The Topeka state journal., 1916-12-27
EVENING STORY
Kings Rest.
(By Eleanor Ramsey.)

the mountainside. Old King had lived |
in it for over thirty-five years.
Jean drew rein in front of it. She |
was dead tired with the long ride up
from Castle Crag. The captain had |
literally fallen in his tracks as soon as |
they had reached their own cabin and /
Jean had started out to forage Fresh |
water was the greatest need. with |
night coming on, and the river rumb- |
ling along somewhere out of sight |
down in the gulch.
King came out at her hail and
stared at her. 1t had been about a
year and ten months since he had |
seen a woman, at least a real, civil |
lied one like Jean. There was the In
dian half-breed woman who came up
the trail sometimes hunting herbs, but
no other. And here, just outside the
groomed and mounted, no mountain
type, but city-bred to her gloved fin
gertips.
I'm Jean Hartley" she said, cor
daily. Capt. Hartley's daughter.
We're your new neighbors down the
gulch, and we just got home Fathers
all tired out, but L m hunting a spring.
Do you know where there is one?"
Did he? Old King hustled into the
shack and got a couple of water pals
down from nails on the wall and
started ahead of her down the trail.
When they came to the break in the
underbrush he showed her how the
ground was all moist and green and
where the spring bubbled up out of
the rock back from the trail. Then
he carried the water for her clear
down to the cabin, and they found the
captain, genial and optimistic, ready
to talk his head off over prospects in
Lost Horse Gulch. King nodded his
head.
''Well, start out every morning for
the old shaft, and each day 1 think to
myself maybe I'll hit it right today.
Been doing that for thirty-fiye years.
but that don't rattle me a bit. The
COLDS here, and the days got to dawn
when some of us find it. That's ALL
Jean used to recall those words dur
ing the months that followed. Each
day the captain would start out for
his diggings, and often she saw old
King coming along the trail, hearty
and optimistic, swinging off his cap to
her.
Maybe it's today, Miss Jean,'' he'll
call. And Jean would smile and wave
her hand back She knew the mining
game. Hadn't she been up in a min
ing camp eighteen years before, high
in the Nevada mountains? F? Then the
captain had struck luck, and they had
gone east to live, the baby and the
slim young mother, back to the civil
ization where they belonged. And af-
ter years of comfort and surety the
two blows had fallen almost together,
the passing of jeans mother and the
crash of the captains fortune in rash
speculations.
But don't you mind, honey girl
he had said cheerily. Wen go back
to where it grows in the mountains
1t had not been hard to take up a
claim in Lost Horse Gulch region.
There had not been a strike there in
the memory of man, but the captain
had run across miner outward
lsfar n J,n t,Sz, I,oI
heard from him of the prospects
there. He had taken over his cabin
and belongings for a nominal sum and
they were fairly settled now, gold
hunters and rainbow chasers, as Jean
used to think sometimes. Once in a
while she wondered why Stanley had
never answered her letter, breaking
their engagement. 1t was right, she
felt after the financial crash not to
hold him, but she had thought he
might have answered. The surprising
part was that, as the months slipped
by, her own feelings toward him had
changed completely; there was only
left the regret that he had not faced
the issue with more manliness.
One morning old King stopped with
news. His face was aglow with eag-
erness.
-Davy's back home" he announced
Hes my boy, not by any blood ties
but 1 took him when he was a little
shaver after his paw died and brought
him up. He's been away to school.
mining school, or school of mines, and
he'll be home tomorrow. You folksll
like him.
But even that did not prepare Jean
for Davy as he was. She rode early
the next morning over to where the
captain was at work, and half way
down the trail she met him-tall.
brown eyed, bareheaded his shirt
open at the throat, with a tame gray
squirrel one shoulder and a dog at
his heels. He had walked down to the
main road, he said to get the mail
sack when the stage went by. And he
handed her a letter from Stanley. She
1 opened it and read it after the big,
brown eyed boy had gone on up to-
ward Kings Rest.
when began to miss you and re-
allied how lonely you must be / felt
/ like a dog not to have answered your
/ letter. but it staggered me at the time
! of course, and 1 admired you for your
stand. Now I've wakened up, Jean
] and by the time you get this I'll be
! on my way west to you, dear patient
brave little girl
That was part of it. Jean stood and
[ smiled thoughtfu1ly. Stanley could be
very quaint at times in his serene ego
ism
You know, honey girl the captain
said some days later, since that boy
Davy came back things seem to have
| frightened all up. He knows more
about the right way to get quick re-
suits than anybody I ever saw And
he says, too, the Indians have known
where the gold ran, but they wouldn't
tell. Seems like a fine boy
i Jean said nothing, but bent little
lower over her mending. Even a week
had taught her that the day was
brighter if Dave came down the trail
from Kings Rest.
He IL
| make Matatao smile. Her brown,
wrinkled face would crinkle up every
time she saw him, and her slow black
| eyes follow his figure lovingly. Once
she came upon them both, standing on
| the trail high above the timb Der line at
SIIndOWn Lookout Daxys