The Lampasas Daily Leader (Lampasas, Tex.), Vol. 35, No. 88, Ed. 1 Thursday, June 16, 1938 Page: 2 of 4
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THE LAMPASAS LEADER
THE RIVER of SKULLS
-------by George Marsh-------
• PBNN PUBLISHING CO. , WNU SXMVICB
trail, Heather, I was almost kisk-
wew, as Noel says.”
"They were terribly afraid of you,
Alan,” she said. "They had heard
CHAPTERXV—Continued
Nearing the camp of McQueen,
Alan and Noel separated to close in
with cocked rifles from different
angles.
At last Alan stood where he com-
manded a view of the fire which lit
the surrounding trees with its flick-
ering glow. Near the fire a tar-
paulin, banked with snow, had
been stretched across two saplings
to reflect the heat. In the snow
hole, beside the Are, huddled a bulky
figure in hooded parka. Beyond, in
the trail from the shore, stood the
loaded sled. The four dogs, too ex-
hausted to note the silent approach
of the stalkers, lay somewhere
asleep in the snow.
The shed tent faced away from
the anxious eyes of the man who
sought the girl’s familiar parka. He
could not see her. Under that snow-
banked canvas Heather doubtless
slept, dead with fatigue. He moved
closer through the black murk of
the spruce and stood directly be-
hind the man hunched at the fire.
This was McQueen. Where was
Slade?
“Well, Tom,” mumbled the man
in the parka, "y’ wouldn’t listen t’
reason. Got tricky! Now you’re ly-
- in’ out tonight—payin’ for it! It’s a
cold bed out there, eh Tom?” A bel-
low of a laugh followed.
"Figgered on John McCord’s gold
and his girl, too, Tom, old pal!”
chuckled McQueen. "I said: ‘Hands
* off her!’ But y’ were too smart—got
tricky! Well, Trudeau got his and
now—y’ got yours! The gold’s mine
—all mine, Tom—and her, too!”
McQueen twisted around where he
sat and faced the river shore.
"Sleepin’ warm, Tom?” he jeered.
"If you’re cold, I’ll bring your bag!”
For a space he muttered into his
hood before he went on, aloud, talk-
ing into the fire: "With this Indian
fish and meat I’ll reach the cache.
Then, Cameron, good-by to you!
Heavy chance you had—with four
dogs! We started with six,” he
chuckled, "and got a present of six
more with fish and meat thrown in.
Pity you didn’t get what the Indians
got at the bend! Too bad it wasn’t
you, Cameron—too bad!”
Thirty feet from the man raving
at the fire a rifle covered the middle
of his back. But the shed tent, be-
yond, was IB the Tine bf~fire:
Then a husky somewhere in the
snow suddenly waked and snarled.
The husky yelped feebly, then was
silent. There was no sound from
the other dogs, too dead to stir from
their beds.
McQueen got stiffly to his feet and
fumbled in his parka as he squinted
into the blackness beyond the circle
of fire glow, listening. He swung
around and stared toward the river
shore.
The rifle now covered his heart.
"You here, Cameron?” he roared.
"Well, you're tod late!” Drawing a
black automatic from his parka, he
started toward the snow-banked
tent. "Come and get her, now!”
Before the man in the murk could
fire, a black body lunged from the
gloom and catapulted onto Mc-
Queen’s back hurling him headlong
into the snow. There was the muf-
fled explosion of the pistol as a knife
flashed in the firelight, flashed again
and again. Then the dogs broke
loose from the spruce beyond the
sled.
A girl’s voice cried: "Alan! Al-
an!" And the yearning arms of
Cameron reached her.
Above the sprawled body of Mc-
Queen a Montagnais, hollow eyes
glittering, stood, stiff as a spruce,
while he held the halft of his knife
to his forehead and repeated:
"Sleep well, John McCord and Na-
payo!”
"Heather!” Alan held the girl in
the sleeping bag to his pounding
heart.
"You came—at last!” she sobbed,
hysterically, clinging to his neck.
"It’s been so long, Alan—so long!
I was asleep! Than I heard your
name and saw Noel leap.”
