The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, May 19, 1901, Page 6

THE SUNDAY CALL INGSTON, N. M., May 9—"“Law- rence Mills,” who gets his stately name from the fact that he once patched the seat of his trousers with a section of a flour sack bearing that legend, astonished this camp Jast week by nearly dying of water. The of Lawrence Mills would d no particular surprise to it probable that it would {verse comment. But his would have been a shock. death merely bave occasi Kingston, nor is occasion muc not been overpopular uble in the Dutchman’s ago, when he hel@ five two- spots in a little game of stud—four turned up and one in the hole, which he did not expect to have turned for him. Kingston then said that Lawrence was lucky he scame out of the boro end of Mineral Gulch last week two jumps and a scramble ahead of & cloudburst this camp would have voted to was so evidently a di- Joon a month wh t Lawrence was wanted in the heavenly choir had he not saved “The with him. But the way in ught out “The Pretty Girl” on his off lead mule has squared him with Kingston, the loss of four mules and his ore wagon helping along his balance in the judgment of the camp. They certain- }y were as nifty mules as ever looked The Pretty Girl” came up to this camp by the way of the Lake Valley stage two months ago. Back East her name is Miss She writes things that Kingston is short on Mtera- so we knew nothing about “The 17 till she came to us, sitting i1l Orchara on the top of the he team Bill lashes didn’t hear e single profane yip out of him during that arive, which was certainly depress- ing to honest horses. But the camp was proud of Bill. The camp feels now that §t can lay right back on B. Orchard in émergencies that require polish, some- ghing never before dreamed of. Inside the stage was Senora Finnegan, gmoking the pipe left her by the late la- mented Finnegan when he went home to g rest, accompanied by the report he marshal’s revolver. Her name used Frandesca Torriende before Finne- ¢ her. “The Pretty Girl” had picked Finnegan back at Lake Valley. ng to give the Mexican a good scter as lady’s maid, but objects to cooking, as the senora will drop ette ashes in the pancakes. was from Senora Finnegan that ngston learned how “The Pretty Girl” pped into their camp. She said “The 1t Girl” was in search of “Jocal She surely needed it when she % Kingston, for she was pale a whole Writing is certainly unhealthy. tty Girl” caused a lot of ex- We all met in the Dutchman’s ly and Gecided the camp could reception committee. Frances Sanford. get printed. ture stage. s & ut we held that our hand was good nough. French Charlie had the style we were all plenty willing He said the lady needed rts of home, so we fixed up some rooms for her in the First Na- oral Bank. Kingston has not needed a yank since silver fell and busted the p. But the First National Bank is certginly a swell place, with Mexican onyx Henders had been killing : back yard when he peddled 2mp, and the coyotes howl ights. But we cleaned d a first class house- for her, making selections hundred empty houses, whose could not afford to on to the und the bank up and rust departing resi their stuff. ts pack out “The Pretty Girl's” gratitude resulted in the incident in the gulch last week. She just about beamed over when we spread ourselves for her like a self-respecting camp and decided she could get better accusinted if she corraled us all in the bank for a reception. That girl was an ornament to any camp, but she did not frealize how much it meant to us. Her- had been making us sick with the had sawed off on us about a arm they had over in that measly So we sent over to Hermosa to tell them to bring their &pectacled girl over to our reception. It was just too they were going to cave with when they shaped their school- m female up against our thorough- wrence Mills came in on ice. “The Pretty Girl” said she could not hold a re- ception legally without icecream. Mills he up and said he could have a whole lot @f ice sent up from Paso to Lake Valley, #nd he would go down in his ore wagon and pack it back with him. “The Pretty Girl” said she’d go, too, as she had some t down there which had splendor in them, the same being necessary to sort cut for the reception. We all told her about the ore wagon being shy on springs and offered to have Lawrence pack the whole outfit up to i i, i / ‘l/, it 4 her. But she said she just had to make the deal herself. The reception committee that night ar- gued that we ought to hang Lawrence an hour or two and send French Charlie in- stead, but the Girl would not hear of it. She said that Lawrence Mills had most local