up torrents upon her devoted head.
 Continued in next issue)
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