The Mena weekly star., 1921-03-31
CHAPTER [.
ny DAVID ANDERsoR
The Iron.Gray.Woman.


 young man stood on the after keck of a small and very dingy house boat filing q fish spear. Riding at the end of storm-blackened rope strung from q cleat at the bow to tree on shore, the boat rose and fell with the pulse of the river, lazy and languld nnder 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 E fheir will upon him. But there are fsrces that grave deeper than wind md weather. Youth can hold wind snd weather at bay. It is poweriess against those other forces-those in uer forces that grave the soul. Under I the chafe of them his face had become the face of a man who had looked upon life and found it not to his Iik- ing. His eyes held the keen, quick hardness that comes to eyes that se. only life's sterner side.
 The Pearlhunter. they called hiHI the river men. not that he had founl his pearl, possibly because he had not found 1t. 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 talned entrance fore and aft and single small window on each side, The man suddenly stopped filing the fish spear and glanced with quick anxiety toward this cabin. woman was coughing. He crossed the narrow deck at a stride, showed aside the soiled and rumpled curtain and entered. A dark, iron-gray woman sat bumped forward in rickety old rockingchair by the window on the shore side. As If con scious of his inability to help, possibly calioused by long familiarity with sim far scenes, he stood looking down upon her. with no expression of sym psthy other than vince of pity in his eyes.
 She straightened after time, and lay back against the bed quilt spread in the chair, spent and qulyering. the trembling shell of what had once been 6 very beautiful woman. The man crossed the cabin. dipped up tinful of water out of bucket by the cook stove and offered 1t to her. She waved 1t away.
 Its so warm and tiatl It has been long from the spring"
 Without word he set the cup hack 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 q 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 It's 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 its waters down a little sul- phur-stained gutter into the pool--who has not heard of itf Not to have drunk of its waters was considered misfortune in ine fiatwoods, just as in ancient Greece it was considered a calamity to die without having seen he statue of 0lympian zeus.
 
 Fallen Rock Is the highest front of naked stone 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 tweHty miles farther on.
 When the man returned to the houseboat the Iron-Gray-W Woman 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 cssgh that wasted her breast seemed pewerless to dim their luster.
 The man crossed the cabin and laid Als hand on the rumpled curtain over tne- doorway. about to return to DIS