Dumb with the wild joy and emo-
tion that choked him, he gripped
her in his shaking arms, as if he
feared he would lose her, kissing
her thin face again and again.
"I’ve loved you every minute-
through those awful days,” she
whispered, "hoping and praying that
you’d come—come soon! It was so
awful to leave poor Dad—lying there
in the snow! They shot him but he
fought them until—he died. And I
had to leave him there! Oh, it was
so hard to leave him!”
"He was unconscious—not dead,”
said Alan. "That night he died in
my arms. Before he died, he smiled
and whispered, ‘Heather’!”
"Dear, dear old Dad!” The strick-
en girl gave herself up to her grief.
When the paroxysm of sobbing
ceased, she said, wearily: "I’m so
tired—so tired! I walked and ran—
most sll the way—except on the
big lake. They let me ride there!”
"You’re going to rest now—for
days, dear. We’re all going to rest.”
"You’re so thin, Alanl You and
Noel and the dogs must have killed
yourselves to reach us. Rough and
the puppies— they’re all right?”
He pressed his face close to hers
•s he said: "You’d always think of
Shein- eur dogs! They’re down the
shore—worked out, but all right.
Now you stay here and keep warm
while I bring up the dogs.”
Before he left he asked her:'"Do
you believe I love you, now?”
She impulsively drew him close to
her. "I knew you did, that day at
the camp when you took me in your
arms, but I’d been so hurt. I’ve
loved you so long—ever since you
left us on the ice to go to Fort
George.”
He kissed her, then pushed back
her hood to touch the thick gold of
her hair. Replacing the hood he
suddenly sensed the ugliness of the
sprawled shape beyond them in the
snow. Standing by the fire on which
he had placed fresh wood, Noel
waited to speak to her, but Heather
spoke first.
"Noel, Noel!” she cried. "Noel,
come here!”
Heather impulsively reached and
hugged the embarrassed Montag-
nais.
“Thank you, Noel! Oh, thank you
for what you’ve done for me! You’re
both so thin; you’ve worked ♦ so
hard! It makes me cry!” And she
burst into tears.
“Eet was wort’ all de work.
Heather—to get you!” Noel’s bony
face shaped a grin, but there were
tears in his winking eyes.
The men placed McQueen down on
the river shore beside the body of
A black body lunged from the
gloom and catapulted onto Mc-
Queen’s back.
thepartner he had shot while Heath-
er slept, then Alan went for his dogs.
Somewhere back in the bush the
Indian huskies again lay quiet, in-
different to the actions of the
strange masters.
When Alan brought his weary and
stiff dogs up to the camp with the
sled, a hooded figure stood on the
ice.
"We’ll have to wire the dogs away
from the camp, tonight, Noel,” he
said. "They’ll pitch on those Indian
scrubs if they’re loose.”
With a laugh the hooded shape
moved through the gloom to the Un-
gavas.
"Roughy! It’s Heather!” she
cried, dropping her mittens and
thrusting her hands at the doubtful
lead-dog. "Powder t Shot! Rogue!
It’s Heather! Don't you know Heath-
er?"
Sniffs, whines, then a mad chorus
of yelps greeted her as the dogs
recognized their old playmate. Trail
stiff as they were, the four emaciat-
ed Ungavas overwhelmed her with
the pawing of fore-feet, nuzzling
muzzles and the swift thrusts of red
tongues.
In the crook of Alan’s right arm,
she walked slowly back to camp
where Noel had steaming tea and
ceribou broth waiting for them.
For two days the happy man and
girl and the gaunt Ungavas ate and
rested in a new camp across the
river for there was plenty of Nas-
kapi dried caribou and fish on Mc-
Queen’s sled with the eight bags of
gold. There, while Heather rested
in her sleeping bag before the fire,
she and Alan talked of John Mc-
Cord and the long race up the Kok-
soak.
“You see they didn't know I had
a pistol, Alan,” she explained. "I
had no chance to help Dad, that
morning. They caught me in my
sleeping bag. But, somehow, poor
Dad broke away from the tent and
shot it out .with them. When they
took me away, I had njypistol un-
der my coat. I knew I’d need it.
