The evening world. Newspaper, August 2, 1916, Page 15

THE The story of « Kentue planted in a desert ow wen last to love as intense pire e uy CHAPTER X, Discoveries, NENT arose at dawn to re- @ume the work upon his ( J arrows. At @ o'clock he had feathered four, Half am bour later he had slain that same Wafrightened old grouse that Judith Bad pursued without avail. Despite the savage thoughts that had driven Bim forth, he knew he must cook this Meat before he could eat it. He epont considerable time in a fruitions search for his matches be- fore he finally thought of @ singular deposit of obsidian, over which he ‘bad passed on his way to this oasis, Reasoning that anything so hard @nd filnt-like would render up a spark at a stroke from tho steel of hie knife, he clambered up the steep @scent past tho ledge of rock and Over the table-land and down its farther declivity till he came to the Glittering belt of stuff from a piece of which he hoped to conjure fire, When at length Ghent came upon @ large rounded “button” of clear @bsidian he was forcibly struck by {te resemblance to a magnifying lens. As conversant as Judith had been with the functions of a burning- Glass, he tried excitedly to procure a focus of the sun's hot rays through this natural substance, so nearly formed for the purpose, but without results. He searched the place in a fever of @esire. Tho glare of it mocked him. The heat that was already rising made him dissy and faint. He began te suffer thirst again, especially at the memory of those houra of his tolling in these barren hills. With hig energies bent upon the task of finding a piece of thie stuff that Might be chipped to a lens, he sud- @enly remembered his watch, an old- fashioned timepiece bulging a pocket of hts trousers. In a wild impatience he pried up the crystal with the blado of his Wnife, and turning it quickly to tho @un, held hie hand below it and moved it up and down to find the foous. A great disk of light shone » Clear on hia skin till he drew it down emailer and smaller, until the rays all fell in a concentrated spot of brilliance ag emall as a freckle—and Ghent Bung hie band out, satisfactorily ‘burned, and shouted aloud in delight. ‘Wager for nothing but to hasten to camp, make a fire, and roast his Dreakfast, he determined he could reach his camp by a roundabout way iavolving less climbing of the slopes. ‘The route he chose was longer than be had imagined. It took him far @round the base of the table iand, end eo, at length, to an upper divi- ton of the great ravine in which tho epring had its rise. @ He recognized the fact that this was +@ branch of the larger canyon, and followed it down at a rapid pace till he came upon a great dike of por- phyry fully as large as a house, He walked beneath the shadow of this maas of rock, ooking up it in wonder UU he found himself halted at its pase WY an extraordinary epectacie. ' Hollowed in the bulk of the , awer- fing, cliff-like ledge was 4 blacke.ed cave or recess, fully ten feet deep, and quite as wide. On a rude sort of table made of rocks, against one of ite walls, inside, lay something that giittered in the ligat. Out on the gravel at the mouth of the cavern lay two of the most utterly gruesome objects John Ghent had ever beheld— the skeletons of a pair of human be- ings, bleached to dazzling whiteness in the glare, the skulls of both split i open. Pr. The men had ber. dead so ag that pe ething remained upon their waked bones—nothing save some etfi- Biles of thick-soled boots, now warped @nd shriveled to mere suggestions of what they once had been, He looked @bout the cavern inquiringly and Presently discovered @ third trait @keleton—that of a rife, Only the barrel, the lock and other fron furnishings remained as they moe had been fashic:2d, All the @tesl) was coated with rust. It was COMMANDMENT BY ANTHONY VERRALL an, turned primitive by ne NEW ky feud hatred trans- , where aman anda ity, come at is they had hated, ly ee 1 fat \oned mursie loading wea- ' be ramped ef whieh had wasted to op ef woody @bher, Whee Ghent took ¢ to bie hands the stock fell away and (he lock lay with bis attention, It was gold—e large wolden nugget, untarntohed, atti mockingly bright, and fashioned by nature with @ hole through ite mane, ae if 1. symbolized the eirele and the hollowness of life, He took up the nugget, but cast It down in, @ bitter smile playing on hte lps The quick, sharp scrutiny to which the cave waa subjected brought noth- ing further to Heht, About to leave, the visttor’s attention was caught by & round, dark