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About The Springfield news. (Springfield, Lane County, Or.) 1916-2006 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 25, 1921)
PAGE SIX THE SPRINGFIELD NEWS The Voice of the Pack I I '3 By Edison Marshall (OopTrtf hi, 1M0, Llltla, Brown A Owepanj) i l Love story, adventure story, nature story-all three qualities combine in the "Voice of the Pack," a tale of modern man and woman arrayed against the forces of age old savagery. Prologue. If on can Juit l! cIom enough to the -breeat of the wllderneaa. he c.n't help 'but be Imbued with eoma or the lit that (pulse Uxreln. Prom Frontiersman' IHarjr. Long ago, when the great city of Gltcheapolls was a rather small, on tidy hsnilet In the middle of a plain, it used to be thot a pool of water, 'possibly two hundred feet square, gathered every spring Immediately back of the courthouse. The sno falls thick and heavy In Gltcheapolls In winter; and the pond was nothing more than snow water that the ineffi cient drainage system of the city did not quite absorb. Besides being the despair of the plumbers and the city engineer, it was a severe strain on the beauty-loving Instincts of every Inhabitant In the town who had any such Instincts. It was mudfly and murky and generally distasteful. . A little boy played at the edge of the water, this spring day of long ago. Except for his interest In the-pond. It would have been scarcely worth while to go to the trouble of explaining that It contained no fish. He, however, bitterly regretted the fact In trufh. he sometimes liked to believe that It did contain fish, very sleepy fish that never made a ripple, and as he had an uncommon Imagination he was some times able to convince himself that this was so. But he never took hook and line and played at fishing. lie was too much afraid of the laughter of his boy friends. His mother prob ably wouldn't object If he fished here, he- thought, particularly If he were careful not to get his shoes covered with mud. But she wouldn't let him go down to Gitcheapolla creek to fish with the other bovs for mud cat. He was not very strong, she thought, and It was n rough sport anyway, and be sides she didn't think he wanted to go very badly. As mothers are usual ly particularly understanding, this was a curious thing. The truth was that little Dan Fall ing wanted to fish almost as much as he wanted to live. He woutd dream about it of nights. His blood would glow with the thought of It In the springtime. Women the world ver will have a hard time believing what an Intense, heart-devouring passion the love of the chase can be, whether It Is for fishing or hunting or merely knocking golf balls Into a little hole upon a green. Sometimes they don't remember that this Instinct Is Just as much a part of most men, and thus 'most boys, as their hands or their lips. It was acquired by Just as la borious a process the lives of un counted thousands, of ancestors who fished and bunted for a living, i It was true that little Dan didn't look the part. Even then he shewed signs of physical frailty. His eyes looked rather large, and his cheeks were not the color of fresh sirloin, as they should have been. In fact, one would have had to look very hard to see any color In them at fill. These facts are Interesting from the light they throw upon the next glimpse of Dan, fully twenty years later. Except for the fact that It was the background for the earliest picture of little Dan, the pool back of the court bouse has very little Importance In bis story. It did, however, afford an Illustration to him of one of the real ly astonishing truths of life, ne saw a shadow In the water that he pre tended he thought might be a fish. He threw a stone at It. The only thing that happened was a splash, and then a slowly widening ripple. The circumference of the rip ple grew ever larger, extended and widened, and finally died at the edge of the shore. It set little Dan to thinking. He wondered If, had the pool been larger, the ripple still would have spread ; and if the pool had been eternity, whether the ripple would have gone on forever. At the time he did not know the laws of cause and effect. Later, when Oltcheapolls was great and prosperous and no longer untidy, he was going to find out that cause Is nothing but rock thrown Into a pond of Infinity, and the ripple that Is its effect keeps growing and growing forever. The little Incident that Is the real beginning of this story was of no more Importance than a pebble thrown Into the snow-water pond ; but Its ef fect was to remove the life of Dan Falling, since grown up, far out of the realms of the ordinary. And that bring all matters down to 1910. in the last days of a particu larly sleepy summer. lou would hard ly know Gltcheapolls now. The busi ness district has Increased tenfold. And the place where used to be the pool and the playground of Dan Fall ing Is now laid off In as green and pretty a city park ts one could wish to see. Some day, when the city becomes more prosperous, a pair of swans and a herd of deer are