The Beaver herald. [volume] (Beaver, O.T. [Okla.]) 1895-1923, 1915-12-02
CHAPTER ".

Physical exhaustion will finally tell,
even over such handicaps as a noun.
tain feather bed and the fumes of
backwoods cabin.
II Juanita Holland did not at last
actually fall asleep, she drifted into a
sort of nightmare coma from which
she awoke with a start.
Finally she fell again into that half
sleep which dreams OF wakefulness.
II may have lasted minutes or hours.
but suddenly she reused again with q
start from a new nightmare and lay
trembling under the oppression OF a
poignant foreboding. What was It that
she had subconsciously heard or imag-
ined? She was painfully wide awake
in the slumbering cabin. At last she
was sure OF a sound low but instinct
with warning.
Beardog was growing just outside
the door.
Then. violently and without the pref.
ace OF gradual approach-precisely as
though horsemen had sprung from the
earth-thore clattered and beat past
the front of the cabin staccato thun-
der of wildly galloping hoofs and a
rattle of scattered rocks. She felt an
uncanny freezing of her marrow
Horses travel perllous and broken
roads in that fashion only when their
riders are in wild haste.
AS abruptly as the drumbeat had
| a. E,, ell
there was no diminuendo of hoofbeats
receding into distance. The thing was
weird and ghostly. She had not no
ticed in the weariness of her arrival al
the cabin that the road ran deep IN
sand to the corner OF the fence and
broken rock 1t fell away again into an
other sound-mufliing stretch. She
knew only that she was thoroughly
frightened. and that whatever the
noise was. II proclaimed hot and des
perate haste.
Yet even in her terror she haC
moved only TO turn her head and hnC
opened her eyes cautiously and mar
rowly.
There was no sound In the cabiI
now; not even the stertorous breath o
a snore. The fire fickered family anC
occasionally sent up from it's whit
bed OF ashes a dying spurt. befor,
which the darkness fell back llttl,
for the moment.
She could see that Fletch McNasl
had half risen in his bed. His heat
WAS partly turned in an attitude o
intent listening, and his pose was a
rigid as that of bird-dog frozen on
point. 1t had all been momentary, ant
as Juanita gazed she saw other tig
ures stir uneasily though no on
spoke. The missionary lay still. bu
the woman's figure moved restlessl
beneath the heaped-up comforter.
So. for a few moments the strarg
and tense tableau held, and the CIR
watching the householder's alert ye
motionless pose, remembered him a
he had hunched drunkenly over hi
plate few hours ago. The two pic
lures were hard to reconcile.
Then. at some warning which he
less acute ears failed to register, sh
saw Fletch McNash's right hand swee
outward toward the wall and come u
gripping the rife.
Still there was no word. but the elt
est boys head had risen from tn
pallet.
Keyed now TO concert pitch, the gin
held her body rigid. and through hal
closed lids looked across the dir
room. While she was so staring an
pretending to sleep, there drifted fror
long way off an insistent. anlma
like yell with peculiar quaver in II
final note. She did not know that
| was the famous acBriar rallying or.
. | and that trouble inevitably follows