object, hidden by the shadow of @ rough projection of stone, He stepped closer and found it was an old cantes atill covered with rotted felt, Kejotcing to find an article wo as ential to his needs against the day when he should make an attempt to eacape from the desert, Ghent started once more for his fort. With the rel of the rifle and the well- preserved canteen In his possession, ho went on his way down the bev h raving deeply sobered by what he had beheld, bee CHAPTER XI. The Savage Passion, : } OTrit spent that day in de. vising and fashioning means for the capture of game. She set to work on the cordage, The snare that she finally finished waa crude and useless, but, unaware of its deficien- cles, she carried it down to the thicket where quail must sometimes travel, and there she secured It between two clumps of shrubbery, trusting to cap. ture something soon. A noose to hang & rabbit eluded all the efforts of her mind, either at memory or in- vention, She nostponed its manufac- ture in favor of a rude sort of drop. Thoughts of the stout wicker car of the wrecked balloon had prompted her ingenuity in this simple craft, She went to the thickest growth of the willows, and breaking out an arm- ful of long, slender branches, took them to the shade and wove a large, flat mat, like @ section from the bot- tom of the basket left stranded on the desert. It was a atout plece of work, nearly three feet square when she had finished, She next provided a stiff piece of willow a foot in length with a long cord tied to its centre, and then, with a number of heavy stones that she readily gathered, she was ready to Proceed, What quail she had seen had been running about the harsh- lookine mountain bushes that grew above their greener neighbors, On these she discovered mall, dark seeds, A quantity of which she gath- ered to strew upon the sand for her lure, Having selected a spot well tracked by the feet of the small brown birds, she fetched her trap to the place. The mat she had woven was placed, bear- Ing several stones upon its top, with one edo resting on the und, while under the opposite edge she stood her foot long stick with the cord attached to its centre in such a manner that it propped and supported the welght of the loaded fall. Her intention was to sit concealed @elow, with the farther end of the cord in her hand, to wait till the un- suspecting quall should gather be- neath the trap at their eager feed- ing. Then she would jerk away the prop and down would come the fall, made deadly by the weight of rocks upon it. It was a long and weartsome vigil to which she was compelled by her desperate hunger, All the long, hot hours of the early afternoon she sat In her hiding place alertly watching for prey. When at length the shadows began to lean eastward from the declination of the sun she heard the comfortable ttle sounds of a covey of quail feed- ing slowly along the slope, Her breath came quickly as a number of tho restlessly darting little fowls ap- peared by the side of her trap. Three of them fed with avidity upon the seeds she had scattered on the ground, Then, as she leaned tensely forward, the cord in her hand drawn 7 4, a pair of the birds moved un- @uspectingly beneath the loaded mat. With a sharp exclamation on her Ups Judith jerked out the prop, and instantly leaping to her feet ran to the place and had the wild satisfac- tion of beholding one of the helpless quail pinned flatly to the earth. The others had flown in alarm. In her eager haste she snatched up the mat to clutch her prize, ‘The bird had mortally hurt, with a wing bone snapped and its back cut and bruised, yet It scrambled to its feet, its in- stinct for life still strone upon it, and darted away toward \.0 oover, Judith sped aft. it instantly. It weit | ALWAYS ME Gooo PAS Ml NOTHING CAN COME ran down the hill to the shaded oasis. Promised good resulta wei As savagely as a famished tigress the woman flung herself forward on the earth to catch it in her hand. She missed {t, and rose to dash on again, tearing her clothing on the brus she ran and keeping her eyes upon the wounded bird relentlessly. It halted in the thicicness of a bunch of willows, She pounced upon it with animal ferocity, crushing the willows down upon the trembling form with all her weight. When sho extricated the crumpled bit of meat and feath- ers @ moment later the last spark of * life had gone out in a flutter of fear. By the fast falling rays of the sun she ignited a fire at her cnve and had S00n scorched and eaten her dinner, She knew sho