Evening star. [volume], May 26, 1929, Page 5, Image 95

About Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972

Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

                
seen in the bakery—hoping, yet scared to hope.
“You —you think so?”
"J don't think so; I know so.”
"Honest?” ‘ ? \
"Honest!”
Poor Lester! It seem’s if I could’ve killed
anybody that undertook to spoil that hope in
his face. I seen him roll onto an elbow and
turn an ear,
"What's that?" says he in a second.
I was tired—tired to death.
“Nothing,” says I. "Nothing but some dog
barking somewheres.”
"No, but hark!”
\IfELL, I had to listen. By and by it come
to me there was more dogs'n one, and
that they wasn’t barking like farm dcgs. They
was baying. Same as you'll hear the surf way
off on an outside beach. That’s how I hear a
threshing at the edge of the cornfield, and
men's voices.
"Well,” I says quiet, “I guess we’ll go.”
Lester looked at me and I at him, eye for
eye. He’d gone deathly white.
"Lester,” said I, "you remember what I told
you?”
He give me no answer, and when I got up and
walked off along the row making toward the
mountainside, he followed, stooping same's I
did. close behind. The sound of the dogs and
men seem to grow louder. It had got hot there
under the com; my tongue was dry and sweat
run down into my eyes. And the darkness that
come was surprising. I started to run, but
Lester had hold of me.
"John!” he beg me. “John, for pity’s sake!”
"3e quiet, Lester.” I shook off his hand.
“You just stick with me, and you'll be all right.
They won’t catch us.”
He had hold of me again, nor he wouldn't
leave go.
"3'ii —John!”
With that I seen what he meant. There
come a flash, and then beyond the men and
dogs there come another sound rolling up all
along the valley—thunder. That sudden dark
ness was a tempest cloud.
I had to stop. Even with them dogs coming,
I had to take a minute's time. The only thing
I could think to do was slap his face. I wish
you could’ve seen the expression that come into
his eyes—like relief. Yes, sir, like relief.
"Didn’t I tell you,” says I, "that I’d taken
that all onto me?”
His look was so funny I had to clap him on
the back. #
"Lester, you’ll live to laugh at all this some
day. Now come on.”
We come out of the com and into the free
air underneath the trees where the mountain
went up. I peeked through the trees, and I
seen the men coming across the field, just their
heads showing, like they was swimming in the
corn. All behind ’em across the valley It was
dark, what with that cloud and the dusk
making.
Night come fast then. We hadn't gone much
over a hundred yards, climbing up amongst
the roots and moss and stones, before it come
on dead blind dark.
Now, le'me tell you, it was strange, and It
was awful. It was strange because the rain
wouldn't come. I never seen rain hang off so
long after thunder, and I tell you I’d a hundred
times rather have it pour down buckets than
like It was, still as death between the bolts and
hard and dry and airless. And that lightning!
I’d never minded lightning. But I wonder
If you ever been under thick woods in a flash
of lightning. Well, it’s queer enough. All the
streaks and shadows take a dart as the light
passes over, and you see ’em jump at you.
But what was queerer was Lester. Lester
■eem to know'when they was coming, and he
seem to know just where I was, too, for each
time, when I seen him, he was standing stock
still with his eyes glued on me. I tell you it
was ghostly. For though his face was white,
yet there wasn’t no more expression on it than
you’d find on a stone. And his mouth tight
shut.
. He made me nervous. I hailed him In one
of the flashes.
' “Lester,” says I, "can’t you believe me—lt’s
all right?”
• If he changed expression I can’t say. for It
was dark again, and if he answered me the
thunder drowned it out. Anyhow, for some
reason ’r other, I got more and more nervous.
I turn and start to walk toward where I’d seen
him.
Xk/E wasn't climbing just then, but’d come to
T a small level space, a kind of a pocket like
about ten j .rds across, set sparsely with these
here thin white trunks of quaking asp. I’ll
see ’em auake In the lightning till the day of
my death.
It was funny, but we hadn’t heard the dogs
fbr the past three or four minutes. It wasn’t
that the party had give up, for every now and
then we'd see lanterns weaving here and there
thro-gh the leaves down hill, back and forth
like fireflies over a marsh. But the dogs had
gone quiet. Perhaps it was the thunder scared
’em. I don’t know.
But as I went groping across the glade to try
and pun a hand on Lester I seen one of them.
I’ll call that the first flash. It come blind
white for a second. It was r' 1 over the sky at
once, so there wasn’t any shadows, just that
smooth, staring white. And there, not three
yards away from me, stands that dog. He
may’ve been brown, but in the lightning ha
looked gray, grizzle-gray; a big dog with droop
ing ears and jowls, perfectly motionless, looking
to the right of me. And all around us them
pale, thin trees.
