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Show BLACK SHEEFsl GOLD ! by Beatrice Grimahaw ! llluttratcd by Irwin Myer. I Copyright by Hughci JVisalo & Co. I WNU Service I WHAT WENT BEFORE On plensure trip on a liner In eastern waters, the narrator. Philip Phil-ip Amory, young Englishman. World war veteran, now a trader at Daru, on the Island of Papua, New Guinea, plunges overboard n the life of a young musical comedy actress known on board as "Gln-SlInR." "Gln-SlInR." Amory Is chiefly conscious of the warm regard of a girl In the assemblage. He learns she Is Pia Laurler, member of a w-eallhy New South Wales family. He tells her something of his life In Papua and of his knowledge of a wonderful gold field on the Island. "Gin-Sling" tells him Pla Is engaged to Sir Richard Rich-ard Fanshaw. prominent In the Islands. Is-lands. His vacation ended. Amory returns re-turns to Daru. There he meets Spl-cer, Spl-cer, on "development" work for Fanshaw. Amory recalls some years before witnessing the escape of a leper. He Is convinced Fanshaw Is the man. Amory tells his friend Bas-se(t Bas-se(t of his knowledge. He believes Spicer overheard the conversation. Amory meets with an accident that lays him up for three weeks. Recovered, Re-covered, he sails alone for Port Moresby. A storm compels him to put In at Fisherman Island. He meets Fanshaw there. Amory resumes re-sumes his Journey to Port Moresby. Mores-by. Fanshaw follows In a motor boat, attempts to run Amory down and Is killed by the latter. With a party of black "boys" Amory sets out to file on his gold claims. Jlnney follows blm. CHAPTER VII Continued 9 "I thought you'd be angry," she said, setting the pannikin down upon the ground. I said nothing. I took her scarred, burned hand, and began smoothing It gently In mine. Angry? She little knew. The very rage of h 1 had been In my , heart, when first I looked down the clearing, clear-ing, saw her sitting there, knew what it meant to me, and knew In the same moment, that she could never, if she lived to be a hundred, understand what she had done. How could one be angry? "Leave go of my hand," she said suddenly. "There's something you aren't telling me, Pbll. . What Is it?" "JiDny," 1 safd, "there are a great many things you haven't told me, and I propose to know them before very long; but there's plenty of time for all that. Plenty of time," I repeated, "for anything either of us wants to tell the other. On the way." "Yes," she said. "The way to the place they call Tatatata." "The way to the mouth of the river, I mean," said I. "You're goin' back again?" cried Jinny. "We're going back." "Because of me?" "Because I find it necessary to go." "Phil, I'd have drowned myself rather than if I'd known. Phil don't do it, old boy. Let's go on and chance it. I'm not afraid of anything. I'll go till I drop dead. Let me, Phil." She was almost crying; she held my sleeve tightly, and shook me, in her eagerness. "Jinny," 1 said, "we're up against hard facts. You'd drop dead, as you call it, before noon today. You " "I done well up to this, anyhow. I kept with you, Phil!" "Yon kept with me because the work hadn't begun. If you had been an hour five minutes later In finding me, Jinny, the meat-ants would have been picking your bones tomorrow, maybe before you were dead. If you came on witn us now, we might be able to help you along " "Yes2" Her eyes glowed with hope. "For a day or so carrying you In a litter where we could, and slinging you up precipices with bushrope like a tied pig. That, Jinny, would cut our day's work down by a third, maybe a half. We should get a little way and turn back. 1 prefer to turn biiok now. Don't cry, Gin-Sling; you never cry, you know. What's that war-cry of yours 'Drink hearty, you'll soon be dead?' Let's hear it again." 1 clapped her on the back, assuming a gaiety I was very far from feeling. One of the swift changes typical of her sad, merry kind, slezed hold on her without warning. She flashed Into sudden fury. "Vor twopence," she said. "I d kill him swine!" "Who's the swine?" 1 asked. But she looked at me sldewise, and made no reply. I saw she was shaking with rage. "Go easv," I told her. Yere going to have a real picnic trip down the river no hurry, everything every-thing pleasant There's nothing to cry about and nothing to get in a paddy about. I'm going to talk to the carriers; take any rags you want out of my swag while Im away." I left her alone, sitting there a forlorn, slim figure, In the new sun of the day that was to hnve begun my march to victory. All the great bush was awake and getting to its business of the day it didn't care that my ambitions were wrecker! and my plans, of years, thrown into the Itomilly river. 