The Seattle Star Newspaper, July 19, 1922, Page 11

SDNESDAY, JULY 19, 1922. From Yesterday) Ue geeture of hopelessness, hear anything from Creet./ “Guess it's all off," came at last, conditions up there?” Pieng ara iepariatendeat te Rg a "i é on the wire, Says to back wu pad. Ite even drifting tm the! everything to Tollifer, including the They've got two plows | plows, and give up the ghost.” mm ‘om keeping em open, “Give it upt’ Houston stared down at al Lake./ blankly at the telegrapber. “But ae up, they all right. | that's not ratiroading!” gi net, they'll run out of coal by to} “It tg when you're with a concern garrow morning and be worse than|that's all but broke,” answered the qauees. There's only about 100 tons/ operator, “It's cheaper for this old at Crestline, and tt takes fuel to feed | wooden axle outfit to quit than to go nem dabies. But so far— on fighting—" “Yer” “That mean six weeks eef thi “qhey're keeping things half way “De you OUR BOARDING HOUSE WEIGH AH You WEIGH AH TWo “TWwo~ HUNER’s AN TWENNY- FOAH PouNDS! Now We'LL TRY storm keep up two days longe: Walt a minute—" He bent) Ba’tiste broke in excitedly, “By to- “It's opened up. | morrow morning, ever’ snowshed, he Bight’s left Tollifer, The | will be bank ¢ull of anow, The track, dehind {t, and three more/he will be four inches In ice, Bix that. I guess they're going | week——this country, he can not stand run them through fm a/it! Tet him go on the telegraph! ‘They'll be all right, if they/ Tell him the cattle, he will starve! ealy get past Crestline. But if/ Peuff! No longer do I think of our don't" machinery! Kef it is los'—-we are ‘He rattled and banged at the key/ los’, But Jet eet go. Say to heem | for a long moment, cursing softly./ nothing of that. Say to heem that the dead “cluck” of & grounded | there are the cattle that will starve, 3 Bheeewes him. Houston turned | that in the stores there ts not enough Batiste. provision. That— af jooks bad.” “I know. I'l! call Denver, But I . But eet depen’—on the/don't know what chance there ts— gtrm. Bet come this way, Near’ ev’ | the road's been waiting for a chance Lay year the road Ue up—jto go into bankruptcy, anyway— he shrug: | since this new Carrow Potnt deal ts Bis shoulders, “that is what one/about thru, They haven't got any for living in « country where the | money—-you know that, Ba‘tiste, It's eet chase ectwolf all over the | cheaper for them to shut down for Before cet get here.” “ix weeks than to try to keep run- woukin't be any chance atining. That fifty thousand they lost b either, would there? They }on that snowplow just about put the of cut thru yet.” ertmp tn ‘em. It might cost a couple they w@' finish until) of hundred thousand more to Keep fs when they figure—"|the road open. What's the result? long way off.” It's easter to quit. But I'll try ‘em--"* jong,” agreed Ba'tiste, and} He turned to the key and hammer. again toward the telegrapher,|ed doggedly. Only soggy deadnoss okey over a spenking key./answered. He tested his plugs and ft could carry anything | tried again. In vain. An hour later, -— ‘a fragmentary message, life waa/he still was there, fighting for the! gre again, and the operator turned | impossible, striving to gain an an- mow-caked window, with !t#/swer from vacanc truggting to in- ar of whirling snow that) still life into « thing deadened by ice, ned to ome ever faster. * jand drifts, and wind, and broke: A are going to get bad Iniging telegraph poles. iry if this keeps up,” came gone! ain’ any too great tue Pi cca XIX. 10 nth dusk they remained in the ate right, I guess. If the ranch-|boxlike station, hoping against hope. Bget to it. But that's the/ But the whine and enari of the wind thie snow. It ain't like/were the only sounds that came to epring bluzard. It's dry | ther, the steady banking of the snow fall, and it’s sure drift-/against the windows the only evt up for four or five days:| dence of life, The telegraph tine, lucky to find the hay-|somewhere between Tabernacle and 3 the country which lay over the bleak, long time then, the three/now deadly range, was a shattered out the window, striv-/thing, with poles buried in drifts of food. gbout hay for the cattle?” for the sake of passing | with loose strands of wire ewinging fy the almost hidden /in the gusts of the bikerard, with tee ‘ef the little town, scarcely |coated upon the insulators, ang re ian & hundred yards away./ pair—until the sun should come and wire opened again, and|the snows melt—an almost impos. gp igs ra BeBe lena