The Everlasting Whisper

o much as kept him in sight, saving alone Swen Brodie, and he was left far back yonder, miles on the other, lower, side of the ridge. By mid-forenoon

stiff with frost; the wind whistled and jeered through them and about sharp crags, filling the crisp air with eerie, shuddersome music. He set his coffee to boil while meditating that down in the Sacramento Valley, which one could glimpse from here by day, it was stifling hot

tiny lakelet which, so far as he knew, had been nameless until his old friend Ben Gaynor had built a summer home there two years ago and had christened the pond among the trees. Lake Gloria! Mark King liked the appellation little enough, telling himself with thorough-going unreason that there was a silly name to fit to perfection a silly girl, but altogether out of place to tie on to an unspoiled Sierra lake. Ben would have done a better job in naming it Lake Vanit

again, his feet toward the blaze. Half a dozen times he was up during the night; before dawn he had his coffee boiling; before the sun was up he was well on his way again, driving the cramped chill out of him by walking vigorously. And at nine o'clock that mornin

t widen out; he saw a couple of graceful canoes resting tranquilly on their own reflections; a pretty bathing-house already green with lusty hop-vines. Ben Gaynor had been spending money, a good deal of money. And no one

men and women. Their laughter floated out to him through the still sunny morning, the deeper notes of men, a cluster of rippling notes from a girl. He wanted to see Gaynor, not a lot of Gaynor's San Francisco guests. No, not Gaynor's; rather the friends of Gaynor's wo

wn hair, and for a little his eyes went after her quite as they would have followed the flight of a brilliant bird. Then, as in sheer youth, as one who during a night of refreshing sleep has been steeped body and soul in the elixir that is youth's own, she yielded her young body up to an extravagant dance, whirling away as light as thistledown across the meadow. Hands clapped after her; voices, men's voices, filled her ears with a clamour of pra

s met in the way of old friendship, gripping hard. Further, Ben beat the dus

it had ever been; "that you are no more flesh and blood than the unicorn or the dodo bird. To-day I'll s

lk," said King. "I've got

ng-room and into what was at once a small library and Gaynor's study; King noted that even a telephone had found its way hither. A cha

it than ever, Ma

Or of cares flocking along with them; they generally come together. His were seriously accepted responsibilities, where Mark gathered unto himself fresh hopes and eager joys; the responsibilities which come in the wa

unto himself a wife. This with no permission from Mark King; not even after a conference with him; in fact, to his utter bewilderment. King did not so much as know of the event until Gaynor, after a mont

desirability of a city environment, had urged the larger schools, music teachers, proper young companions, and a host of somewhat vague advantages. Hence a large part of the year Gaynor kept bachelor's quarters in his own little lumber town in the mountains where his business interests held him and where his wife and daughter came during a few weeks in t

er to his friend's approva

re's Ben Gaynor playing

el. Which is it, Ben? A

lk shirt, a very pure white; bright tie, very new; white flannels, very spick and span; silken hose and low white ties. This garb for Ben Gaynor the lumberma

." But none the less his eyes, as they appraised the rough garb of his guest, were envious. "I can breathe better, just the same, in boots l

g the minutest iota in his loyalty to Gloria and her mother. He was t

d King eagerly. "That

istocratic face was briefly overcast, and

etly. "Not this time. I've got

his chair, his hand g

t, always been willing to bet my last

tightened and h

tty deep here of late, a little over my head, it begins to look. I've branched out where I would have better played my own game and been conten

le, leaving French Meadows and Heaven's Gate and Mount Mildred 'way off to the left. I had it all pret

to lead to so absurd a thought. "Of course not Honeycutt; I saw him last week, as you wanted me to, and h

then. And A

pressed as King ha

f the Kentucky mountains have come into vogue in the West. Everybody knows, and that includes even the government agents in San Francisco, that there is a

the cliffs not a quarter-mile from the old cabin. They stood close together, right at the edge. Parker fell. Brodie lo

nor. Then his brows sh

e did for him?

he mountain across the lake, too far to swear to anything like that. But this I can swear to: Brodie was in there for the same thing we've been after for ten years. And what is

what Brodie and P

Then he babbled by the hour. And all his talk was of Gus Ingle and the devil's luck of

said Gaynor with a sober look to his face,

nted his

e is another man's bread, you know. Now I've told you my tale, let'

u've come to the right man. But am I goin' to blab now, havin' kept a shut mouth all these years?' And then he goes on, his rheumy-red eyes blinking, to proclaim that he is feeling a whole lot stronger these days, that he is getting his second wind, so to speak; that come mid-spring he'll be as frisky as a colt, and that then he means to have what is his own! And that is as close as he ever comes to saying anything. Abo

years," mused King. "He is

re and sucks at his toothless old gums and giggles that it's the first hundred

s someth

do. So does Brodie, i

any more than t

n the winter of 1853. By old Honeycutt's own count he would have been a wild young devil of seventeen then. And remember he was one of the roaring crowd t

l, he knows with sly, intimate knowledge how and why the man

cked up

w that. What

a century ago on him? But as the law laughs and at least pretends to disbelieve, his pride is hurt. So he has grown into the way of wild boasting. You ought to hear him talk about the affair at Murderer's Bar! It makes a man shiv

had had the use of his legs all these years, he'd have gone straight as a string where we are trying t

e-runners. They hang out in the old McQuarry shack, cheek by jowl with Honeycutt. I saw them, thick as

ll for Swen Brodie. And I'll go bond he's giving Honeycutt the best, most nourishing meals that have come his way since his mother suckled him-Swen Brod

s jabberings, Honeycutt is sly and furtive and is obsess

and see him o

does know, he gets lockjaw a

ousand dollars-five thousand, if necessary-in hard gold coin, if we have to rob the mint for it. You'll spread it on the table i

e thousand wasn't as much mon

rape deep. And I'll d

we draw

rk King turned, utterly unconscious of the quick stiffenin