1 bad never questioned for an Instant the necessity laid upon me to take Jinny ynfeiy back to civilization, civil-ization, save her from the conse quences of her folly, at any cost But I could not pretend to mysell however much I might pretend to her that I was ghid. It meant the using up of my stores, the going back to Daru to refit. Losing the carriers was posnlhle; they might desert as soon us they saw the sea, and I should have to recruit over ?! eeks of delty. months maybe, may-be, and all the time All the time 1 A thought struck me hard. I "us repacking some 0f the boys' loads when this Idea came to me. A the time-" I said to myself. Ail the time somebody else would he getting away. . . . , tl,,nk , can agree with Jinny In calling him a swine." I found her waiting by the bag-B'lge. bag-B'lge. She had taken a shirt and a pair of trousers out of my swag and dressed herself in them, throwing throw-ing nway her rags. She bad smoothed her hair with my comb and washed her face with 'what I nferred to be the last of our drinking drink-ing water. . . . No matter; 1 could send a boy or two to fetch more from the bottom of the gorge- wnat was time now? The queerest mixture of kindliness kindli-ness and anger filled mv heart, when I looked at her. After all. If what I suspected was true, she was scarce at all to blame. After all, she had risked her life, was ready to go on risking It, just for (he doubtful blessing of my society. Was it a crime? No, by all the gods no matter what It had cost me. Yet The way to the Romilly river was easier than It had been comiug'up. We got there In two days and camped to make rafts, since no canoes were now available. And on the first of the nights of our camp. Jinny and I came to an explanation. explana-tion. CHAPTER VIII WE WERE seated upon the platform plat-form of Jinny's tent-fly, which had been mine (I slept with the carriers car-riers now). She sat with her legs crossed, playing an Improvised "bnnjo," and mimicking the sound with closed lips, very cleverly if one had felt disposed for such cleverness. clev-erness. I was not so disposed, feeling. feel-ing. Indeed, a irood deal more like going down to the Romilly and drowning myself in it, than listening listen-ing to revue tricks but I respected the pluck that set the improvised banjo to a seeming twanging. Somehow, she Influenced me, drove the dark mood away. Somehow, Some-how, by and by, she had me laughing. laugh-ing. And the great dark above us pressed less heavily; the world narrowed, nar-rowed, suddenly, to a cozy small tent with a lantern and a pretty girl lighting It up almost equally. ... We had had HtUe talk on the way down from the hills. But now, with a day or two of waiting before us, while rafts were made, iL seemed to me that I owed her something. She thought me hard, unkind. I didn't want to be a churl. "What's It about, Jinny?" I asked her, as she ended her play. "What's the smooging for? Want me to go out and buy you a pair of silk stockings?" She laughed; stretched out her shapely dancing legs, disguised in my khaki trousers. "I don't want anything off you," she said suddenly grave. "At least, not anything you'd want to give me this side of the grave. . . . I've made up my mind to tell you all about everything all about my comin' along after you, I mean-Well, mean-Well, the beginning of it was that day when you talked to me on Thursday Island, and said no woman wom-an couldn't go exploring; that put me in a bit of a paddy, because, of course I didn't believe it and I don't either" "We'll let that go," I cut In, a trifle wearily. I knew I could never succeed in making Jinny see the truth. . ,. "Well, I was feeling pretty bad about it after you went. And it just came into my bead, I dono how, thai I'd get a boat and run over to the other side, and see, like, how things were goiug on with you and your trip. Of course, Sir Richard Fanshaw, Fan-shaw, he was meaniu' to go and get whatever it was, before you, and Spicer, be was backing him up; I'd got that much out of the old boy, Somehow She Influenced Me, Drove the Dark Mood Away. while we was friends, because of course he wanted to make love to me, and 1 wouldn't, and that s when they will tell you ... And then I found that you weren't there at all, at Pa What was the place? "Yes. ' Seems you'd gone to Port Moresby after all . . . I'h". wasn't that fair awful nbout Sir Richard get.in' drowned? Did no one ever find out anything? . . . Well you know," and she ran on without waiting for an answer, "when I heard you'd gone there, I was 1 was-Phil, I was that snake-headed I could'ye bit yon I'm tellin' you all the truth I didn't want you to go, because knew she would be there, and I thongbt, let her get safe married to Sir Richard, and it'll be all right, because she's the milk and water kind that won't ever think of another an-other man again; that's what 1 thought. So when I heard you'd gone there and he was dead Are you going to marry her?" It burst out like a cry. If 1 had been angry with her" for her slighting words about Pia, I