fouston wait “It'd take @ guy with « diving eult im to give some report. But/to find some of them wires, I guess,” we none. At inst: at Marionvilis, Other SUE cieccer $e: ice ease sho the shop. One engine/lobby and to watch with them the Mngering death of day tn a shroud He bent over the key.!o¢ white. Night brought no cesm- it white—tense. tion of the wind, no lessening of the Danks of snow which now were drift- wrong? The two meniing high against the first-story win- beside him now. dows: the door was only kept in oneeleven’s kicked over | working order through constant sal. les of the bent old boarding bouse keeper, with his snow «hovel. plow. They're wiring | Windows banged and rattled, with Crestline. The secondia muffied, eerie sound; anow sifted in the snowshed with } through the tinfest cracks, spraying ‘Ome of ‘em's dead. Thel upon those who sat near them, The @ minute, I have to/old cannon ball stove, crammed with ther." coal, reached the point where dull red except for the rattling | spots enlivened its bulging belly; yet ee broken, jagged. a clatter-!the big room was cold with nonde- We Of the distance, faint in the tectable drafts, the men shivered in Hwhine of the storm, yet! spite of their heavy elothing, and the aa it carried the news of | region outside the immediate radins | World—a world where the | of the beater was barn-like with frig- men knew that ali had|idity, Midnight came, and the group hell of wintry fury: | about the etove slept in their chairs, | forbidding moun | rather than undergo the discomfort now the abiding place of | and coldness of bed. ledge and the avalanche;| Morning brought no relief. The #trel and the highest invention counted for the biast of the wind | drifts waist high at the doorway with Of the tempest. Then | his first shoveling expedition of the from far away, @ strained | day. The telegrapher, at the froat the operator’ caked window, rubbed a spot with hia had gotten packed on the rails | hand and stared into the dimness of ‘One-sieven tried to keep On| the flying snow, toward his station. soo Dick and shovel gang. Got) “Guess I'll have to call for volun-| Be aah S curve just below Crest: |teors if T get in there today. We'll and went over. One-twelv have to tunnel” SF got the men up. The plow’s| Ba'tiste and Houston joined him. ashes to nothing. Fifty-three thou-| ‘The boxcar that served am a atation worth of junk now. | house—always an object of the heavy. here's Denver.” fest drifte—was buried! The bic! one of those agonizing | French-Canadian pulled at his beard. | facking to the two men whose! “Peuff! Ret is like the ground hog,” | largely on the hap-| he announced. “Ket is underground atop the range. Far on the | already.” site, fighting slowly upward,| “Yeh. But I've got to get im there. train containing flat-| The wire might be working.” Mlatcar joaded with the nec-| “So? We will help, Baree and) Materials of a large sawmill | Ba’teese. Come — we get the June was yet two months; shovels.” Bvt months are short when|’ Even that was work. The town i Work to do, when machinery | «imply had ceased to be; the stores Beinstalled, and when con-| were cloned, solitude was everywhere. Me waiting. Every day, every | They forced a window and eclimbed{ Svery minute counted now.|tnto the little merchandise establish. |ment, simply because it was easier i than striving to get in thru the door. 7S EMTURES ENE Twins SNUFFLES AIDS BABY ROBINS Bales! Dr. Bnuttiest’ éall-| “Never mind, madame,” aald Dr. to the kind ittle fairy |Snuffies. “I think 1 ean help you Ih who doctored all the crea |!" SIve you something that will it a {make your children have lovely soft 8 Outdoor Land. “Here's Mra. jfeathers in about thre f mad ree weeks’ time,” it, TN be down in a min-| Dr. Snuffie: High’ 7 . Snuffer call Se sdheallndits alled to Nick to bring 80 | him some milkweed and pokeberries. | These he squeezed and mixed to. h Mrs. Robin, how do you | gether. Then he handed Mra. Robin aid. “You don’t look a bit | a bottle with some instructions, Y | “Will that med “And irom” eneweres medicine really do any 007?" asked Ni sadly shakin, Ee Nancy when Mrs. gm Robin, haking her head. | Robin had gone. “1 th ; oa doctor, it's—It's, oh, « hought all baby ‘kicked over?” ~ Cl ~ 4 or robins were b #0 mortified! It's my new are and it took three weeks for thel “ Ree pests 3te my sew | or their feathers to grow. “That's right,” nodded Dr. Snut- Sree on inno of being |fles, “it dows. But in the meantime Mra, Robin won't be worrying