Ever believe a man’s hair could actually stand
on end? Mine did; I know that for a fact. I
was so scared of that dog I could’ve died. And
yet I was so set In my ideas that my one
thought was, “He’s after Lester. Lester’s beside
me; that dog’s seen him; he’ll get him.” And
as the dark come down and the thunder with
it I took one long jump at that dog—or at
wh?r? he had been. Black? By heavens, it
was black. And scared? If I’d ever got him,
what I’d ever done I don’t know.
I never got him. He just’d faded out. And
there was I blundering aroum’, stone blind,
■weeping my hands every which way and trying
to call to Lester to run. Branches hit me,
THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON. D. C., MAY 26. 1929.—PART 7.
stones give under my feet; I trip on something
and down I come with my arms over the trunk
of a fallen tree. And then the lightning.
I’ll call that the second flash. It was by far
the longest of the three; or maybe there was
more bolts’n one. If that’s so, then the last
must’ve struck close by.
I seen Lester fl-st. He stood about a rod
away, looking down at me wher. I laid with
my chest on the log. It couldn’t been a second,
but it seemed ten. His face wt. the same as
I’d seen it before; just seem to have nothing
in it at all, no color, no expression. And in his
eyes was the strangest look, like a sleepwalker.
It was so queer I couldn’t face It. I drop ny
eyes.
There was a flicker of dimness and then a
stronger glow than ever; one big cold stroke
that lifted the skin away from the flesh and
kept it there. And I’ll tell you what I seen as
I stared down at the ground. From the other
side of the tree trunk, from the long, weedy
grass that made a kind of shadow under it, I
seen a woman looking at me. I seen that.
There’s no dream nor anything about it. While
that flash lasted that woman looked up at me
with wide, egg-shape eyes. Her mouth was
open a little, as If with surprise. She had on
a gingham dress with a tight little ruffle of
white around the throat; her hair was drawn
back from the forehead, and her cheeks was a
kind of transparent bluish wh"e. I recall every
detail. I’ll remember it till I die.
JT was dark. I got my hands on the log and
pushed backward and got onto my feet.
Then I turn and walked away. I walked.
That’s strange. But I remember saying to
myself I mustn’t on any account try and run.
Why? I don’t know. It cross my mind that
that sight must have done for Lester for good
and all; he must be either dead or raving
crazy by this time now. For the minute it
didn’t seem to matter much; though I would’ve
like to’ve heard his voice. The main thing was
to keep from running. And the other main
thing was that that lightning must not come
again.
I’ll tell you what. It seem to me if it
lightened again I’d just let out one scream
and go raving crazy myself. I waited for it. I
couldn’t wait. I run. That gully was so full
of things in the dark I couldn’t go two steps
without hitting something; trees knocked me,
Decoration Day
By Charlotte Rosenbaum .
That gentle lady, Peace, they died to save, •
Has come at last unto her rightful own,'
Hnd wanders in 'the Spring among her brave, '
Joyous, alone . - *■ *
Her head is haloed with their victory,'
Her gown is gold with sacrificial flames;
She walks among them, slowly, musingly ,•
Hnd calls their names .
She ne'er forgets her lovers—through the land
She goes, and where their crosses wanly glow—
From just a dewy touch of her white hand;
Red poppies grow .
1,000 Years Hence.
Continued from Third Page.
abilities. At the beginning he was much infe
rior to the lowest type of man now existing, pro
vided by nature with no weapons for defense
against fierce animals much larger and stronger
than himself. Yet, gaining more and more in
telligence, he was able, when the last great
Ice Age arrived in Europe, to meet and con
quer its frightful vicissitudes.
“That Age of Ice arrived about 80,000 years
ago. By 35,000 years ago it had started to
decline; the ice had begun to melt. At that
period there was only one species of human
kind. It was during those 35,000 years that
man differentiated into many types and races,
all of which date from the so-called ‘post
glacial’ epoch.
“Not all of those types and races—varieties
of mankind—survived. The less successful be
came extinct, and no trace of them is now to
be found among living men. But it was during
the post-glacial period that man attained rec
ognizably his present form, emerging therefrom
as ‘homo sapiens'—the man who thinks.
“Up to the end of the Age of Ice h? evident
ly gained very slowly in numbers. His spread
was slow and sparse. But soon he began to
multiply much faster, and, with increase tn
numbers, the human race, already differenti
ated into many types, spread all over the in
habitable earth.
