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Show MYFRIEND 7$W$Z " Till! Sl'OIIY SO K.Ml: Trn-rr-oM Krn SI. I miKlilln. slvrn nil om'ortimlly l chooc rtii.v jo.nllni: on Ills f:inill.vi Wy-iMiilus Wy-iMiilus r.mi'li. I'lokJ I'"" Wily '( "Wo" m:uc. Ilu father, il retired iinny ollW'er, Is rlls;i iMnlnc! by Ki-n'i rliolee mill by his t.illur nl silmol. When I'llekn, llif filly. Is k.nlly linrt tryln to Jumi tho corral feme. Ken lakes Cha opportunity (o m:kf trlemts with the wild Utile colt. Allhoni;li he Is now eonvtneed that l'lleka Is not "Wo" like her niollier. Cnplnln Mel.nndvlln does not think she will set noil, lint Ken, who always wanted a colt of his own. Is still hopeful. He believes he can tame I'lteka, who Is to him something fine and beautiful. Now continue with the story. CHATTER XY11 At dinner. Ken nte midline;. Howard How-ard said, "Ken isn't eating his dinnerdoesn't din-nerdoesn't he have to eat. Mother?" Moth-er?" But Nell answered, "Leave him alone." Ken had understood what his father fa-ther meant when lie said, "I won't have a tiling like that on my place." To allow an animal to die a lingering linger-ing death was something his father would not do. Flicka was to be shot. He didn't hear his father give the order to Gus. "Pick a time when Ken isn't around, Gus, and take the Winchester and put the filly out of her misery." "Ja. Boss" in bed, wide awake, and shaken by steady fine (nilvorlni!, he could sen It rellecled In the opened casement window of his room. lie hadn't completely undressed, hut lie had the sheet drawn up to his chin, In case his mother or father fa-ther came in to look at him. He heard them talking together In their room as they undressed. Ilow long they took. It seemed to him hours before the whole house was quiet as quiet as tliy night was outside. He waited still another hour, till everyone was so deep asleep there would be no chance of their hearing. hear-ing. Then he stole out of bed and put on the rest of his clothes. He carried his shoes In his hands and crept down the hall, past the door of his parents' room, taking a half minute for a step. On the far end of the terrace, he sat down and put on his shoes, his heart pounding and the blood almost suffocating him. He kept whispering, "I'm conning, Flicka I'm coming " His feet pattered down the path. He ran as fast as he could. It was so. dark under the cotton-wood cotton-wood trees, Ihe had to stand a moment, mo-ment, getting used to the darkness, before he could be sure that Flicka was not there. There stood her feed box but the filly was gone. Unreasoning terror swept over him. Something had spirited her But for Ken, there was, first, the creeping numbness of those parts where tho head and the neck of the lllly pressed. Then tho deep chill from the cold water running over his legs, his thighs, almost up to his waist. The mountain stream was fed from tho Snowy Range In the North West, and the water was far colder than the shallow, sun-dappled surface looked. Ken's legs were shrivelled and cramped with the cold, and long before the night was over, his teeth were chattering and his body shaking with chills. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered mat-tered but that he should hold Flicka. and hold the life in her. At dawn, when there should hove been light, there was, first, a gray gloom, and then persistent twilight. The wind had failed and the clouds had their way at last, forced up from all points of the compass by pressure in the lower areas behind them, Laramie and Cheyenne, both a thousand feet down, and the valleys val-leys behind the mountains that were to the north and south. Often McLaughlin studied the sky, especially the rims of Sherman Hill, and said, "It's trying its best to storm, but the clouds can't get over the mountains." Now they had got over. There wasn't room for them all. They obscured ob-scured the zenith and' then doubled up, one layer below the other. But Ken knew nothing of the weather only Flicka; the heat of her body that burned his arms. Toward To-ward morning he knew that the heat had gone, and it was not death; when he spoke to her, her eyes still looked back into his. He was full of thankfulness. . Ken watched the gun rack in the dining room. All the guns were standing in it. No guns were allowed al-lowed in the bunk house. Going through the dining room to the kitchen kitch-en three times a day for meals, Ken's eyes scanned the weapons to make sure