Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1920-02-20

'front.' They stood u the sparse shade
of big tree, their eyes sweeping the
| ground beneath their feet and rising
to meet each others gaze with swift
intelligence and swifter understand
ing. Here was great reading, the
anti-climax of suspense, the pregnant
moment of final premonition. The
three elephants had come together,
they had milled beneath this tree, they
were even now Individually beneath the
next they had encountered-for when
q feeding elephant walks in a circle
for no apparent reason it is because
his thoughts are entirely fixed on TAX
ing his monday nap promptly.
The tracker stood unbelievably
erect, heels off the ground 1t was as
though by an effort of will he had sus-
pended himself IN air, so still was he.
so wholly was his body consecrated to
the act of listening. Suddenly his
wide n0strils luiyered with a visible
! futtering and distended till their out
er rims showed white. A look of
sensual and ineffable content spread
over his face as he drew down into
his lungs that breath of tainted breeze.
He smelled the prey; the wind was
right.
Presently Andrea caught the odor
and her whole body trembled as from
an overmastering physical contact.
This smell was unlike all others; the
mind gave 1t color and substance 1t
crept through the forest like dark
cloud, an ominous warning to all frail
creatures to get out of the way. She
felt suddenly cold and glanced over
her shoulder with half-formed notion
of retreat; then her eyes fell on
M'sungo and she forgot all else in an
absorption that was above fear.
He had become filed with an es-
sence of youth, as though years of life
had rushed from past and future to fill
to overlooking the cup of this one
transcendent moment. His face was
tense but alight and his ordinarily
gray eyes had attained to ain unfathOm-
able blue that seemed to deny meas
ure to the depth of his emotion. His
thin lips were drawn in the crooked
] line of fixed Smile-sa smile that
struggled on the verge aof an infinite
solemnity. When he moved he gave
an indefinite impression of disem-
bodied action as if spirit alone passed
on, leaving flesh behind. Like black
monitor the tracker went before him.
Andrea was suddenly aware that
Msungo carried the big gun. Its dead
weight of eleven pounds lay in his
hands lightly as though it also were
sustained by spiritual force. She had
not seen him take ii and there was
something ghostly in the mere fact of
his possession of it. Her mind was in
a turmoil; she knew that upon the
taking over of the big gun had hung
some vital instruction to herself but in
| that primal moment of suspense mem
DRY was an agonizing blank and moth
ling more. She followed blindly in the
cautiously pausing footsteps of the
single gunbearer that crept before her,
close on the heels of his master.
Infinity seemed to come and go be-
fore they had advanced twenty PAGES.
She came to the bare trunk of a big
| tree whose top had been felled by
lightning and at that moment M'sungo
j looked back, a terrible frown on his
j face. Without taking her eyes from
his she leaned against the stump of
/ the tree and put her arms around it.
Memory came to her. She remembered
what he had told her to do. She
/ Rugged the tree in a great relief while
her eyes still followed the white man
and the two black shadows that he
seemed to throw, one before, one be-
hind.
Suddenly the tracker paused with an
unmistakable finality. His hands went
up In On even, swift gesture Of warn
ing. His body sank gradually lower
and lower till it stretched flat and still
as log at the side of the narrow
trail. With Iong-studied, cautious
movements the white man passed over
| him and stood erect, at once steady
and quivering, as heat waves culver
steadily in the air arising from
4 parched soil.
Not forty PAGES from where Andrea.
Rugged her protecting trunk and
scarcely twenty in advance of M'sungo,
the domes of two trees topped the
even mass of the saplings about them.
Into the shadows beneath these trees
he was peering with an intensity that
communicated itself to Andrea. She
too stared desperately as though by
an effort she might send light into
darkness with her gaze.
Presently she was rewarded; three
shadows within the shadow slowly
took form. Once seen, they advanced
in distinction until they stood out to
vision as does the Coal Pit on starry,
moonless night. They were three