must manage to lay more traps than one, and that all must be practically automatic, Food she must and would have till sho could leave this desolation, and on traps alone could she rely for birds or rabbits. With straws and aticks she began a study on the ground to invent the means of preparing a trap that the creatures would spring upon themselves, She noosed @ cord and studied tn- tently to recall the methods that her young boy cousin had once employed to hang a cottuntall, When at jJength she fancied she had solved the mo- chanical problem she was baffled by the need of a knife with which to cut the necessary twigs with their notches and triggers, The darkn engulfed her while she sat there pondering her problems, Until the chill of the higher moun- tain air crept down upon her she re- mained there, wrapped in study, Her Inventions had come to a halt for the sheer lack of tools, She threw herself down upon her bed of grass at last, still feverish with the riddle ot her needa, Bhe slept, and her mind was free to labor untrammelled in its way of mystery, Some time late in the night she was suddenly awakened, Bhe sat up In bed, tremulously excited, The sleuths of her brain, in search for needed Implements, had scented steel at last—the steel strips bedded in her corsets, In the utter darkness of her cavern she lald her hands and teeth to the task of ripping out the Priceless blades of metal, and when she had finished she clutched them fast and returned to her sleep like @ child. CHAPTER XII. Primordial Beings, | NLY an eager inventor or an artisan skilled in creating forms in wood and metal may comprehend the fever in which Judith labored in the morn- ing to make herself a knife, Two of the steels were large and @tyong; the remainder were smaller thinner. Even the patr that Life’s Little “Ifs” AOR YES, AND THEY'D STILL BE THE SAME OL’ pay. RODERICK'’S PALM BEACH SUIT WOULD HAVE MADE THE HKK'S EYES POP OUT AT HIS CLASS JABBERS SURPRISE To HIS WiFE WOULD HAVE series Dae Mee YOu SAID. A WHOLE Lot Twar Yow * { As —_s by \ PETE HADN'T GOT Too MKE ON HIS BACK | , ——— eee: | QOH! me ) lwo ow) | SUNBURN! : ms 4 ) HiCKER ——- Wan ty The Evening World Daily Magazine: Wednesday. Augu jack Callahan |} renee oe ere Ole FRIENDLY ANO SLAPPED UTHINK ILL HAVE THIS FOLIAGE REMOVED AND SURPRISE THE WIFE, much too Icug ana pliant. She pounded one in the centre with a sharp edged rock, and finaly succeeded in breaking it In twain, The pieces were abundantly pro- vided with small brass catches along the outer edge. Utilizing these pro- Jections, Judith bound the strips of steel to roughly prepared handles, afte: which she was ready to begin the task of grinding the blades to Practical kcenness, While she labored thus, oreating and devising at her cave, Ghent had been scarcely less active, His deter-, mination to escape from the desert had been tremendously augmented by his recent discoveries, The thought of the two bleached skeletons, lying wugwestively near, persistently haunt- ed his dreams, Possession of a sound canteen for carrying water made an exploration of the desert possible, Impatience coursed in his veins, yec the man was wise in his sense of the dangers with which the desolation abounded, Of these, starvation wee ™ the first, He could make no attempt to loave this strip of life and green- ery till he could slay and prepare a number of birds or rabbits, to be carried, ike his can of water, egainst the demands of his body. Meantime, he had never been any- thing but hungry, night or day, and between himself and Judith was weged a silent competition for the living creatures on which they must both of them prey, Some of Judith’s contrivances he found tn the run- ways of the animals, What success she had achieved tn killing meat for food he could not know. For him- self, he had whittled new arrows, since bis bow was atill his only weapon, and upon them he depended wholly for supplies. Thus went the days In the canyon, Judith continued to be far more starved than Ghent, Despite her snares, traps, pits and sling, her means of securing food were far less certain than the man’ Time after time she was driven to return to her first crude deadfall, which she watched for half. days at @ tim All day, when not otherwise en- gaged, she labored with mind and handa to produce new engines of de- struction with which she must wage a battle for life against the helpless denizens, birds, animals and snakes, whose world waa the limited oaals. Ghent, only barely less bungry than Judith, and even more active and (How 90 1 § IT