they were all there. That night they were not all there. The Winchester was missing. When Ken saw that, he stopped walking. He felt dizzy. He kept staring at the gun rack, telling himself him-self that it surely was there he counted again he couldn't see clearly. Then he felt an arm across his shoulders and heard his father's voice. "I know, son. Some things are awful hard to take. We just have to take 'em. I have to, too." i Ken got hold of his father's hand and held on. It helped steady him. Finally he looked up. Rob looked down and smiled at him and gave him a little shake and squeeze. Ken managed a smile too. "All right now?" "All right. Dad." They walked in to supper together. Ken even ate a little. But Nell looked thoughtfully at the ashen color col-or of his face; and at the little pulse that was beating in the side of his neck. After supper Ken carried Flicka her oats, but he had to coax her and she would hardly touch them. She stood with her head hanging, but when he stroked it and talked ; - .O ' "-' '-I'll The alarm clock broke the early morning silence of the bunk house and jangled for sixty seconds. Before it stopped Tim and Gus were sitting, naked, on the edge of their bunks, yawning and rubbing their heads. Gus reached for his clothes and began to draw them on, remember, ing as he did so that something unpleasant un-pleasant was ahead of him. It was a moment or two before it came to him the shooting of Flicka. When he remembered he dropped both hands on his knees and sat in silence. Nothing for it, it must be done. The filly might have been left to die of her own accord, but that was contrary to custom on the Goose Bar Ranch. Gus finished dressing, made the fire and laid the table for breakfast, break-fast, thinking that when he had everything ev-erything ready except frying the eggs and bacon and making the coffee, cof-fee, he'd go down to the Calf Pasture Pas-ture with the Winchester. It wouldn't take a minute. He had the gun with him there in the bunk house. It stood in the corner, still loaded. He'd be back before Tim had finished milking the cows and have plenty of time to make breakfast. The water rippled over Ken's legs and over Flicka's body. to her, she pressed her face into his chest and was content. He could feel the burning heat of her body. It didn't seem possible that anything so thin could be alive. Presently Ken saw Gus come into the pasture carrying the Winchester. Winches-ter. When he saw Ken, he changed his direction and sauntered along as if he was out to shoot cottontails. I Ken ran to him. "When are you i going to do it, Gus?" "Ay was goin down soon now, be- ! fore it got dark " I "Gus, don't do it tonight. Wait I till morning. Just one more night, I Gus." "Veil, in de morning den, but it got to be done, Ken. Yer fadder gives de order." "I know. I won't say anything more." Gus went back to the bunk house and Ken returned to Flicka. At nine o'clock Howard was sent by Nell to call Ken. He stood at the corral gate, shouting. Flicka was still standing in her nursery when the full moon rose at ten. It was the Hunter's Moon, as yellow as the Harvest Moon. Flicka's wounds did not pain her, but the suction of the down-whirling spiral was an agony felt through every part of her. Now and then her young body found strength to fight against it; she struggled; she lifted her head. She was thirsty. The smell of the fresh running water drew her. She waded into the stream and i drank; got her 811, lifted her head, turned it again to the house. The cool water rippled against her legs. There was no sound from the house, no feet running upon the path, and suddenly the last of her little strength was gone. Lunging forward, she fell, half on the bank, half in the water, and lay there, struggling convulsively. At last she was still. Some minutes later, from ten miles away on the towering black-timbered black-timbered shoulders of Pole Mountain, Moun-tain, there stole out the most desolate deso-late cry in the world the howl of the gray timber wolf. It rode on the upper air without a tremor, high and thin, pointed as a needle. Through long minutes the note was sustained, mournful and remote-through remote-through long moments it died, with a 'ailing cadence of profound listlcss-ness; listlcss-ness; and even before it ceased, it had become the very essence of the quiet of the night. Ken had seen the Hunter's Moon rise over the eastern horizon before be ueot upstairs, and lying