Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1914-11-19
III Shall Not Be Afraid"

when I hit the Stag pile; that is, when
l was down on my luck, you know"
81 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. 1t seems
to me that l have gone over that trail
scores of times. I have felt the desert
sun blaze down on me till every drop
of blood in my veins turned to fire.
1t was little warm there, reckon.
We didn't take thermometers along,
cause they alters melt in them parts
and run all over things and make
muss."
And then the climb away up the
mountain, stumbling over rocks and
slipping on smooth slides and scaling
almost vertical slopes, and then the
top, shivering in the cold, freezing in
the sharp Winds
''It is little coldishlike nights,
waitin' fer the sun to rise; but, lordy!
amt it fine sight when she does git
up? It kind O. pays fer settin' round
on top O. the hill tryin' to keep warm
by a 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 crevice, 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 fer
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', now! Did Dick tell you all
that stuff"
He would have died that time if it
had not been for you"
That's nothin' fer a man to do"
81 think it is a great thing for a
man to do. 1t shows friendship, and
l think that is not a common thing
in life"
Dicks my pardner," he said, quietly.
Miss Lyleford had heard men say
The is my brother" with less of the
fnality of self-surrender that was ex-
pressed in the simple statement of the
relationship Of this miner with his
friend. She heard a soldier say once
He is my comrade," with something
of the deep, soft, earnest information of
her escort.
A note in the sound of her voice re-
know away back in the years-his
boyhood years-when he used to play
with girl in the schoolhouse yard.
That voice had drifted away in 81
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 it might
have drifted over a grave
4 blaze of lightning lit up the noun
tain pathway. From the narrow ledge
that wound around a steep wall Of
rock the girl looked down into the
depths of a canyon that seemed to
open into the heart of the earth.