her they're bare as door head off, and that thedicing won't hurt ‘em @ bit. There are tricks to| hey look awful. jall trades, my dear.” (To ie Continued) (Copyright, 1922, by Seattle Star) ea Then, artned with their shovels, they began thé work of tunneling to the station. Two hours later, the agent once more at his dead key, Ba'tiste turned to Houston “Bet is the no use here,” he an- nounced. “We must get to camp and assemble the men that are strong and willing to help. Then—" “Yea?” “Then, ect will bo the battle to |help those who are not fortunate There is death in this storm.” Again with their waist belt guide lines, they etarted forth, to bend against the storm in a struggle that was to last for hours; to lose their trail, to find it again, thru the strag gling poles that in the old days had carried telephone wires, and at last to reach the squat, snowed-in build ings of camp. There, Ba'tiste assem. bled the workmen in the bunk house. “There are greater things than this | now.” he announced. “We want the strong men—who will go back with us to Tabernacle, and who will be willing to help the countryside. Ah, out, eet is the danger that ts ahead How many of you will £0?” ‘One after another they reached for their snowshoes, silent men who act ed, rather than spoke. A few were left behind, to care for the camp in caso of emergencies, to keep the foofs as free from snow as possible and to avoid cave-ins. The rest filed outside, one by one, awkwardly test- ing the bindings of thelr snowshoes, and awaiting the command. At the doorway, Ba'tiste, his big hands fumbling, caught the paws of Gole mar, his wolf-dog, and raised the great, shaggy creature against hin ores pe anid in Kindly, indulgent fashion. “Het ‘s not for Golemar to Yep, ou! MAN + 1 You GUESSED \ TWENTY-TWO PoUNDS OF FAT SHY « You DIDNT ALLOW FOR HIS HEAD !« GET “TH SCALE BUS THE SEATTLE STAR BY AHERN 24 the “TH! GUM OUT OF YouR MOUTH Bus, AN! SPREAD Y'GELF ON “TH! SCALES ~ HA-HA MISGED'M BY ON} | Wweitty-Two Pourtp Vou'Ve GOT “TH! MAKINGS OF AN ICEMAN, ie, BROTHER | <H% ite 4 7 i aN La» HE MADE A GooD JOB OF “THAT, I'LL SAY A.A STRAWHAT DON'T MEAN alm i Ui }go with us. The drift, they are deep. | There is no crust on the snow, Gole- | {mar, he would sink above bis head Then blooey! There would be no Golemart" Guide lines were affixed. Once more, huddied, clumsy figures of white, one following the other, they made the grueling trip back to Tab- ernacle and the duties which they | knew lay before them, For already jthe reports were beginning to come in, brought by storm-weakened, blix zard-battered men, of houses where | the roofs hat crashed beneath the | weight of snow, of lost ranchmen, of bawling cattle, drifting before the | storm—to death. It was the begin-| ning of a two-weeks’ slege of a white inferno. Little time aid Barty Houston have for thought in those weeks. There were too many other things to crowd upon him; cold, horrible hours in blinding snow, or in the faint glare of ja ruddy sun which only broke thru the clouds that it might jeer at the stricken’ country beneath it, then fade again in the whipping gusts of wind and tte attendant clouds, giving way once more to the surging sweep of white and the howl of a freshened blizzard. | Telegraph poles reared only their cros-arms above the mammoth | drifts Haystacks became buried, lost things, ‘The trees of the forest, literally harnessed with snow, drop- | ped their branches like tired arms too weary to longer bear their burdens. | The whole world, it seemed, was one | great, bleak thing of dreary white & desert in which there was life only that there might be death, where the battle for existence continued only as | a matter of Inatinct (Continued Tomorrow.) OUR FIRST YEAR By a LXVI MY UNDERSTANDING O “put Jack, you know T can act!" Now that I had mentioned my bright idea about earning my own living, I bubbled over with aseur ance. “Don't you remem! 4 after ‘Skoal'? pe rou-7OU want to go on the stage my wife—on the stage—for a sal ary?’ Jack stammered. His expres: sion wan blank—as vague as his votce. His face betrayed neither din- approval nor appreciation, just be- \derment. : ie ould-—that's all I'm saying, ber the offer I PARTING Bride F JACK PREVENTS OUR jcontinued, “They cut ‘Skoal’ to one jact for vaudeville, And offered me |$100 @ week. Of course, I'd hate it, Jack, the separation, But since I'm |reaponsible for our predica | Jack interrupted with | sentence “You're not responsible. It's I! I'm no good!" he groaned, “You must | think me selfish to marry you—and not take care of you, as you want to| be, ought to be. You must think me a failure.” | His speech was like blow upon & tragic : THE BABY "Oh.0.0-0f Peggy's eyes were big and round as she listenéd, | .