“Then, during that drifter,” she
went on, "while McQueen and Stade
slept, I waked up in my bag to see
that evil-faced halfbreed watching
me. I tried to wake the others, but
they were dead with sleep. I had—
to shoot—him—Alan!
“Slade was scared and wanted to
take my gun,” she continued, “but
McQueen wouldn’t let him. He told
me to shoot Slade if he bothered
me. I wouldn’t have given it up—
I’d have shot, first! At the last they
were both out of their heads—al-
ways watching the back trail, afraid
you were coming. Yet they insisted
they were fifty miles ahead of you.
That’s how they ambushed the Nhi-
kapi—watching for you.”
"When we reached the Naskapi
at Fort George that you were the
best shot on the coast. We had
such a long start it seemed almost
impossible for you to catch us, and
I grew so tired. The last day I
lost hope and decided to shoot my-
self, as McQueen and Slade quar-
reled. They went mad, both of
them. I knew I’d have to use my
gun—some day, soon. Then I waked
to hear McQueen call your name
and saw Noel leap from the shad-
ows.”
’ With the bribe of frequent feed-
ings of fish, Noel had won over the
shy Indian dogs and, when the
party started leisurely for the
cache on the big lake, he followed
Heather and the gold on Alan’s sled
with a team of his own. At the
cache they rested again while they
revelled in flour, sugar and pemmi-
can, and dogs and men rapidly put
on weight. Slowly but surely the
superb vitality of the exhausted girl
was working its cure. By the time
they reached the cabin on the Talk-
ing, which, to their surprise, Mc-
Queen had not burned, she had re-
covered her strength. The shad-
ows had left her violet eyes and the
dimples were again in her cheeks.
There they waited two weeks to
hunt deer and net fish, under the
ice, for dog-food for the long trip
to the coast.
One night when the stars swarmed
low over the valley and the aurora
glowed in the north, Heather, Alan
and Rough stood on the river ice as
the frozen feather of a moon hung
above the western tundra.
The girl in the hooded parka
Although more than 25,000 differ-
ent varieties of fish already have
been catalogued and new types con-
stantly are being brought to light
there is only one species, which car-
ries its own bait.
This unique fish is commonly
known as the sucker and the bait is
a mixture of greed and dishones-
ty, says a writer in the Chicago
Daily News"
Thousands of these fish are hooked
every year by con men who, al-
though using a variety of lines,
toss out the same old hook which has
caught the over-greedy suckers for
generations. The fishermen them-
selves have a very low code of
morals but they live up to it and do
not class themselves with crooks or
thieves.
“We just work the suckers,” one
remarked, “And if the fish wasn’t
perfectly willing to grab off some
other sucker’s kale he wouldn’t take
the hook.
"Farmers bite? I should say not,”
he replied in answer to a query as
to where the best fishing grounds
were. "Country folk work hard for
their money and want to investigate
before they lay out a dollar. The
big cities are filled with fish that
have the bait in plain sight and all
one needs to land them is a good
line and a fairly strong hook.
"What chance would a guy have
to take a roll of ’silk,* cut it up into
dress lengths, and then go to some
little country town and try to sell
I Although the family uult has di-
minished steadily in size in the United
dtates since 1890 and now occupies a
greatly changed place tn the life of our
'people. It Is still an important factor
.whose significance Is frequently over-
looked, the statistical department of
(the National Industrial Conference
board declares.
| “In the census of 1890,*’ says the
board, “the family unit consisted of
J4.93 persona. The census of 1930 gives
:the number as 4.10 persons. The cotn-
i parison la based upon the official defi-
nition of a ‘family,* which Is broad
enough to cover the entire population
'and includes ‘households’ ranging from
'the cabin of the lone trapper or squat-
ter to the vast hotels of our cifles and
to Institutions of all kinds, each of
which constitutes a family unit for
census purposes.
“The bureau of the census has com
puted from the enumeration of 1939
the size of the private family, eliminat-
ing residents of hotels and institutions,
but Including lodgers and resident
servants, and found It to be 4.01. A
similar distinction made in 1900 found
the average else of the private family
to be 4.00 persona.
“In the latest census a further step
was taken by eliminating all persona
except those related in some way—by
blood, by marriage or by adoption. The
average number of persons in a family
thus defined was found to be 8.81. In
making comparison of different races
and localities, the census bureau uses
the mlddle-slsed family, which for the
sountry at large Is 8.40."
