Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1915-10-14
CHAPTER ".

Physical exhaustion will finally tell,
even over such handicaps as a noun
tain feather bed and the fumes of a
backwoods cabin.
If 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 w~akefulness
1t may have lasted minutes or hours.
but suddenly she reused again with a
start from a new nightmare and lay
trembling under the oppression of a
poignant foreboding. What was 1t that
she had subconsciously heard or mag
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-there clattered and beat past
the front Of the cabin a staccato thun-
der Of wildly galloping hoofs and a
rattle of scattered rocks. She felt an
uncanny freezing of her marrow
Horses travel perilous and broken
roads in that fashion only when their
riders are in wild haste.
AS abruptly as the drumbeat had
come 1t died again into silence. and
there was no diminuendo of hoofbeats
receding into distance. The thing was
weird and ghostly. She had not no.
ticed in the WEAKNESS of her arrival at
the cabin that the road ran deep in
sand to the corner of the fence and
that after fifty yards of rough and
broken rock it fell away again into an
other sound-muffling stretch. She
knew only that she was thoroughly
frightened, and that whatever the
noise was, it proclaimed hot and des.
perate haste.
Yet even in her terror she had
moved only to turn her head and had
opened her eyes cautiously and mar
rowly.
There was no sound in the cabin
now; not even the stertorous breath oil
a snore. The fire fickered family and
occasionally sent up from its white
bed of ashes a dying squirt, before
which the darkness fell back a little
for the moment.
She could see that Fletch McNasf
had half risen in his bed. His heat
was partly turned in an attitude O
intent listening. and his pose was al
rigid as that of a bird-dog frozen on {
point. 1t had all been momentary, ant
as Juanita gazed she saw other fig
ures stir %uneasily, though no on,
spoke. The missionary lay still. blu
the woman's hgure moved restlessl.
beneath the heaped-up comforter.
So, for a few moments. the strang,
and tense tableau held. and the girl
watching the householder's alert ye
motionless pose, remembered him a
, he had hunched drunkenly over hi
plate a 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 rifle.
Still there was no word, but the elt
est boys head had risen from tn
pallet.
Keyed now to concert pitch. the gil
held her body rigid. and through hal
closed lids lool ed across the dir
room. While sh, was SO staring an
= pretending to sleep, there drifted fror
. a long way off an insistent, anima
like yell with a peculiar quayer in II
final note. She did not know that
a was the famous McBriar rallying or,
! and that trouble Inevitably followe