was not angry now. "Jinny, my dear child who do you think would have me for their daughter? I'm as likely to marry Miss Laurler as you are to marry one of the king's sons," 1 answered her. She went straight to the heart of that sophistry. "Yes, but if you was to find something some-thing up at Tatatata, that was worth fortunes and millions " "I'm quite sure, If I hud a mil-linn mil-linn fimmrrno) Hfi-o T.onrlnr wnnlH not like me any the better." (Yes, but I thought to myself, she would let me marry her daughter; she hates the type I represent all wise women hate it; it's anti-social still, if I were a Bolshevik from Leningrad, Lenin-grad, with a million In my pocket, she'd swallow her hatred, hand over the girl Curse her, and all like her!) This went on through my mind In a second, while Jinny was going on "I hadn't anywhere to stay at Daru. Mrs. Maidstone, she gave me a bed. Spicer, he was there. I know Spicer; he used to be on the halls, years ago, but he wasn't any good at that, so he got a job as gentleman's gen-tleman's gentleman to Sir Richard. Well. Spicer, he said to me 'Why don't you up and after him, when he starts? He'll be back here to get his boys which is waiting for him,' says he, 'and then he'll be off by the Romilly river, and if you take a canoe along the coast,' says he, 'I'll put you up to all the tricks,' he says, 'and you'll catch him up before be-fore he can get out of the bush country, where he'll have to cut his way," be says, 'and you'll show him,' he says 'what you can do after all. And who knows,' he says Now, I've told you everything, Pbll Amory, and more than you want to know, so If you'll kindly leave my little wooden hut to me, I'll go bye-bye." "You'll leave my little wooden hut for me," she parodied, shrilly. The black forest about us sounded to her high singing. I had thanked her, and left her, and I was alone alone with myself, and the knowledge of my wrecked ambitions. Things, on the whole, looked worse than I bad supposed them to be. Jinny did not know everything. So far as she was aware, Spicer had been the moving mov-ing spirit in the plot to stop me and bring me back ; but I guessed the hand of Sir Richard Fanshaw in the matter. If the plan was his, It was a good plan, fully organized, and one might expect developments from It yet. It was as certain as anything could reasonably be, that a rival expedition was even now on Its way. One hope only I had. My road was not the road of the dead miner, Grace; I had used my knowledge of the country to beat out a new track. If I were right and I was all but sure of that the new way would cut down risk, time, expense, above all, enable me to get to Tatatata faster than any one else could. Faster, it might be, than any rival trip that had started already; al-ready; I wouldn't give up all hope of that, even now. Under the hanging hurricane lamp I drew forth my copy of Grace's last notes, written on the day when famine and sickness drove him to turn back with his task still undone. Grace -was leading lead-ing an exploring trip, financed by the moneyed partner who wished to solve oue of the many unsolved problems of the New Guinea back country, and, incidentally, place his somewhat undistinguished name upon the map. To cross from Romilly Rom-illy to the Fly had been his ambition. am-bition. There was and still is a big unknown area in those parts, and Jackson had been bitten by the desire, most natural, as I saw it of finding out what, and who, might be in the untraveled space. I sat on the end of the sleeping platform, under the lamp, and pored upon my copy of the words he had written In the bitterest hour of his life "January 5 No sago In sight. Stores very low. Jackson anxious to turn back at once. After dispute, dis-pute, agreed one day more. Boys weak, rebellious. Dysentery threatening. threat-ening. "January 6. Today at four we tnrned back. Urged Jackson attempt at-tempt further travel, but he declares himself unfit, insists Immediate Im-mediate return. One carrier died today. Three in very poor condition.' condi-tion.' Natives appeared on distant dis-tant ridge, war-danced. No attack. Deeply regret necessity return." . Then the passage that gave significance to the whole added hastily in pencil, as if some reserve, re-serve, some Impulse of prudence had ' suddenly broken down "Whole formation suggests gold. If so, have struck biggest jeweler's shop ever known." "Jeweler's shop," a phrase current among Papuan miners, means a pocket, or series of pockets, of extreme richness. . . January 9. Covered about five' miles, hard going. Carriers very wei:k, feet badly cut. Jackson somewhat belter. .jOth Much regret to say Jackson Jack-son killed by uatives today, evidently evident-ly belonging to same Tatatata trine that had threatened us. When stopping In stream bed for lunch, shower of spears suddenly thrown from dense bush. One went through Jackson. 