The^board's ftlWIrla— found that
gazed for a space at the flickering'
lights on the horizon.
"He wanted this, Alan. Dad told
mo, more than once, he wanted It.
He almost worshiped you. He want-
ed you and mo to have this gold to-
gether—lo be rich.”
"He knew before he died, I loved
you,” said the man. "I told him,
and I promised him I’d get you.
He smiled. It comforted him.”
"Daddy I Daddy I” For a space
the girl’s grief swept her. Then she
regained her- self-control in the ref-
uge of his circling arms.
"And now I’ve got you, Miss Heath-
er McCord. No matter how hard
you struggle you can never get
away from me. Whether you like
it or not, you’re bound straight for
Fort George with eight bags of nug-
gets and gold dust. What a terri-
ble fate!”
"It sounds pretty wonderful to
me!” she whispered.
"But I haven’t told you the worst
of it. A friend of mine by the name
of Stanton, an awful man who wears
black clothes, is going to take your
name away from you. When he’s
through talking, you’ll be poor
Heather Cameron.*’
"Heather Cameron,” she repeat-
ed, her face radiant with happiness.
"What a beautiful name!”
Noel, at the water hole, smiled,
as he saw, above him on the river,
a hooded shape take another hooded
shape in its arms while two wolf-
rimmed hoods were blended into
one, and a great, black dog, stand-
ing on his hind legs, pawed at the
motionless figures, demanding at-
tention from the two humans he
loved.
(THE END.)
these dress goods as material which
had been smuggled through the cus-
toms. The dear old lady would go to
the phone and give three long rings
and. a short one and the entire
town would know that a smug-
gler was sitting in her kitchen and
the town marshal would be on the
scene before you could say Jack
Robinson With your mnuth open---
"When the ‘silk’ was taken down
to the general store, and found to
have been grown in the Carolinas,
the fisherman would be called on to
change his line and hook for a heavy
sledge hammer and be sentenced
to make canary bird tombstones
out of big granite rocks.
"I can take those same ‘silks' into
New York, Chicago or almost any
other big town, put on some oily,
soiled overalls and a blue flannel
shirt and hand out a line about hav-
ing just come off an ocean steam-
ship and succeeded in smuggling
goods through the customs and I
will hook from 10 to 20 fish in a
couple of hours.”
Con men who invent new tackle
look in scorn on those who persist
in employing lines and hooks which
have been used for generations. -It
is almost unbelievable that a man
who had made a success of a legi-
timate business to the extent of a
nest egg of $20,000 to $50,000 would
lay his entire savings on the line in
some game which has received so
much publicity in the press that the
average reader should recognize
"line and hook” at once.
the largest group of families was that
comprising two persons. These consti-
tuted 23.4 per cent of the whole, with
the “old-fashioned” family of six or
more constituting 18.5 per cent of the
whole. Families of three or fewer con-
stitute 52.1 per cent
Private families owning their, own
homes, as based on. the 1930 census,*
were found to constitute 40.8 per cent
of the whole. The board explains that
exact comparisons with earlier censuses
were not practicable, as in 1910 and
1920 the figures Included premises oc-
cupied by the small number of insti-
tutions and other quasi-famlly groups
which were counted as families. “Such
cases.” continues the board, “exercised
little Influence on the result, and it
may be noted that the percentage of
families owning their homes was
larger in 1930 than it was in 1910, when
it was 44.6 per cent.
“It Is clear that the Increase of
muitl-family dwellings in cities has aa
yet bad little effect on average condi-
tions throughout the country," says the
board, pointing out that In 1930 76.4
per cent of all American families lived
in one-family dwellings. In the cities
the proportion was 633 per cent and
In the country 94.4 per cent In 1930
there were 1.19 families per dwelling
in this country, against 1.12 at the
close of the last century."
The Bermudas are a group of what
are said to bo 365 Isianda but there
are only five important islands capa-
ble of use which aro connected by
bridges.