color. He was a fair-skinned man and burned redder that the rest of us. He was sure a burning shame to King- ston and as ignorant as a burro. The very first Sunday, when “The Pret- ty Girl” organized a Sunday-school in the Dutchman’s, Lawrence disgraced us ter- ribly. ‘Mr. Mills,” s “who killed Abel?” “You must excuse me, Miss,” says that old hold-up. “I'm & sort of stranger in this camp.” In spite of all this “The Pretty Girl” started off with old Lawrence in his ore wagon. He had put on six mules to make a pretty trip, and we had chipped in a couple of dozen jackets to fix a comfort- able nest for the Girl in the body of the wagon. Some of us boys rode nearly to Mineral Gulch with them. Had we had real good sense we should have seen them through the gulch, and the Girl would have had no such close shave. Kingston is up among the Southern Rockies. Mineral Creek comes down through the camp from between Bullion Peak and Old Kentuck. It is a whole lot of a stream up with us, but it peters out when it hits the sands. After trailing across the sands fifteen miles it enters Mineral Gulch just a sort of dribble. Mineral Guich is a slit in a big rock bute. It is hardly wide enough for a ‘wagon to pull along the sandy bed of the creek. Now and then there are big chunks of rocks spraddled around and sharp turns about jagged corners. The sides are of smooth rocks that a cat is “The Pretty Girl,” / not going to climb, and they go straight up 300 or 400 feet. The gulch is a mile and a half long and it takes an ore wagon llke Iawrence Mills’ outfit nearly two hours to get through. But there is no way around or over. The little old stream is not ten inches deep anywhere, but the sand 1s soft and the rocks are pretty large now and then to be bumped over. Once in a while a cloud bursts up between Bullion and Old Kentuck. You do not know any- thing about the cloudburst down in Min- eral Gulch, with the slit of sky above as blue as ever. But in a couple of hours there is twenty feet of water boiling through the gulch from wall to wall, tear- ing ten ton chunks out of the cliff. That is how the loose bowlders come to be ly- ing around. ‘When they got well within the shadow of that canyon conversation languished a lot. It is not that Lawrence Mills thought much about it, having been through there, drunk and sober, till he became reconciled to plodding along, knowing there was no kuery Pie jT ANS KINNOW, the portrait painter r—h of Munich, is dead. The doctor who made the a of a bro grief and anxiety, but Hans’ friends knew 211 the t at it wasn't so. They main- tained that his brush and palette had killed him, and a discovery made in the deceased artist’s rooms see: their surmise, queer as it i Hidden away on the uppermost shelf of & disused closet was found a portrait of Hans Kinnow, which, according the @ats on the frame, wa December last. It a self-portrait— Kinnow had painted it from the reflection of his face in a mirror. And thus the curse that attached to all his work had come true once more and for the last time. A customer of his own, be died like all his customers have died, efter he finished painting their likeness. Here is the weird story. If any budding genius of the Robert Louis Stevenson kind reads it he had better make a note of it, for “properly worked” up and elaborated it would furnish material for one of the most thrilling novels or the most blood- curdling dramas written since “Dr. Jekyll end Mr. Hyde” saw the light. “I first met Hans Kinnow some ten n heart, s to bear out to one some time in” ture From vears ago'at the Munich Painters’ Acad- emy,” said Herr Freidrich Seeger. “We were both poor boys then and the bohem- janism of penury and enthu m cement- ed a hearty friendship between us that death alone could sever. “Kinnow's decided talent for coloring was equal to his diligence. He was one of the hardest work in his class and his progress remarkable, but, like other poor artists, he had to take to por- traiture as a means for making a living when he got through with his studies. “But even in this makeshift vocation, adopted solely to pave the way to better things, Kinnow's genius shone forth From painting his landlady o A threatening board bill, and wipe out from winning money and laurels among bakers, butchers ung artist rose to the g opders from ladles ion and of gentlemen who had achieved high honors in the service of the state, of science and of literature. “For a time Munich art circles were alive with the gossip of Kinnow's success. The Minister of Culture had pronounced his color disposition ‘remarkable,’ several of the older masters had spoken encourag- ingly of his attention to