going to be Intro duced, to restore some of the natural wild life of the park. But In the sum mer of 1910. a few small birds and possibly half a dozen pairs of squir rels were the extent and limit of the wild creatures. And at the moment this story opens, one of these squir rels was perched on a wide-spreading limb overarching a gravel path that slanted through the sunlit par- Tne squirrel was hungry. He wished that some one would come along with a nut. There was a bench beneath the tree. It there had not been, the life of Dan Falling would have been entirely dif ferent. If the squirrel had been on any other tree. If he hadn't teen hungry. If any one of a dozen other things hadn't been as they were. Dan Falling would ha-e never gone back to the land of his people. The little bushy-tailed fellow on the tree limb was the squirrel of Destiny I BOOK ONE Repatriation. CHAPTER I. Diin Falling stepped out of the ele vator and was at once absorbed in the' crowd that ever surged up and down Broad street. He was Just one of the ordinary drops of water, not an Interesting, elaborate, physical and chemical combination to be studied on the slide of a microscope, ne wore fairly passable clothes, neither "Why, You Little Devil I" Dan 8ald In a Whisper. rich nor shabby. He was a tall man, but gave no Impression of strength because of the exceeding spareness of his frame. As long as he remained in the crowd, he wasn't Important enough to be studied. But soon he turned off, through the park, and straightway found himself alone. The noise and bustle of the crowd never loud or startling, but so contin uous that the senses are scarcely more aware of them than of the beat ing of one's own heart suddenly and utterly died almost at the very border of the park. The noise from the street 6eemed wholly unable to pene trate the thick branches of the trees. He could even hear the leaves whisk ing and flicking together, and when a man can discern this, he can hear the cushions of a mountain lion on a trail at night Of course Dan Falling had never heard a mountain lion. Except on the railroad tracks between, he had never really been away from cities la his life. At once his thought went back to the doctor's words. They were still repeating themselves over and over In his ears, and the doctor's face was still before his eyes. It bad been a kind face; the Hps had even curled In a little smile of encouragement But the doctor had been perfectly frank, entirely strulghtforward. There bad been no evasion in his verdict "I've made every test," be said. ill v They're pretty well shot Of course, you isu go to s.'iue sanitarium, If you've got the movey. If you haven't enjoy yourself all you can for about six months." Dan's voice had been perfectly cool and sure when he replied, lis had smiled a little, too. lie was still rath er proud of that mite. "Six inoothsl Isn't that rather short?" "Maybe a whole lot shorter. I think, that's the limit." There was the sanation: Dnn Fall ing had but six months to live. II began to wonder whether his mother had been entirely 'vise In her effort to keep him from the "rough games of the boys of bis own age. He realised now that he had been an underweight all his life that the frailty that hud thrust htm to the edge of tho grave hnd begun In his enrllest boyhood. But It wasn't that he was born with phy sical handicaps. He had weighed full ten pounds; and the doctor had told his father that a sturdier little chap was not to be found In any ma ternity bed In the whole city. But his mother was convinced that the child was delicate and must be sheltered. Never In all the history of his family, so far as Dan knew, had there been a death from the miilndy that afflicted him. Tet his sentence was signed and sealed. But be harbored no resentment against his mother. It was all In the game. She had done what she thought was best. And he began to wonder In what way he could get the greatest pleasure from bis last six months of life. "Good Lordt" he suddenly breathed. "I may not be here to see the snows cornel" Dan had always been partial to the winter son son. When the snow lay all over the farm lands and bowed down the limbs of the trees. It had always wakened a curious flood of feelings In the wasted man.' It seemed to blin that he could remember other winters, wherein the snow lay for end less miles over an endless wilderness, and here and there were strange, many-toed tracks that could be fol lowed In the icy dawns. But of course It was Just a fancy. He wasn't In the least misled about It. He knew that he had never, In his lifetime, seen the wilderness.. Of course his grand father had been a 'rontlersman of the first order, and aM his ancestors be fore him a rangy, hardy breed whose wings would crumple In civilization but he himself had always Used In cities. Yet the falling snows, soft and gentle but with a kind of remorweless ness he could sense but could not un derstand, had always stirred htm. He'd often imagined that he would like to see the forests In winter. In him you could see a reflection of the boy that