The Little River news., 1920-11-24
cHAPTE ER |.
The ron.C,rav-Woman.


 end of a torm-blackened rope strung from cleat at the bow to tree on shore, the boat rose and fell with the pulse of the river, lazy and languid under the beat of the hot afternoon sun.
 He was so tall, with such spread of shoulder, that he seemed out or place upon so small deck. Wind season and weather wear had worked their will upon him. But there are forces that grave deeper than wind and weather. Youth can hold wind and weather at bay. It is poWefless against those other forces-those in- ner forces that grave the soul. Under the chafe of them his face had become the face of a man who had looked upon life and found 1t not to his Hk- ing. His eyes held the keen, quick hardness that comes Co eyes that see only life's sterner side.
 The Pearlhunter, they called him, the river men, not that he had found his pearl, possibly because he had not found it. Failure names men, as well as success, in the wilderness. The space between the fore and after decks of the housebOat was occu- pied by kind of cabin, with cur tained entrance fore and aft and a single small window on each side. The man suddenly stopped filing the fish spear. and glanced with quick anxiety toward this cabin. A woman was coughing. He crossed the narrow deck at a stride, showed aside the sofled and rumpled curtain and entered. A dark. iron-gray woman sat bumped forward in a rickety old rockingchair by the window on the shore side. As if con- scious of his inability to help. possibly calloused by long familiarity with sim liar scenes, he stood looking down ,uponehe with no expression of sym pathy other than vince of pity in his eyes.
 She strengthened after a time, and lay back against the bed quilt spread in the chair, spent and Quivering, the trembling shell of what had once been very beautiful woman, The man
 
 of water out of bucket by the cook stove and offered it to her. She waved 1t away.
 Its so warm-and fiat! II has been long from the spring"
 Without word he set the cup back on the bench, picked up the bucket, passed out to the front deck, crossed the narrow gangplank, and hurried away up the slope toward the cliffs that rose above the trees few rods back from the river shore.
 The spot was known the length of the Wabash, for who has not heard of Fallen Rock, with the broad, thin wa terfall pitching over the sharp-edged shelf between Its two breasts and lap ping the stone-strewn pool at it's base? And the spring breaking out from un- der the shale lodges of the cliff near the west end of the old cabin and trickling it's waters down a little sul phur-stained gutter into the pOol-who has not heard of it? Not to have drunk of its waters was considered a misfortune in the Flatwoods, just as in ancient Greece it was considered a calamity to die without having seen the statue of Olymbian Zeus.
 Fallen Rock is the highest front of naked stone along the Wabash. At the present day seven towns can be seen from it's summit; in the late for ties, two: Buckeye. mile up the river. and the City twenty miles farther on.
 When the man returned to the hOuseboat the Iron-G -GrayWoman still lay back in the shaky rocking chair Dipping the battered cup full of fresh water, the man stepped to her side.
 "Your cool drink, mother"
 The thin lids raised. The eyes she turned toward him must have been wonderfully beautiful in her day large and deep and lustrous. The cough that wasted her breast seemed pOwerless to dim their luster.
 The man crossed the cabin and laid his hand on the rumpled curtain over the doorway. about to return to his task of sharpening the fish spear.
 '1t looks cOol-and calm-up there"
 He paused ;N glanced back over his shoulder at her. and waited for her to go on. 9T s3
 "Is that aglog house see up there under the cliffs?" &a
 The floor of the hpuseboat creaked under the weight oe him as he came to the window. He hAd to stoop low to bring his eyes level with the open ing ~ @~sst eIa
 "A log house: old and empty.~ 1.-The lron-G Gray Woman oat musing moment, her eyes sStray among the trees nodding languidly in the serene June afternoon. w wna# sesssT wish f,might live again upon the shore. The sun beats down so hot npon the houseboat, and !. sraw weary. ef tho eternal throb of the rivss. If