Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1920-11-26
CHAPTER /.
The Iron-Gray-Woman.


A young man stood on the after
deck of a small and very dingy house
boat filing a fish spear. Riding at the
end Of a storm-blackened rope strung
from a cleat at the bow to a 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 OF
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. 1t is powerless
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 it not to his lik-
ing. His eyes held the keen, quick
hardness that comes to 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 q kind of cabin, with cur
tanned 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 soiled and
rumpled curtain and entered. A dark,
fron-gray woman sat bumped forward
in a rickety old rockingham by the
window on the shore side. AS If con-
scious of his inability to help, possibly
calloused by long familiarity with SIM
aIar scenes, he stood looking down
upon her, with no expression of SYM
pathy other than a vince Of pity in
his eyes.
She Strengthened after a time, and
say back against the bed quilt spread
In the chair, spent and quivering, the
trembling shell of what had once been
a very beautiful woman. The man
crossed the cabin, dipped up a tinful
of water out of a bucket by the cook
stove and offered it to her. She
waved it away.
"It's so warm-and fiat! 1t has
been long from the Springw
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 its base?
And the spring Sreaking out from I'M
der the shale lodges Of the cliff near
the west end of the old cabin and
trickling it's waters down little sui
phur-stained gutter into the pool-who
has not heard Of it? Not to have
drunk of its waters was considered q
misfortune In the Flatwoods, just as
In ancient Greece it was considered
a calamity to die without having seen
the statue of Olympian Xeus!
Fallen Rock is the highest front of
naked Gtone along the Wabash. At
the present day seven towns can be
seen from its 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-Gray-Woman still
lay back in the shaky rocking chair.
Dipping the battered cup full of fresh
water, the MAO 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 Iuster.
The man crossed the cabin and laid