HQDN'T RENDERED aggressive, had become an apparition of animal ferocity His clothing, like hers, was tattered Like Judith, he was hatless. His beard had become an ugly stubble that failed to con- ceal the scar upon bis jaw, His eyes glittered sharply and aggressively. He was thinner, The look of the famished was upon him, When ho and Judith met at the apring or in pursyit of creatures of the brush, never & word passed be- tween them. They faced each other for @ moment in unabated hatred that was daily increased rather than diminished by the plight of living to which they had both been reduced, By tacit agrecment, Ghent remained almost exclusively in possession of the upper half of the oasis, while to Judith fell the lower extent of the narrow realm of greenery—tbe slender bridge of life. Out of sheer necessity, Judith had constructed or gathered more appll- ances than Ghent. Beyond his shel- ter and his bow and arrows, he had himself nothing at all, Judith, at the end of a period of feverish employment, had accumulated an as- tonishing number of properties. Ghent had scorned all thought of Provision save that of sufficient food to assure bis escape. As if at last the gods of chance emiled benignly on his enterprise, he had the singular 00d fortune to Kill three quail and & grouse on an evening when Judith finally completed and set the most skilfully contrived of all her traps, He therefore determined to delay no longer, but to make @ particular ef- fort toward securing another brace of birds at dawn, and with all his moat and his can of water to leave the place forever—and Judith to her fate, CHAPTER XIII, The Land of the Lifeless, P and allently haunting the i} greenery with bow in hand, before the day had fairly broken the following morn- ing, Ghent roved from one end to the other of the canyon's growth Without securing #0 much as @ shot. Impatient and half determined to start upon his migration with the samo srouse and quail that would still re- main after eating his breakfast, he Presently emerged from one of the thickets and discovered Judith's lw est trap, with two Ilve quatl beneath it, striving vainly to escape, He glanced about, Bhe was not tn sight, Desperation had intensified the LL So that you will not miss TAKE THE EVENING WORLD WITH YOU ON YOUR VACATION may continue to enjoy the daily magazine, comic and other special features. Include them in your summer reading, Order The Evening World Mailed to Your Summer Address any of the weekly novels and " LOOK ,WIFIE? HER UNCONSCIOUS feud between them. Their battle went deeper than tribal hatred; it sounded the final abysses of Ife and death. Meat was meat, and no more hers than his, Life was life—and the fit- test would survive, He hesitated for a moment only, then killed the quail and took them from the trap, For his breakfast he ate but @ single bird. Hoe had threo cooked quail and @ grouse to carry for his needs, The sun was gilding the loftier peaks of the world of mountain austerity when at length he made ready to depart. While he stood there Judith had come forth from her cave, and, hav- ing started for the spring, now be- held the man, and paused to wonder ot hie actions, On his back sho saw a bundle, wrapped in grass and leaves, In hie band he held the empty can- teen, : Judith knew that he was going, doubtless to return no more, She felt it by instinct, Her own wild longing to escape this place and flee back to friends and civiljzation had rendered her sympathies acute, The bundle and the filled canteen told hor ail she could have wished to know. Ghent was leaving her alone in this meas- ureless land of desolation, Hhe drank at the spring and bathed her face and arms, then visited her traps, found them empty and went all that day without @ taste of food, Ghent had determined to cross the range and attempt bis escape by the north. He climbed up the bed of the gorge at @ rapid pace, for the shadow was cool and the air amazingly ro- freshing. A mile up the titanic chan- nel he came upon @ singular feature of the canyon, It widened out to a veritable amphitheatre of stone, Not @ shrub or @ wisp of growing etuff bad foothold here, It was noth- ing but rock and ground-up rock, red, black, gray and yellow, Halfway along the solid barrier he found a rift, where torrents had washed away A substance eofter than the cliffs themselves, And here he »aused, for, dug in the bank on the northern side of nature's excavation, was a hole that none but man could have made. It was the mine where the two men long aince dead had delved in