played beside the pond of snow water, twenty years before. Ills dark gray eyes were still rather sarge and perhups the wasted flesh around them made them seem turgor than they were. But It was a little hard to see them, as be wore large glasses. His mother bad been sure, years before, thot he needed glasses; and she hud easily found an oculist hat agreed with her. Now that he win alone on the path, the utter absence of color In his cheeks was startling. That mount the absence of red that warm glow of the blood eager and alive In hla veins. Perhaps an observer would have noticed lean hands, with blg knuckled fingers, a rather firm mouth, and closely cropped dark hair. He was twenty-nine years of age, but he looked somewhat older. He know now that he was never goln to be any older. A doctor as sure of himself ss he one he had Just consulted couldn't possibly be mistaken. He sat down on a park bench. Just beneath the spreading limb of a great tree. He would sit here, he thought, until he finally decided what he would do with bis remaining six months. , He hadn't been able to go to war. Tho recruiting olrtcer had been very kind but most determined. The boys had brought him great tales of France. FIRST VENTURE OF LIPTON Friend Tells How He Took Chance With Patrons of a Rundown Grocery. Dr. J. H. Ostrander, a personal friend of Sir Thomas Llptoh, told recently for the first time the story of Llptou's Inl tlal business venture, an exchange states. Llpton's first business venture was an event in one little corner of Glas gow. He bought for a few pounds a sorry old rundown provision shop that had changed bands a score of times; everybody had failed. It was In a neighborhood where profits were mea ner and housewives close troders, and . where sharp practice and Indifferent j ethics precluded credit. So when Lip- ton announced that he wouiu trust any decent neighbor once all foresaw bis doom. Llpton, however, did not mean that i. a wnuhl rnrrv accounts 80 days, for I at this period five such accounts would have swamped him. As he himself put It : "In misfortune I will carry any de i cent chop till Saturday night. I will j bo a friend to you In spite of prevail ing business rules; out ir you ureas faith with me you will lose a friend It might be nice to go to France and live In some country Inn until he died. But he didn't have very long to Ihlnk upon this vein. For at that Instant he squirrel came down lo see If he had nut. It was the squirrel of Destiny. Hut Dan didn't know It then. Bushy-tall was tint particularly afraid of the human being that passed up and down the park, because be had learned by eiperlencs that they usually attempted no harm to hlro. But. nevertheless, be had his Instincts, lis didn't entirely trust them. After several generations, probably I he squirrels of this park would climb all over Its visitors and sniff in their ears and Investigate the back of their necks, llut this wasn't the way of Bushy-tall. He had come too recent ly from the wild places. And hs won dered, most Intensely, whether this tall, forked creature hnd pocket full of nuts. He swung dowu on the grass to see. "Why, you little devil I" Dan said in a whisper. Ills eyes suddenly sparkled with delight. And he forgot all about the doctor's words and his own prospects in his bitter regrets that he hsd not brought pocketful of nuts. And then Dan did a curious thing. Even later, he didn't know why he did it. or what gave him the Idea that ha could decoy the squirrel up to him by doing It. That was his only purpose Just to see how close the squirrel would come to him. He thought he would like to look Into the bright eyes at close range. All he did was sud denly to freeze lu one position lo art Instant rendered as motionless as the rather questionable-looking stone stork that wss perched on the foun tain. Where Da Falling eleclde to spend his laal ls month and who be roally It, are In teresting feature of the nest Installment of "The Vole of the Pack." 1U lit. fuMl.NltU) Preserving Spiders' Webs. Amateur entomologists will be Inter ested In a suggestion made by Doctor Luts for the preservation of all kinds of spiders' webs, sly the Independent The webs should be sprayed from sn atomizer with artists' shellac, and then. If they are of the ordlnnry geo metric form, pressed carefully against ft glass plaid, the supporting strands being at the same time severed. After the shelluc Is dried, the plates carry ing the webs can stored away In a cabinet Even domo-shaped webs may be preserved In tlielr original form by spraying them with shellac and then allowing them to dry before re moval from their supports. Mary spiders webs sre very beautiful, and all have Interesting characteristics of the species to which they belong. The Problem of Food. The man or womon who lives on well-cooked food has moro ambition nnd more strength to do the worth while things In life than the one who ents Irregularly and amid unpleasant surroundings, says Good Housekeep ing. It Isn't necessary that largo amounts of money should be spent for food, but It Is essential that thought and rare should bo mixed with every menu. Some day those who now look upon tho preparation of meals as Irk some may get the new vision the big Idea that food and progress are linked together, and that without vision of the true place of good food In our dully lives from childhood to old ago, the people perish t Idtas Confused. "How are the women hers as cod- versotlonallsts?" "The light one over there Is rather heavy, but the dark girl beside her Is very light" and I will lose my business." Thus he put them on their honor. And It wont won because symputhy and fellowship dominated the boy and excited like at tributes In others. 