Keeping Up
Device That Tests
Surface Accuracy Is
Mechanical Marvel
By WATSON DAVIS ’
New York.—A human hair
about 15 feet across. That is
what it would be if it were mag-
nified with one of the latest test-
ing devices for automobile
parts.
One of the wonders of modern
mechanical engineering is the rou-
tine measurement of finely finished
surfaces so smooth that magnifica-
tion of the order of 50,000 times is
necessary. So exacting have be-
come the demands of modern ma-
chine shop practice that the working
surfaces of anti-friction bearings,
for instance, require great accuracy
and smoothness. Surface irregular-
ities less than a hundred thousandth
of an inch (10 micro-inches) are
cause for rejection.
A machine that measures so finely
with the rapidity necessary in ac-
tual production, has been achieved.
The profilometer, as it is called, has
a tiny point th.at traces the almost
molecular surface irregularities.
This varies the current flowing
through a magnet and this current
is sent through special amplifiers
and circuits. Thus, electrically,
there is created that high magnifi-
cation necessary.
Record Written by Light.
The magnified replica of the sur-
face desired is the light-written rec-
ord of the oscillograph into which
the current is fed. If a permanent
record is desired, a motion picture
camera is'aimed at the waving light
line of the oscillograph.
How far machine shop precision
has traveled during the age of pow-
er will be realized when it is re-
called that Watt, inventor of the
steam engine, was elated when he
found that Wilkinson’s boring mill
could machine an engine cylinder
true to within the thickness of a
shilling.
The dawn of precision in machin-
ery came when the system of inter-
changeable parts was adopted early
in the last century. Arms factories
in Connecticut pioneered in measur-
ing accurately with gauges ——
With accuracy increased many
fold, this is the principle that under-
lies the machine age of today.
Asbestos Is Costly and
America Hasn’t Much of It
Washington. — Asbestos, magic
wicking material once used in the
non-burnable wicks of the ever-burn-
ing lamps tended by the Vestal
virgins of Rome, and now a part of
nearly every farmer’s oil stove, is
not a single mineral, but a trade
term applied to a number of fibrous
materials, Dr. Oliver Bowles, of the
United States bureau of mines, told
the Geological society of Washing-
ton.
Commonly found associated with
serpentine rocks, from which it is
formed .by alteration and recrys-
tallization, asbestos varies in value
from $750 a ton for inch-long fibers
of chrysotile (a very high grade),
down to less then the cost of mining
for the short-fibered poorer grades.
The greatest problem in asbestos
production. Doctor Bowles said, is
to separate the asbestos from the
rock without breaking the fibers.
Not well supplied with asbestos,
the United States has commercially-
productive deposits only in Vermont
and Arizona. Most of our supply
today is imported from Canada,
with the other producers — South
Africa and Soviet Russia—sending
small amounts.
Hot River Carries Away
Radioactive Materials
New' York.—Hot river, draining
Mammoth Hot Springs, famed
thermal regioin in Yellowstone, car-
ries away radioactive materials
equivalent to 40 grams of radium
a year (worth $800,000 if extracted)
Drs. Herman Schlundt and Gerald
F. Breckenridge, University of Mis-
souri geologists, find.
Draining the deeply buried rocks
of some of their heat-producing ra-
dium content, these hot spring wa-
ters, of unknown origin, do not con-
tain much radium per quart, but
over a year’s time the amount of
radon, a radium by-product, re-
moved is very great. Other hot
springs, outside of Yellowstone park,
also contsin radium, suggesting that
chemical changes deep in the earth
are substantially the same wherever
hot springs occur.
Oil Menaces Fish
Baltimore. — Offshore oil wells
now being drilled in large numbers
along the'Texas coast were pointed
out as menaces to the state’s re-
sources of oysters, shrimp, fish,
and waterfowl, by Richard H.
Pough of the National Association
of Audubon Societies, speaking here
before the North American Wildlife
conference.
‘Problem Child’ Needs
New Teaching Methods
Until Mind Matures
By MARJORIE VAN DE WATER
Detroit, Mich.—Defiant, rest-
less, truant, and subject to tem-
per outbursts. That is a picture
of what school officials know as
a “problem child.”