Gus walked down to the ranch house, stood the gun against the house outside, and went Into the kitchen to make up the fire. Gus' shaking down of the ashes every morning was the rising bell for the family. When the kindling had caught, and the flames were licking up around the blocks of coal. Gus closed the back draft and went out. He took the gun and walked slowly across the Green, to the gate of the Calf Pasture. A few minutes' walk brought him to Flicka's Nursery and showed him that Flicka was not there. He walked down stream and soon found Ken sitting in the water, Flicka's head in his arms. One look at the boy's face was enough. Gus crossed the creek, laid down his gun, and seizing the filly by the head, dragged her out onto the grassy bank, as doctors drag infants in-fants into the world by the head-never, head-never, safely, by any other part. Ken could not move. Gus lifted him in his arms and again crossed the creek. Ken's head dropped back over the Swede's shoulder, turning to the filly for one last look. "Good-by, Flicka." It was only a whisper. Rob was standing at his window-fastening window-fastening his belt, when he saw the foreman passing, carrying Kim. He thought, "Flicka died I didn't hear the Winchester Ken's found her dead fainted " He ran downstairs and out, took the boy from Gus' arms, and then noticed the unbelievably shrunken drawn features, . and the violent chills. This was more than a faint. Gus told him how he had found Ken, and Bob carried him in and up to bed. Rob and Nell put Ken to bed between be-tween hot blankets and tried to get some brandy between his lips. Gus returned to the Pasture to get the gun. Flicka was lying as he had left her, but at his approach held up her head. The man knelt down on the grass by her and felt of her head, her neck, looked into her eyes. "Veil veil Flicka, liddle gurl " He was astonished to feel that her body seemed to have lost its great heat; the fever had gone He looked at the two wounds. The cuts were clean and all the hard swelling had gone; and he could see by her face that she was brighter, as one can see by the expression in a child's face, even though it is stil' pinched and wan, that life is com ing back. 'JO BE CONTINUED) away he would never see her again Gus had come down his father He ran wildly here and there. At last, when there was no sign of her, he began a systematic search all through the pasture. He dared not call aloud, but he whispered "Flicka Oh, Flicka where are you." At last he found her down the creek lying in the water. Her head had been on the bank, but as she lay there, the current of the stream had sucked and pulled at her, and she had had no strength to resist; and little by little her head had slipped down until when Ken got there only the muzzle was resting on the bank, and the body and legs were swinging in the stream. Ken slid into the water, sitting on the bank, and he hauled at her head. But she was heavy, and the current dragged like a weight; and he began be-gan to sob because he had no strength to draw her out. Then he found a leverage for his heels against some rocks in the bed of the stream, and he braced himself him-self against them, and pulled with all his might; and her head came up onto his knees, and he held it cradled in his arms. He was glad that she had died of her own accord, in the cool water, under the moon, instead of being shot by Gus. Then, putting his face close to hers, and looking searching-ly searching-ly into her eyes, he saw that she was alive and looking back at him. And then he burst out crying, and hugged her, and said, "Oh, my little lit-tle Flicka, my little Flicka." The long night passed. The moon slid slowly across the heavens." The water rippled over Ken's legs, and over Flicka's body. And gradually gradu-ally the heat and the fever went out of her, and the cool running water wa-ter washed and washed her wounds. The night took a heavy toll from Ken, but for Fliaka there was resurgence. re-surgence. At the moment when Ken drew her into his arms and cried her name, the spring of the down-whirling down-whirling spiral was broken, Flicka was released and not once again did she feel it. The life-currents in her body turned, and in weak and wavering wa-vering fashion, flowed upward. A power went into her from Ken; all his youth and strength and magnetism mag-netism given her freely and abundantly abun-dantly on the stream of his love from his ardent eyes to hers. |