“We should realize that man in something
like his present form is relatively a recent
comer in the world. Derived from a more or
less ape-like precursor, he has risen in a sur
prisingly short time to his present status. His
is an amazing history, his progress being mark
ed by gradual conquest of his environment—
branches cut me. thorns caught me. And all
the while it keep hammering in my head, It’s
coming!
I begin to call for Lester out loud, caring for
neither dogs nor men.
“Lester!” I yelled. “This way!”
I stood still to listen. I wanted to hear his
voice. Or anybody's voice at all. It was quiet
as the grave. And standing still so, all the
strength went out of my knees of a sudden and
they doubled under me and I sat down.
Something went through me. Starting with
my ankles, something like a • Id wind seem to
pour up my legs and right away up my spine.
And I hadn't the time to say it, “Here she
comes!”
It come white. I was sitting on a tree trunk.
There was my feet in long, weedy grass. I
knew. I couldn’t shut my eyes. From right
between my feet that woman looked at me with
them wide, dead, egg-shape eyes.
And that time the cloud parted and the rain
come down.
I don’t know how I got away from there, I
swear I don’t, nor where I went, nor how long
a time it was. I only know I was drowned with
water and deaf with the roar of It through the
leaves. All I know Is something hit me on the
forehead, a branch, I guess, and down I went
without- a sense left.
~ couldn’t’ve laid there long, yet when I
come to again the rain was gone and the sky
full of stars. I was In a road. "Twasn’t much
of a road, hardly more’n a pair of wheel tracks,
but it was clear. I ‘arted to walk along It the
way I hapoen to be facing.
In a minute I seen a light ahead of me. I
never worried myself what kind of a light It
was; I went for thf>t light. When I come up to
within a few rods of the doorway that give
it, I seen somebody coming toward me. It
was my brother Lester.
I couldn’t say so much’s a word. I stood and
waited till h> come and looked at me. He
give a sigh.
“Thank heavens!” says he. “I was beginning
to worry, John. Another ten minutes I
should’ve set out to look for you.”
He slap me on the shoulder and laughed. I
wouldn’t hi.ve known him, somehow.
“Hungry?” says he. "I bet a cent you’re
hungry. . You hit the right place, John, old
boy, don’t worry. There’s a woman here fries
bacon, and she's got a tub of coffee on the
stove. Come along.
"Come along!” says he again seeing I never
cold, heat, famine, wild animals and even dis
ease.
"A general knowledge of his past, as re
gards his physique, is obtained from numerous
early human skeletons and parts of skeletons.
Os his cultural development it is possible to
learn much from millions of tools and other
artifacts which in bygone ages he left behind.
For the reckoning of time there are vast num
bers of bones of long-extinct animals dug up
with his remains.
“Such evidences are easily accessible in the
Old World, particularly in Western and Cen
tral Europe, in Northern Africa and in Asia
Minor. They are found in formerly Inhabited
caves and rock shelters, in terraces and gravel
deposits of rivers which during the Ice Age
were flowing streams.
<< r J'HUS we are enabled to follow the history
of man back through the ages. As we
pursue the study of him backward he is found
less and less alike the human being of today,
until, toward the beginning of the Ice Age, it
is impossible to say whether he was at that
period already a man or only an ape-like pre
cursor.
“His advance has been through a process of
evolution. To suppose that that process, with
him, has come to an end would be unreason
able and against observed facts. For it is ap
parent that it has continued during the recent
few thousand years covered by written history.
“Man is still changing, and will continue to
change. As the centuries go by he will make
steady progress, physically and mentally. If
we could view him as he will be 10,000 year*
from now. we would doubtless be surprised.”
(Copyright. 1939.)
moved. I tell you I didn't feel like moving for
a cent. I couldn't make him out.
“Didn’t ycu see it?” I manage to say at last.
“See it?” He give a laugh. “I guess I did.
Say, some dog! Some dog! I thought sure
for a minute he was going to get you, John.”
“Dog!" says I. “Dog! I don’t mean the dog.
I mean—didn't you see the face? In th©
lightning? The face of that—that—that dead
woman?”
TTE look at me for a minute, and it seems t»
me he was kind of embarrassed. He put
his arm around my shoulders and started walk
ing toward th lig’ ted door.
“No,” says he in a queer, sober voice. “I
never seen it this t'me, John. And what’s the
funniest part, I wasn't once scared of being—
being Just going to see it, either. I been think
ing. You know. John, old boy, I almost believe
—talking the way you did, and acting like you
did—l’ll be darned if I believe you didn’t cure
me.”
I couldn’t help it; he seem like a stranger.
