The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1918-07-18
"And leave the house?"

uAouIhAuiS, anu Wdlhcu lutO TIC OlucT
room-the one of the bottles.
poor old Spud ~ he said. "He set
great store by this house, and a more
comfortable one you couldn't find In
a days travel. Why, it was that warm
last winter when everybody was freez-
ing--for it gets mighty cold up here
roundabout New Years, even if it is
the desert.
HE used to sit In that big chair
yonder and smoke his pipe and say,
This hOuse-and that hole in the
ground back there-that's all I've
got. and that's all / want; and when
I'm gone, pard, they're yourn, for I've
got no kith or kin, either
"And when he died I had the pa
pers filed regular-but, pshaw! it
wouldn't pay to do any assessment
work. Spud worked at it long before
came, and nobody ever saw anything
he. got out of it. can't afford to hire
| the required work done, and I'd have
to lay off to do it myself-and I guess
I'll be laid Off soon enough without
that"
| "And then" breathed Genevieve.
"Then-weIl have to go somewhere
else"
Dad held on to his job just another
fortnight, and then the Kangaroo-X
| shut down altogether. Father and
daughter consoled each other the best
| they could, and set about packing their
| belongings together.
1t was no new experience to the
man. Well he recalled several pre-
vious occasions when he and the girls
mother-before Genevieve was old
enough to remember, yes, and before
she was born--turned the key In the
door behind them, leaving all their
possessions, excepting what they
could carry, and setting out for pas
lures new. Then, after the mother
died, he made these exoduses alone,
for the girl was always away at
school.
He didn't mind so much for him.
self, but Genevieve couldn't be kept
at school forever, even IL he could af-
ford it. Poor girl, she had worked
~ u W ldhc Tic UOlll6 uOuSc a
home for both Of them.
First he tried to get work over at
the Scrub-Bucket, but there were
twenty men for every job. He had
waited too long. There was moth
ing newer than Scrub ucket-Hill. So
he decided to go back to Tonopah,
where some Of the old mines were be-
ginning to pick up, and take a chance
Ut getting work there.
They were all ready to start for
the fiye-mile walk over to Beatty,
where they were to stay all night and
catch the train for Tonopah in the
morning.
The key had been turned in the
door, and Genevieve waited on the
porch.
How evenly the bottles were laid,
ends out, sometimes one, sometimes
the Observation-Disclosures the chinks
filed in with mud.
Spud seemed to have been partial
to brown bottles.
She was the red-eyed, red-nosed
Genevieve when Johnny came along
on the wagon.
"Movin', kid?" he said.
She nodded and turned her face to
the bottles, and burst out crying
afresh.
"Ah, nowi" said Johnny.
"Gee!" he said on the veranda, 81
wonder what the old geezer put in
those Notwithstanding his eye to
one of them and trying to look
through 1t into the deserted house.
Nothing" SMILED Genevieve.
you're another" ungallantly. re-
torted Johnny. There's something in
this one. 1t looks like sand. You can
see it when you look kinda sideways
at It,"
$50 there is in this" gulped Gene
We've, wiping her eyes to peer through
the one she was crying against.
But, Of course, she argued there had
to be sand in them, just like they put
sand in the tin cans they built Mother
Twins house out of.
But Johnny couldn't see it that way.
Tin cans needed something to hold
them out.
He took his pocket-knife and tried
to dig around the bottle so as to
loosen it and see for himself. But
the stuff it was caked in was as hard
as the bottle itself.
The walls of Genevieve's bottle
house were as solid as the walls OF
Jericho.
Still, even they fell. And Johnny,
putting the useless knife In his pocket,
picked up rock and smashed in the
bottom of the bottle!
His cries brought the girls father
from around the house-and he helped
the boy sort out the particles of gold
from the broken glass.
$50 poor old Spud," he sighed, nod
ding his head at handful of the
shining things" knew what he was
talking about. after all. Here he was
digging this stuff out of that hole back
there and storing it in these bottles.
/ guess we'll camp right here"
Saluting His Allies.
A bright-eyed little boy In sailor