the rock for gold, The men had tunnelled a short dis- tance only into the rock, By the Nght of reflected sun rays (hent could oer it In thé hole~gold as pure as the earth's great alchemist can make, bedded tn @ crooked seam, He all but forgot his own desperate mission, and was slowly approaching the magnet of metal, when ho saw at his feet a gicaming pile that, once held in a bag, now lay heaped where the ele- ments had strewn it when the sub- stance of the canvas pouch had frit- tered away in wind and rain. He shook hia head at the worthless gold, and started once more on his way. | plateau was @ st 2, 1916 ———- MY iy RANDAL « tortures threaded vn of the range and was King down upon « rugeed valley, rd wb must toll eerame @ low t { mountwine, tn ” ear, ot ait fer out the northern horlion Ht seemed to Ghent he 1a hint of gree «Het and weet, with prom t aod balers verdure He rd down the rocky slope, eager 10 breast the lesser range below end ino reerh the valley that atretoned away ¢ mreenery beyond. " » had climbed the cloudless 4 all the earth wae shim With his head protected by ly & square of cloth, on the under side of which some leaves had been secured, Ghent found the heat almost insupportabls Giare and quiver and hel! tteelt seemed blended together in the pare! ‘ng olf when he came at length to the summit of the lower range of hille On the farther aide he de- ed throurh @ perien of ravines, ot which were shaded. Hig © upon the plain below wae arkably abrupt, At one moment shut in and unable to behold an open space a hundred yards before him, he idenly out of the pass, upon 4 gontlo slope, with « vast plain spread flatly for miles, No sooner had he seen ft thaa a sound of gladness broke from big ips, Down the slope, and looming above the stunted brush that grew upon the desolate land, wae apparently the figure of a man, ho waa slowly mov- ing backward and forward in the | stare, Too far away to be signaled, the figure could nevertheless bs over. taken, Ghent started toward it in a fever of joy and excitement, Presently he halted. The figure was hardly two hundred yards away, lit had now become singularly still. zlod, and beginning to feel some sickening dobbt, Ghent went onward, {stumbling @ trifle in bis eagerness land panting with heat and breath. | i ness, It must bea mant man! But fifty yards from the thing that had lured him down the slope he wae It had to, bee lready to sink in disappointment to the earth, It was merely a cactus plant, gre- tesquely ike the figure of a man The dancing alr of the desert had seemed to impart the motions of life to its form, Ghent did not approach {t nearer, The truth had jarred upon him with a shock. In the heat and dancing of the alr he had need to pause and mako an effort to remember what tt was he had been striving to achieve when the vision of this desert com- panion had been thrust upon him, Yes—he ramembered—he had been hastening northward, out of thie Hideous desert. He etarted again, his desperate hope to reach some haven of men and open farms, From time to time he sipped from his can of tepid water, A mile fur- ther on he came to a shelving ter- race in the’ valley, above a lower floor, Down in that sunken depres- sion the alr took on @ newer, more fantastic manner of dancing, and the land was populous with cactt, near and far, that resembled human be- ings, All of them moved, All were terribly silent, Ghent felt that they would drive him mad. He was mocked as no man had ever been mocked before. They were not to be ignored, As he moved, so they moved, When he halted, they moved lesa certainly, but some ap- peated to turn about, or to sway in their tracks, or to change thelr poal- tions while his eyes were turned away, Hoe knew they were grisly yueca plants—mere Joshua trees—like the one he had approached, yet they took on auch motions and looks of life that bis one crazed impulse was to run from one to another of the parched, forbidding things, crying for compantonship and guidance, With all his strength of wit he forged northward, more alone than before, in all this grisly company, A thought that those behind were pur- suing him began, at length, to haunt his mind, A hundred times he turned abruptly about and faced the ghosts that appeared to dog-bis trail He went on, He cursed the Joshua trees, doomed forever to this dance of death, to which they would fain entice him, He was strong; he had water and meat; he would keep his course and come upon human habita- tions, Yet there came an hour when the heat was no longer supportable, With @ brain on fire and senses reel- ing drunkenly, amid all the quivering of the air, he staggered ahead till he knew he could go no more, Something in one of the yuccas off to the left abruptiy suggested his father, gone to his long eternity, Like a helpless child the man stumbled weakly through the stunted brush, moking for the form, As he came there 1t steadied, ceasing to move, ther in all tte desert uglt- ness, a stiff, bare thing, little lke 4 parent as a gallows, Nevertheless, Ghen® threw himself down on the Long before noon he had come upow scorching sand where the post-like SENT NEPKS COMPLETE NOVEL LADY OF DOUBT ¢ of the Kevotuti brought logethet in @ series o deepens with every chapler. ee NEGINS IN NEXT MONDAYS EVENING WORLD A, PARISH ion with hero and heroine / nevee-trying ad- on a mystery that (rink cast ® bend of shade upee the ort aed eb au heed anda of bie body protested the glare, he lay parching Ot ite CHAPTER XiV, The City of Dreams. OR near hour Ghent re. mained the foot of the yucea then the oun it that the shade had diminished tful. He arose, tn every direction the whost-like forme were moving in that silent, stealthy manner, each one promising « larger pated of shade and protection than the other, Seeking the shade of ene after antoher, and sipping @ ite fluid trom hia hot canteen, Ghent lay at length, exhausted and all but it waa, with the need ho 4 mind ened Noa ae the dawn, and Ghent was ence more facing @ day in this terrible region of Ufeleseness, He Dreakfasted spar- ingly, and drank but little of the cool, By the eteadily inoreasing Nght of dawn he selected his trail p Revi the Tocky uprise, rejoicing at last to find that he had left the valley of cacti behind him and that Borthward was © gently rolling plain that, though utterly ®arren of anything suggestive of life or greenery, Revertheless was easy travelling, with constant Sfom- lee of @ vista when each rising swell should be topped, In all the courage of bis hope the man journeyed steadily onward. The sun rose higher above the barren oarth and began ore its merci- Jess quest for moisture. Until 10 o'clook Ghent endured it doggedly, having recourse but seldom to his can, By then the same horrible dance of the air had recommenced, his brain deginning to seethe, and the mou: tain range before him had not only receded, but its cool, dark shadows had shrunk from the glare of the cloudless aky, Ghent halted at the top of o knelt! of rock and gravel to gase across the shimmering plain between him ead his goal, Slowly he turned from his contemplation of the cistant hills an@ looked to the westward, Then the man cried out in a way of agonising ecstasy and raised his hand te bis forehead, He could scarcely credit his senses, yet out there, not more than five miles away, lay @ alty, built beside a lake, with the mists of ite smoke and the green of ite trees softly blended together for its set- ting, and white and dark houses and tapering steeples ...tinctly out against the sky, Ho marvelled that he had not be- held it sooner, but his vne concern was to hurry there as fast as his reeling senses could direct him. A new grasp on his faculties was ef- forded by the sight. He knew he could traverse the distance; he knew that his power of will would sustain him to reach the goal, despite the dreadful Increase of the heat, For half an hour he plunged straight onward, At the end of that time @ depression in the plain was before him, It was small; he would cross it in less than five minutes; he must Jose sight, briefly, of that pre- clous abiding place of men, Down the sloping side of the dry, rocky swale he hastened and up on the opposite rise. For a moment, when he came again upon the higher level of the valley, he could see, no sign of town or lake, It was, hows ever, slightly more to the south than he had fancied, That his brain was revolving in his skull a thing he felt, Naturally it turned him around, There came a moment when, with his aching eyes strained and fixed upon the vision before him, he sud- denly beheld it disappear—evaporate in the merciless wlare and fade from the face of the earth. He thought for &® moment that the sun had smitten him blind—at least, to objects at a distance, He rubbed his hand across his forehead—and the city reap. peared, He winked, and still another elty * was created in the blue, imposed ypon that which was wrong side up, The groan he might have uttered died away in his throat from his weake ness, He knew it at last—this city of dreame—tpe empty mirage thas beckons kind to their doom!