detail. Earliest of His Victims. “About two years ago I began to notice in Kinnow's studio sketches and half- finished portraits of persons who, being parvenu house-owners, 1 brewers, th way out of it excepting at the end. He went right alosg telling The Pretty Girl about two of his wives back East and how superior she was to both of them and that he would never, no, never, flee from her. But the Girl shivered ‘at the som- berness of the place and forgot all about the local color, though Lawrence was painting pretty thick, They had rot well into the gulch, so there was no turning, before Lawrence noticed the cows. The air was chilly, though it had been blazing hot out on the mesa. The slanting sun came a’ few feet down on the western wall, but all the rest was deep shadow. On the patch of lighted wall the Girl could see the shadow of a buzzard trail- ing along, “What's that big bird doing there?” the Girl asked. “That’s a ole buzzard, and he's loafing around, to git his beak into something that's good and dead,” explained Law- rence, anxious to show his wisdom. The camp should have sure dealt this hand to French Charlie, who is the only THRILLING RIDE ro= LIEFE °F & MULETEER awe a WOMAN . COMPANION THROUGEH & NEW MERICAN CANON , A WALL or WATER PURSUVING THERM real cultured man iIn the Territory and would make no such breaks as that to a beautiful and innocent maiden. Just then Lawrence noticed some cows around the bend of the cliff. There is no grass growing in that gulch, the same needing sun. But the cows come down there to drink and to cool their feet and to dcdge the flies, The wagon creaked up on a bunch of longhorns with calves. The way the cows were hustling their children out of that canyon was enough to explain the situation to a tenderfoot. They were pushing them and butting them and talking strenuous to them, as if they expected death in the family. “Good Gawd!" muttered- Lawrence, staring after the cows as they got their calves headed dowgythe canyon on the Jump. 3 . “What's the matfer, Mr. Mills?"’ asked the girl, getting up out of the blankets. She could not have guessed what Law- rence knew, but she caught the terror in his tone. . “Oh, she ain’t nothin’, miss,” said Law- rence quickly. “I'm sorry I spoke.” ®He pulled up his mules, who were begin- ning to splash the water uneasily with their hoofs, and jumped out. He laid his ear on a sand bar and listened a fow sec- onds. When he scrambled up, dripping, there was no local color left in Lawrence Mills. “My Gawd!” he blurted out. “To think it had tp be you! Now, if it had been old Stampede or some other ole ¢imarroon who ought to die, I'd not kick. But you! “Gawa!” The girl was now standing in the wagon. Her face had gone a bit white, but Her eyes and her-voice were steady. “Tell me the truth at once,” Mr. Mills,” she demanded. “Well, it's a cloudburst, ma'am,” he said. Then he ran to the lead mules and began unfastening the traces, “\Vh%t's a cloudburst?”’ she defhanded again. “It means that in less than ten minutes there’ll be twenty feet of water just a- hootin’ through this place!” he said quiet-~ ly. “Nothing that gits on the track has a white chip’s show. But don't you worry none, ma'am.” I'll ride you out of here a- flying.” To the ears of the startled girl there came a low murmur. Even in the few seconds she listened the murmur grew to a'roar. The buzzard sank languidly down into the shadow around them. The girl leaped from the wagon into the water. “Loose the other mules!” she cried, for the roar was now baginning to be echoed by the walls of the gulch. Lawrence paid no attention te her appeal. He knew something about the gait a cloudburst travels whenr it is hemmed in narrow bounds. ‘ “No foolishness, now!” he yelled. “Can you all ride?” “Oh, yes,” shouted the girl. “I can rid “Then up you go,” sald Lawrence, and he tossed her on one of the free mules. He gave the hames a shake and a rattle. “They’ll hold,” he said curtly. “Never mind no reins. Grab those hames and hold on like hell to a sinner. No lady- like foolishness now. You ride like a man rides.” He grabbed the chain traces, twisted them around her feet as she sat astride and fastened them deftly to the hames. “Now you're organized to ride! Don’t be scared about falling off none.” He swung himself! on the other free mule, slashed at them both with his black- snake whip and they tore down the bed of the creek, leaving four fruntic mules plunging and squealing in the harness be- hind them. As their mules jumped away they heard behind them the boom of great waters as the cloudburst swished into the gulch, a couple of hundred yards behind them. “Don’t look back!” yelled