The Bottineau courant. (Bottineau, Bottineau County, N.D.) 1895-1929, 1915-12-02
stopped. I could not yet bring M.
self to think of any afterward.

~ SA4A46 AA1~
self to think Of any afterward.
1nasmuch as Weighborne and
were for a time to travel the same trail
and since, as my reason insisted, he
was guilty of no injury to me except
an injury so fantastic that only des.
tiny could be blamed; and since, too,
he was all unconscious even of that,
there must be truce between us.
Yet there rose insistently before me
the lissom beauty of his wife. Tho
light that tangled itself in her hair
blinded and tortured me.
The deity I had built up out of fan.
cy and under the influence Of the trop-
les laid itself in parallel with the wo-
man I had seen last night. The god
dess, I knew; the woman-I loved and
doubted. Was she only the coquette
who wanted to lead me chained at her
chariot wheel for the cheap Joy Of
conquest?
My goddess had not been that sort.
What had she to offer me in return
for such a tribute to her vanity? Was
merely to fit in the background Of
her life, giving all that the heart has,
receiving nothing but the occasional
condescension of a smile? Does great
beauty 50 preempt a woman's soul to
drive out even the homely virtues3
These questions bore mistakenly in
% my brain until it ached with per.
plexity. Then came the memory Of
her momentary wtstfulness; her crav-
ing for something more than life had
given her, or something different.
What was that7 At all events, I
knew that to fall again within the
scope Of her personality would mean
to be swept rudderless from my moor
ings. Whatever her object, be It ex-
allied or petty, I should inevitably
bow to it, in surrender, If such were
her good or evil pleasure. Consequent
" the one end Of oil my thinking was
tho resolve that I should not again
see her.
The journey was progressing with
more surety than my reflections. 1t
whisked us through the richness of
blue grass pasture lands and the opu-
lent ease of blue grass life into a bar
or country, where the color of the
soil grew mean and outcropping rocks
lay bare.
We roared through foot hills where
the vivid green Of young cedars
dashed the gray tangle of naked tim
Der and scrub. At last we climbed
into tn e mountains themselves, lying
in dreary ramparts of isolation under
skies that had grown sodden and raw.
Here were the barriers of the Cum
berland heaping up gigantic piles of
raggedness under bristling needle
Joints of timber.
We passed through anomalous viii
lagos where the nations most primi-
tive and quarantined life was rubbing
shoulders with the outriders of CAPT
tails invasion. Shaggy men, ridden
in from distant cabins on shaggier
horses, men who probably nursed
guilty knowledge of illicit stills, gazed
at the passing train out Of humorless
and illiterate eyes.
At last we left the train at a sta
ton over which the November dusk
was closing, where the coke furnaces
glared in red spots along the shadow
ed ridges. A four mile drive brought
us to the tawdry hotel, and after at
lacking our eggs and ham we went to
our rooms. I, on a feather bed, with
the reek of a low-turned lamp in my
nostrils, lay for hours gazing at the
horror of patched and dirty wall pa
per, and at last fell to sleep to dream
Of a wonderful lady who opened a
door in a wall of rock, and led me
through it to things which could new.
or be.
The next morning, as we waited for
the wagon which was to take us TWEEN
ty miles into the hills, Weighborne
showed me the dingy court house
whose weatherbeaten walls had in
other days been penetrated by Cat
ling guns of the militia. He pointed
out boyishly looking figures whose
eyes were young and mild. yet who
had more than once "notched their
guns" He showed me spots where
this man or that had fallen, shot to
death from the court house windows
by ~assassins who had neve been ap-
pretended or prosecuted.
''That is all changing" he said.
when capital comes, the feud must
CO."
Stolid groups of men, clad in but
ternut and jeans, eyed us with mild
curiosity. Here and there a father
whose face was as stupid and unedu.
Gated as that of a Russian peasant,
walked side by side with a son dress
ed in the seasons ready-made styles.
Between parent and child yawned the
gulf of schooling, which the younger
generation had acquired in a college
"down below or in the new schools
at home, presided over by "fotched
on" teachers.
We travelled at snail's pace over
twisting roads where our wagon