1 fired into bush and ordered or-dered carriers to do same. Fleard one or two shouts, but on entering enter-ing bush later nothing to be seen. Attended to Jackson best I could. He did not live three minutes, seems to have been hit In heart Buried him eight feet deep, piled boulders on top, resumed march. Reached creek I had named Jackson, Jack-son, about five. Camped. More dysentery among carriers, two In bad way." The record continued, brief and hard, relating deaths of carriers, further attacks by natives, terrible straits for lack of food and lack of water; the finding at lust of a small patch of 6ago that enabled them to secure enough food for a rush back to the Romilly river. Grace had written little after that; the fever that ended his life some weeks later was burning out his strength day by day, and he was barely ahle to reach the coast alive. There, at a little trading station he died; leaving his gear with the trader; and I, coming along some while after, had bought the stuff for a song. Grace's diary didn't Interest the trader, who had native na-tive blood, and could barely read and write. I was as sure as anyone any-one could be that my eyes were the first to rest upon It I had been absolutely sure till the day I met Jinny Treacher on Thursday Island that the very word "Tatatata" "Tata-tata" was unknown to uny save "I'm Not Askln' Marriage, Phil Amory," She Said. myself; that the suggestion, the possibility of immense treasure, contained between the lines of Grace's diary, was my secret alone. Now that I had passed the trading trad-ing station again, ascending the river, no Sherlock Holmes was needed to tell me how the secret got out. That story was contained in one sentence Grace had written writ-ten to his girl. He had no doubt hoped to get better, get back to her. He bad done exactly as 1 had done with Pla, as Sir Richard Fanshaw had done with Jinny. Told his girl his secrets. . . . And Grace's girl had gone out, in an Influenza epidemic, not long after. But before that, she had, in her turn, told some one who was, probably, her lover ; might have been her lover all along Fan shaw.- Well if Jinny had not spoiled It for me, I had bad a fair chance of tearing the heart out of Grace's secret, sweethearts notwithstanding. notwithstand-ing. I might have a chance yet. At all events, I would not give up while a shred of hope remained. On that resolution I went to sleep. Next morning there was fine music, mu-sic, when the carriers got to work clearing and felling the timber we wanted for rafts. Jinny stood beside be-side me on the river bank, tall and thin and motionless as one of the long palms that grew in the sheltered shel-tered verge of the bush. Her beau tiful, hungry face, with its avid eyes, was fixed on the sliding Romilly Rom-illy river. The sound of the carriers' car-riers' clearing had shifted farther away ; hack, hack went the axes, dully, mufiled by distance. There was a pause ; through it arose, exultantly, ex-ultantly, the voice of a Mambore cannibal singing the death song of the tree. . . . Followed a rending rend-ing crash, and shouts in chorus. There is something in the fall of a great tree that lets things loose; things that have nothing to do (on the surface) with trees. Genevieve Treacher had been one woman In the instant before that crash. In the Instant later she was another another of the many Jinnies, to know all of them would have needed need-ed great part of any man's days; would have been worth It . . . perhaps. . . . She swung round from the river; she faced me, tall as I, filled, as I, with the fires and forces of youth ; strong, supple, as a tigress, brave as a tigress, a woman made for the wilds, if ever one was so made. "I'm not askin' marriage, Phil Amory," she said. "I'm askin I'm askin' just a hut down somewhere some-where at the mouth of the river, and me waitin' for yon to come hack, since you won't have m'e on the trip. And I'll stick to you and follow you" She fought for breath. "You pulled me away from the sharks," she said. "You sent your trip to blazes and never cared. Y'ou're the first real man I've ever ever Phil, will you leave me In that hut when you go?" She was as modest, almost virginal, vir-ginal, in her self-betrayal as any girl. 1 don't know bow, but In that moment I recognized a truth that, so far, had not come my way. I realized how sucb a woman as Jinny may regenerate herself; I realized, with a wrench of soul and body painful beyond all telling, tell-ing, that I, and no other, was the man to help ber to It But between us stood the wrath of Pia, my white rose, my star, Pia who some day, God willing, 6hould pass the ivory gate of dreams wltb me, into a paradise of which I was unworthy, which, nevertheless, 1 could not give np. If the salvation of a hundred Jinnies stood In the way. li there had never been a Pla. TO BE OOXTUCCED) |