It is also a typical picture of a
child who hks failed in learning to
read, write and cipher—particularly
to read, Dr. Charles L. Vaughn, of
Detroit’s Psychopathic clinic, has
learned from a study of boys at
the Wayne County Training school.
These boys were from twelve to
fifteen years old and yet tests
showed them to be below grade
three in reading. In other words
they had spent about nine years in
school trying to learn to read with-
out success.
It is hard to realize the insult that
such a prolonged failure is to the
sensitive nature of a child. If he
canpot learn to add, that is to some
extent at least a private matter
between his teacher, his parents,
and himself. He can hide those
arithmetic papers with the damning
zeros.
But when it comes to reading, he
is asked to stand up before the
whole class and demonstrate almost
daily his weakness.
Shouldn’t Be Humiliated.
If you have struggled with an in-
come tax blank, a difficult crossword
puzzle, or one of those baffling Ori-
ental cut-up puzzles, you know the
exasperation that- can result from
failure even when no audience jeers
at your mistakes. '
A child should not be forced to
learn to read and to try to master
other school subjects Until his mind
has matured sufficiently to make it
possible, is Doctor Vaughn’s con-
clusion.
Teachers should try new methods
of instruction with the child who is
not learning, or else the child should
be given another type of program,
such' as handwork, that he can mas-
ter.
No child should be forced to sub-
mit to ignominious failure until his
whole personality is disorganized
and catastrophe brings him to the
psychopathic clinic.
Future Apple Trees Will
Grow From Own Roots
' Washington.—Apple trees of the
future, breaking precedent with ap-
ple trees of today, may grow on
their own roots, experiments con-
ducted by United States Department
of Agriculture scientists indicate.—-
Government experimenters have
succeeded in inducing stem cuttings
of desirable Varieties of apples to
send out rodts, Dr. F. E. Gardner,
in charge of nursery stock investi-
gation for the bureau of plant indus-
try, reports. In the past the apple
tree has been an assembled article
with the fruit-producing part grafted
on to a common root-stock such as
the French crab variety. This was
necessary because seedlings do not
produce true to variety and because
cuttings of stem tissues would not
take root.
Springtime taping of the growng
root with black tape right up to the
growing tip or enclosing the shoot
in a black tube so changes the shoot
that it will take root when removed
from the tree in the fall. It is only
necessary to make the basal cut,
Doctor Gardner declares, before
planting.
Double Set of Ears Given
Salamander by Grafting
Pittsburgh.—Four ears, growing
where normally only two would
grow, were what Prof. Ross G. Har-
rison of Yale university, newly-
elected chairman of the National
Research council in Washington, D.
C., reported here at the meeting of
the American Association of Anat-
omists.
Professor Harrison obtained his
extraordinary results through tis-
sue-grafting experiments with early
embryonic stages of salamanders.
A part of the side of the head region
was removed, and a piece of tissue
from the abdominal region set into
its place. Organ-forming influences
from surrounding head tissues
caused the development of small but
otherwise normal internal ear struo>
tures in this transplanted piece.
Irish Was Spoken in
Germany 1.200 Years Ago
Berlin.—Irish missionaries who
came to central Germany from the
Sixth to the Eighth century, bring-
ing the gospel that St. Patrick had
carried to them still earlier, had no
difficulty in , making themselves un-
derstood. There were plenty of peo-
ple in Germany at that time who
spoke a Celtic language very simi-
lar to ancient Gaelic, is the belief
of Prof. Emil Menke-Gluckert of the
Dresden Technical college.
. Spongy Iron in Germany
Berlirr.—Spongy iron that is soft
and malleable like lead and employ-
able for some of the same purposes
has been developed here by a physi-
cist, Dr. Hans Vogt, after many
years of effort. The material has
the further advantages that it is
much lighter, lower in price, and
can be produced from native ores.
Size of Families Found to Be Smaller;
I Many Home Groups Live in One Dwelling
American Sucker, a Unique Fish Which
Carries Own Bait, Greed and Dishonesty
Upcoming Pages
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The Lampasas Daily Leader (Lampasas, Tex.), Vol. 35, No. 88, Ed. 1 Thursday, June 16, 1938, newspaper, June 16, 1938; Lampasas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1198918/m1/2/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Lampasas Public Library.