8pread of Bathing In Europe. Bathing came to Europe as one of the good results of the Crusades. The Knights of tho Cross found baths In general use among the Sartcens, and seeing what good things they were, on returning from those wars took the initiative for their introduction. In this they were highly successful first !n England and from that to other countries. So popular did the bath be come that it leeu!2"i customary to hare one before ceremonies such as mar riage or knighthood, nnd the people havo been ever since learning the value of keeping their skins clean. The Power In a Tree. A young man wished to measure the force that drives the sap upward In trees and shrubs. So he cut a vine and tied a bladder over Us end. In two hours the bladder was greatly distended, and Inside of three hours It burst with a plop, so great Is the force that drives sup upward, I'opn lar Science Monthly,. GOOD ROADS SAVE MUCH GAS Trucks Use Twice as Much Fuel on Dirt Highfays as en One Built of Concrete. That good roads cut the cost of na.iiti mora than 50 per cent Is stated by "FrclglU Transporatlon Di gest" A loaded two-ton true w used In a test and In running 100 miles on an earth road consumed 17.3 irniiona of ensullne. making an aver age of 5.73 miles a gallon. Tle cost figured at 23 cents a julioii was .. The same truck wss used on s con crete road and traveled the samo dis tance on 8.40 gallons of sBsollne, unk ing 11.78 miles per gallon. The cost In this case, figured on tne smo basts, was S2.12. The net savings ra Cost of gusollne on the Improved high way was therefore $'.'.21, or wore thkn 100 pet cent Statisticians could step In here and conjure a colossal sum to represent the savings In gasoline cost If all the highways of the United States were paved, remarks the Columbus (0.) Dispatch. They could, for Instance, assume that all of tho one-half million motortrucks In the rountry were two ton trucks, and on this basis figure out a saving In gasoline costs equal to a couple of Liberty loan Issues. This enormous reduction In gasoline costs, coupled with the ability to handle loads' with less fractional ef fort Ims become one of the strongest arguments for good roads. The two tests cited In this Instance show con clusively that poor roads are expen sive., to the fanner ami merchant alike. Tho farmer who hauls with motor truck Is getting only one-eighth of the profit he could get and the merchant and Intercity freight truck operator are paying out twice what they should for gasoline and are getting only one eighth of the profit ibey could get GOOD GUIDE FOR TRAVELERS Arrows on Signs Mark Detours on lewa's Highways and Point Out , Proper Direction. All detours around road closed to traffic In Iowa are carefully marked for the guidance and protection of travelers. Signs are erected at Inter vals so that the proper direction can be taken with the allghtest deviation from tho regulur route. The signs, a furnished by the state to the counties at cost, have a yellow arrow printed agulnst a black ground, with the word "detour" above und below the urrow. The blank sign furnished to the coon tie Is shown In the upper corner, and as used, In the lower. The larger Illustration shows how the signs are disposed to guide traffio around a closed road. When the sign ha been placed with the arrow pointing In the proper di rection, the "detour" below Is deleted with black paint Tho name of the place the arrow ts pointing to, sod oilier Information, is stenciled Inside tho arrow, 1'opular Mechanics Maga zine. MATHEMATICS OF BAD ROADS Farmer Solves Problem of Hours Lost in Making Trip Over Road That ' Is Deep In Mud. If it takes a farmer, making a trip through the mud one hour and a half longer than when tho rotds are linn, how iiiuny hours are lost In a year If 1,000 farmers muke an average of 12 trips a month 7 What would be the monetary loss If each 1 hours lost be estimated at 75 cents per hour for each man and his team? This "two-In-one" proposition gave our old cat considerable trouble, but he finally; worked It out thus:, Ono farmer mul tiplied by 1V4 hours multiplied by 12 trips, multiplied by 1,000 farmers, multiplied by 12 months equals 21u 000 hours lost; going a step further, and multiplying 210,000 by 75 cents, you have $102,000 per annum lost to the farmers. Our old cat Is now pon dering how tiiuny road bonds this annual loss would float at 0 per cent Interest Union Times.