Putnam patriot., 1914-11-27
q Shall Not Be Afraid. ?


 to much, 'eept to look pretty. An this little euss will take you safe as a roekin hoss.
 She smiled up at the rugged. kindly face that was dimly visible by the flashes of light.
 T shall not be afraid of anything with you to take care of me. l re- member how good you were to Dick"
 "Sho', now! I didn't do anything for him. He was mighty good to me when hit the slag pile; that is. when l was down on my luck, you know"
 T know what you did" she said softly, and her voice was like a strain of music across the wind that drifted down from the mountain. He told me how you were his friend when he first came to the mines. 'tenderfoot, he called it, and how you knocked out Big Stoker when he tried to play pranks on him. Then he told me about the time you went prospecting together on the west slope. It seems to me that l have gone over that traA scores of times. I have felt the desert sun blaze down on me till every drop of blood in my veins turned to fire.
 And then the climb away up the mountain. stumbling over rocks and slipping on smooth slides and sealing almost vertical slopes, and then the top. shiyering in the cold, freezing in the sharp winds"
 Ut is little coldishlike nights. waitin' fer the sun to rise; but, lordy' aint it fine sight when she does git up2 It kind O pays fer settin' round on top O the hill tryin' to keep warm by brush fire that goes out mos as soon as it kindles"
 Then that time Dick slipped on a glare of ice and fell down the side of the mountain into a ereviee. and you crawled down and found him there hurt so that he could not move. and you put your own coat around him to keep him warm and sat against the wind to shelter him from it. You set his broken ankle and nursed him through all the days that he was help less. watching him day and night. You scarcely ate anything in all the time that Dick could not be moved, lest the food that you had brought for the journey should give out and Dick might suffer Then, when he was able to bear the motion, you carried him in your arms down to the plain and to the little station and took care of him till he was we'll"
 'Sho'. nowl Did Dick tell you all that stuff?"
 He would have died that time if 1t had not been for you
 That's nothin' fer a man to do."
 q think it is a great thing for a man to do It shows friendship, and I think that is not a common thing in life.'
 Dicks my pardner, he said, quietly.
 Miss Lyleford had heard men say 'he is my brother with less of the finaIity of self-surrender that was ex- pressed in the simple statement of the relationship of this miner with his friend. She heard soldier say once "He is my comrade," with something of the deep. soft, earnest intonation Of her escort.
 A note in the sound of her voice re- minded him of a voice he used to know away back in the years-his boyhood years-when he used to play with a girl in the schoolhouse yard. That voice had drifted away in si- lence long ago and he had not thought of it for years, except sometimes when he lay awake nights and heard a soft wind sweep through the pine trees. To his ear the wind had an undertone of sadness. as if 1t might have drifted over grave
 A blaze of lightning lit up the noun tain pathway From the narrow ledge that wound around a steep wall of rock 4he girl looked down into the depths of a canyon that seemed to open into the heart of the earth.
 'BalaaM will take you safe through. no matter how shaky 1t looks
 She looked up into the kindly. reas- surfing face, and smiled confidently
 T am not afraid; but it all seems so strange and so beautiful, and aw- fui It is uplifted so far above the world that I do not seem to belong to earth any more I wonder how the people who are used to such scenes feel. and if they are not larger and grander than We who live on the com mon levels"
 T s'pose most folks are about the same old bad pennies. no matter where they live nor what they look at
 How do you know about me so far away"
 Dick had told me where he come from, and then. when he was out O his head, he talked about you, and thought mebbe you lived back where he did. He didn't talk about anybody else, and I thought mebbe you might be all he had, and then I sent the telegram hoping you might get it and come
 You and are all he has. and we will save him"
 The man lifted his face up toward the dark sky.