‘Did the Indians come and steal the baby on the little porch?” “More likely a cougar,” David guessed. But Mrs, Kahler wasn't telling | what the danger was yet. “I was busy as I told you,” she yald, “thinking the little fellow was perfectly safe, when sudden- ly I heard him scream—a terrible scream it was to come from a« baby only eight months old; I could hear in it terror and pain and baby rage. “And what I saw when T ran out to see about it was enough to have frozen the blood in my veins. “On the edge of the ditch was a great, gaunt mother pig, with eight or nine little pigs following after her, grunting and oofing! hungrily and—it turns me sick yet | to think of it, the sow had my precious baby’s tender lttle hand in her cruel mouth and was drag: ging him away. f “I picked up the broom which T had left standing tn the corner of | nela MEATS -BAKED GOODS - STAPLE GROCERIES THE MAIL HAS BEEN SO PAGE 11 BY STANLEY THE OLD HOME TOWN mT, AND COME RIGHT HOME-ATS APTER fg NINE OCLocK:! HEAVY OF LATE THAT THE POSTMASTER 1S SPENDING HIS EVENINGS STRAW HAT THEY HAVE THIS MAKES THE THIRD ONE I'VE HAD THIS "S SCREAM the porch and ran after the brute, deating her off as best 1 could; it seemed ages to me, that she ran; ages that I saw my baby being dragged along thru the dirt; ages that I suffered at the sight of the little hand crushed in the cruel mouth. “Beating and running, trying to call words of comfort to the baby, I ran, and at last the pig let the little hand drop, and ran away. “I snatched up the baby and him to me, saying the tender, foolish things mothers say to comfort their little ones, hold: ing him close, close, afraid, Oh! so afraid to look at the hand. “But Oh!}—" she sighed in relief at the memory, “it was not badly crushed, I soon had him asleep not much the worse for his peril." David looked thoughtful as he sald, “I've heard people say bables are sweet enough to eat; I won- der would the mother pig—would she have done a dreadful thing like that?” “Yes,” Mra. Kahler said, “and I should never have known what became of my baby.” SS enneeneeeereee He was explaining himself, not ac- cusing me, I wag thankful that I knew how to construe him, other: | wise we might have parted there. I went to him, drew his head | upon my breast, kissed him, but I} couldn't atop his words: | "You've tested me, Peggins! You've | shown me what a husband ought to do for n wife! And T haven't been | able to keep the pace! “At any other t have," 1 insisted ne, You would ‘3 the Unes " I|blow, Jack didn't mean to hurt me.! the business slump—* “No, Peggina! It's It “Or I!” IT murmured. “But Jack, honestly, I've only been doing w right |all the girls do, Why, darling! We|the rug. Jack wiped my eyes, kissed | them? haven't half as much as most of our friends—" A small accident ended our discus sion. Jack's distressing reaction to my suggestion that I go on the stage had made mo While we argued, I twisted my pearl necklace, The string snapped sud denly and the drops of congealed awfully nervous, | EVERETT TRUE BY CONDO Tee- HES — 1 SEE THERE'S A CEMETERY RIGHT ALONG THE HIGHWAY HERG, X GveEss THE IDEA IS To HAVE IT RIGHT HANDY FOR THE RECKLESS DRwers! SO You WANT TO COOK Out, Eveeerr! HAR - HAR - HaR It GET OUT AND ASK THE CARETAK To SHow You THE SPECIAL PLOT THey HAVS RGSERVED FoR BUM JOKE SMITHS ne THEY PLANT THEM THIRTY FGET *” BELOW THe FRost Cine eer moonlight dribbled thru my fingers | and rolled to the walls. |. We went down on our knees wet | find them and met at a corner of/ a half dozen you've lost, altogether.” “The string is getting too short,” I said, “But they're cheap things— you remember I paid only $25 for I'll have Barnick match jme, comforted me. We sat like two | them. If we can afford it!" children on the floor, Jack pulled a few bills out of his We had not been such understand: | pocket and less than one dollar in ing friends for days, Finally Jack | silver. | raised me to the davenport and we| hore's our pile—until next pay. ated the beads. day,” he laughed, “But I guess we Fake them to Barnick's,” Jack|can manage a few frosted beads suggested. “And have them strung | without breaking us.” properly this time, Two are miss- (To Be Continued) ing, as I count them. That makes! (Copyright, 1932, by Seattle Stax)