And I as dumb, all the while, as dumb.
••No,” says he, "somehow or other I seem to
get ahold of myself after what you said—and
even more the way you says It.
“Do you know what I was thinking of *ll
through the tempest, John? Well, I was fig
uring to myself the chance, if there was a
thousand men out in a thousand different
thunder squalls—what chance in a million
would there be of any one at all of ’em seeing
a dead woman by a stroke of lightning? And
here was I, just one single man, out in one
single tempest. What chance in a million?
In a hundred million? Well, ’twasn’t hardly
enough, I should say when I come to think of
it, to be very badly scared about. Wasn't that
right, John?”
He give me a look, kind of sidewise, kind of
sheepish, and more color in his cheeks’n I’d
ever seen there before.
“Say!” says he then. He looked at me fairer,
seeing I didn’t answer. “Say, what's wrong
with you? What makes you look that way,
John? You hungry?”
“I—yes,” says I, “I—l guess so. Hungry."
That minute we got to the doorstep, and out
come a woman to stand on the sill, in the light.
She's a good-looking, red-cheeked, youngish
woman with straight black hair and good
natured eyes.
"Sakes,” says she to Lester, “I’m glad you
warned me, or else I’d think I was beginning to
see double in my old age." She put her hands
on her hips, throw her head back, and give a
little laugh. Then says she to me, “You empty,
too? Soaked on the outside and empty on the
in, eh? Well, well, both them things is curable
diseases.”
Her voice die off and I seen her eyes’d shifted
beyond us.
“There they come now,” she says.
1 look around and I seen a crowd of lanterns
coming up the road, and I hear a whining of
dogs.
“Land!” I hear her saying, as if to herself.
“Just as goed I got the coffee early. They
telephoned they’d be here like about 10.”
You could sec she was uneasy, or not so much
uneasy as embarrassed. Her eyes shift back to
us. and it was at Lester she looked, not me.
“Well?” says she.
“Well?” says Lester, almost like he was mock
ing her.
I don't know what he’d told her, or who sh 3
thought we was, but, anyway, she was ill at her
ease.
“Well.” says she, flushing redder and redder
and still looking at my brother, “I tell you, why
don't you boys just clear out and wait a spell?
Right there to the left in the brush you’ll find
a path leading up the spring. It’s quiet there
and out of the way. I tell you, frankly, these
folks is all right; still, they never been crazy
about strangers hereabouts. Specially so as
they’re all het up just now with this word that
Warty Edmond's gang, that held up the mail
■Tuesday, is working this way over the moun
tain. If you boys ccme through town today, it’s
a wonder to me they didn’t round you up and
.give you the third degree. They’re that het up.
Mercy! Here they come. That’S right. That’s
.best. You just wait above the spring a spell till
I call you. I’ll give ’em some coffee, and ’twtm't
be long. That’s the boys.”
CHE followed us, though, and come a few
steps into the dark. And still it was Lester
she looked at, and I<ester she spoke to.
* “You’ll be back, though?"
“Sure, we’ll be back,” says he, and give hes
a long look.
“Remember?” says she.
“I mistrusted her, somehow. When we comft
to the spring I was all for playing it safe and
going on while we could. I told Lester I didn’t
like the look of it. It had too much the look
of a trap for me. It was funny: I was the
timid one that time and Lester was the bold.
“No,” says he, shaking his head hard. “She’s
all right.”
“All right, or all wrong, I wouldn’t take a
chance,” says I.
“I would,” says he. He give me a kind of
laugh and a dig in the ribs. “Don’t you worry,”
says he. And for all my arguing he wouldn’t
budge from that. When the woman called in
the dark, I stayed where I was, but Lester went..
And he was right.
No, he ain’t around here now. He’s married
now and gone a good ways from these parts,
and doing well, I hear; surprising well, for
Lester.
Me? Well, maybe some day I’ll be setting
out on my way again. First I’d kind of llk°
to find that woman. She ought not to be left
laying out that way without a Christian burial.
And me being the one that seen her, seems like
I was the one
Bayless, darn you! What makes you look
Darn ycu. Bayless! Don’t you look at me
cross-eyed that way. She was there. What the
name of creation d’you suppose! You suppose
I’m another simpleton like Lester, born to see
things that ain’t? You got another suppose
coming, then; that’s the joke on you. No, no
fooling. Bayless, she was there, and she must
be there still, somewhere in them woods across
there. See, them woods across there? Well. I
got to find her, or I don’t believe I’ll ever gr
her face out of my mind. Sometimes in i.
thunder tempest—even now— -
(Copyright, 193».) '„* •
5