Lawrence, but the girl had seen. Her hat went off, her hair fell down and she half turned with a woman's instinct toward disar- ranged back hair. She saw what seemed to be a dirty gray dam sweeping swiftly toward them. For weeks the bed of much of the stream had been dry. The first rush of the flood had rolled before it great rocks, logs, bushes and leaves, pinons torn up by the roots bristling in front of that swiftly advanec- ing wall. Once that reached them, and they, too, would be twisted into the mass. Behind this wall came a flood of turbid ‘water, angry at being held in leash. The canyon was full of the din of the water. It churned and boiled, rumbled and roared, swirling in a hundred eddies, a single glimpse of which made the girl reel dizzily, but she gripped hard the project- ing ends of the hames, braced against the chains, and she clung on somehow. Above the din of the water she heard the shouts of Lawrence, as he lashed at hér mule with his whip. There was no holding up their mounts in such a mad race. A single stumble on the joose shin- gle, a single trip in the sand, and that roaring wall would have been on them. They cut ground sharp curves, barely grazing jagged rocks. They leaped over boulders without pausing to pick their way. Sometimes Lawrence's whip struck her, but she did not feel the lash. She had shut her eyes, and was clinging. “She sald her prayers, I reckon,” said Lawrence, reverently, in telling about it to the camp. “Which same shore saved you all,” de- clared Old Man Henders. “Cert,” admitted Lawrence, simply. “T don’t get no action on up above, but that girl wins out with her little ole prayer. I wouldn’t have taken the small end of a thousand to one, while we were chasing down them rocks with the water a couple of jumps behind.” Suddenly the girl opened her eyes. She felt her mule beginning to scramble up. “We wins! We wins!” Lawrence was shouting in her ear, while he plied the blacksnake with new vigor. The towering cliffs had broadened into steep hills, up which the mules were scrambling. Just below them the flood ‘was sweeping by, howling in disappointed rage. Lawrence untwisted the chains about ‘her feet and lifted her from her trembling mule. She sank to the ground and began to cry. ) ““Oh, don’t do that there,” Lawrence said, the excitement dying out of his face and leaving it full of trouble. ‘“What's the good of crying, miss, when we all win a plenty?” ¢ But she still sobbed hysterically. Law- Tence sat down beside her and began pat- ting her hand. Her eyes again wandered to the flood swirling by so dizzily. She saw the sheetiron roof of a ranch go by. Then she noticed an ore wagon, turning over and over. In the brown ruck of the flood she caught a glimpse of animals, the hoofs of a mule, or the head rising, then boiling out of sight again. “Thank God!” she whispered, taking Lawrence's big hand in both of her little ones. “Blamed if I don’t believe she aimed to kiss me,” said Lawrence, in relating it. “You're a liar!” said French Charlie promptly. “There ain’t no known ecir- cumstances when a girl aims to kiss an ole hold-up what shaves once a month.” ANDREW McKENZIE. his Manp's Brusl]'Brouglyt-Deatly to His fl\odel in moderate or even poor circumstances, could not afford to pay his price for paint- ing their likeness. There were pictures of bedridden people, beggars, and littls delicate babies, all remarkable for an as- pect of suffering on their countenances. 1 asked Kinnow what he meant by throw- ing away his time on such subjects. He seemed not to like the question, but finally said he painted these people because they interested him and because he was trying on them some new method of color com- bination. “Meeting him a few days later he toid me excitedly that one of his models, a mendicant of 50 or 60, had died that morn- ing, and when I refused to see anything extraordinary in this he added: ‘But Marie is dead also,’ “*‘Who is Marie?" ““The baby with the waxen face and soulful blue eyes, whose portrait you ad- mired so much the othsr day.’ *“ ‘I believe you told me that her mother was a consumptive.’ ““Maybe I did, but she dled only twe months after I finished her likeness, The same happened to Father Martin, the poor beggar man with the remarkable head of gray locks, that hangs over my writing desk.” “He concelved that in some way he was responsible for their death and nothing would do but to start in and investigate the records of other rersons who had given him sittings. And, unfortunately, the further he got in his examinations Qommitied Suicide by Painting His Own Portratt. the more convinced id he beconte that his brush was fatal to all whom it com- memorated. The landladv, for instance, a young woman in excellent health, with several children, who allowed him to pay off his debt in canvas and colors, had died suddenly from pneumonia after he had moved from the house. “Kinnow's head was swimming, ~THb beggar, the baby, the iandlady, the boss butcher—all died within a short time after sitting for him. His brush had been to them like an executioner's ax. ‘“‘As he was going home one afternoon to rest and think he passed the small rococo palace where Fraulein Dina 8., the ballet dancer, lived. Kinnow had sent her portrait from his studio to the annual picture show only a few days be- fore. When he came within a hundred paces of the house he tried to look away, but his eyes Involuntarily turned upon the gate. On it was an enormous crepe bow and in the house all curtains were drawng Sequence of Deaths. “Kinnow was half crazed with con- scientious scruples and remorse when he rushed into my studio to tell the story. His heart was beating like a sledgeham- mer, he cursed his ‘death-breeding’ art, and T myself was %0 surprised by the ar- ray of undeniable facts that I had no words to dispel his melancholy conclu- sions. “Well, we went to work the same night and found everything as reported. Kin- pow’s assurances that the five persons were apparently in good health when they sat for him were corroborated by the family and friends of the deceased, and all had died rather suddenly some time after their portraits had been fin- ished. There was no gainsaying that, but where the causative connection be- tween the act of painting and death came in was a mystery. “Though I still continued to hold up to ridicule the idea of the thing, a feeling of horror crept over me when a few Jdays ter I read in the Nachrichten that Lieu- nant Count D—hot had broken his neck on the racetrack, for the Count was one of Kinnow's latest customers. Being out of town for a couple of days the young artist was spared this plece of dis- tressing news. I was rejolcing over the fact when Munich society received a se- vere shock by the announcement that Dr. L:, a well-known art connoisseur and col- lector, had been run over and killed by an electric car. “‘I am the painter of death,” he said: ‘the death-bringing painter. ©On his wand- erings through the world the king of ter- rors stops at Munich every little while, and by mysterious strategem compels his victims, marked for early demise, to go to my studio and arrange to have their portrait taken. There must be some cabal- istic conneftion between death and my- self, but I won't act as his messenger any more. It would be criminal in me to ac- cept further orders for portraits or to hire models for my studios. They must all die, and I cahnot go on playing at murder.” “He was downcast, somber, despalsing of himself and the world, tortured by fears of hearing of another victim. His morbid apprehension was so overpowering as to actually keep him from opening a newspaper. It might contain an item about the sudden death of one of his cus- tomers or models. Death of Sweetheart. ‘“When next I saw Kinnow he was head over heels in love with a young seam- stress who lived in the rear of the apart- ment house where his studio was located. ’.l;hls ‘gh'l ‘was always sitting at a window that looked out his own. Thus théir acquaintance m:.'&e.a Soon they be- came more Intimate. . One day when L went to his rooms she was sitting for her portrait. ‘“Last November she died, and Kinnow was convinced that he, not any disease or complication of diseases, was responsible for her death. “Here is the letter he left about the sad affair: ‘“ ‘Gretchen was lying on the battleflell of life when I pounced upon her—I, the raven, who had already tasted so much blood. I sat on the breast of the dying girl, my neck stretched, beak pointed toward her beautiful eyes—those eyes that were her joy, her pride. “¢“Give me one more hour, only one hour,” begged Gretchen. “% 41 will not,” croaked I, raising my beak. . ““Then a nameless pain shot through Gretchen’s poor head—a pain much more intense than that which her wasting lungs had caused her. Blood ran from the hol- lows of her eyes, darkness enveloped her —the obscurity of death.’ , “Kinnow was little seen after the death of his intended. Conneisseurs and art dealers who had given him orders for work waited in vain for their pictures. The last months of his life he seems to have spent in painting his own portrait, ‘““After it was done he daubed it over. Then lay down and died.” Herr Seeger will restore Hans Kinnow's portrait. .He says it's a masterpiece—the best he ever painted.—Chicago Sunday Tribune.