Analy High School - Azalea Yearbook (Sebastopol, CA)

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The rider was as white as death ,and seemed stunned. He looked straight at her and tears were forming in the eyes of both. “I am Roger Walters, Ethel, the son of the man whom your father murdered. I came here to avenge his death, by killing your father. When I intend to do anything I always do it, but you stand between my vengeance and your father. I can’t kill him.” One evening, as summer was closing, there were four sitting on the porch. A gray-haired man rested his hand on a young, strong shoulder, the shoulder that might have braced the gun tiiat would liave killed him. A curly-headed little boy sat by Roger Walters, while a girl dreamed of a little cottage over the hill. She saw her father and his mother sitting together on its porch, and then the dream faded into the present scene of happiness. Roger commenced to sing: ‘ ‘ From the desert I come to you On a stallion shod with fire”— Ethel took up the song and they sang it together, while her father sighed, then smiled.

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was queen there. The father was still in the mountains, working with Ins men at the saw mill. He would return in a few weeks. The visitor never entered the house; never even went higher than the second of the few steps on the front porch. Two weeks later, when the sun had just set, and a cool breeze was blowing the roses in the little garden, Ethel sat beside the man on the step. For about five minutes not a word was spoken. A bird fluttered to the ground near them and then flew up with a thread in his bill to a tree by the little white gate. Then the rider, no longer a stranger, looked at the golden head near him. Then he looked into two dark blue eyes that were turned immediately on his. Then he spoke— “Ethel, I’m getting in so deep, and it isn’t fair to you. You don’t know who 1 am or what I’m doing here. That evening that you would not tell me your last name unless I told you mine—well, 1 had a real reason. I’ll have to tell you some time and if you reject me on that ac¬ count—well, I don’t know what on earth I’ll do, but I must tell you anyway, so here goes’’— “Now you wait until 1 tell you something” the girl cut in quickly. “There is something I have to tell you first, and maybe you will be the one to change your mind about this,” and without waiting for another word she began: “Mv father did a great wrong when I was a baby. Still I can hardly blame him. A man, long before my father married mother, was an old sweetheart of hers. Mother told me how deeply in love those two were—he and mother. Then they were parted in their youth and they forgot during several years. Then when I was a baby this man met mother again. It all came back to them again, the love of some years back. Mother became discontented, and knowing that Walters was already married, and had been for several years, just seemed to lose her life in the thoughts of her past and her shattered future. She became thinner and so ill that she could not get out of her bed. Father stayed by her day and night until she was stronger. He was almost insane. One night he left with a gun and his saddle horse. He met Walters at his cabin door and shot him outright, Walters died a few hours later, telling his little son to avenge his death. Then my heartbroken mother lived, or rather existed, for eleven years longer. One night she was found dead in the river ove” there. I)an was only one year old. That’s all. I have raised Dan and kept house for father ever since. Now, if you can consider the daughter of a murderer, you are doing more than most men would.” PAGE 16

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4 ‘Of course there are fairies,” said mother smiling. Isabel jumped up and down on her small toes and cried, “Where do you find them, mother ?” Her mother picked her up and s,at her on her knee and began a little story which went something like this: “Once there was a little girl who did not believe there were any fairies. Every little flower she saw she would crumple, and every pretty bug or butterfly she would kill, just so the fairies wouldn’t have them to make them happy. Well, you might say that this little girl was cruel, and so she was.” Mother paused for a moment, and looked down at the seri¬ ous and attentive child and began the story again. “This little girl continued this cruel pastime until she was ten years old. When one day she came to her mother and asked, just as you did, ‘Mother are there any fairies?’ Her mother said , ‘Yes,’ but the child did not stop her cruel habit. One day she wanted a squirrel for a pet, and her mother considered for a long time and at last said, ‘Did you know that squirrels are fairies’ horses?’ ‘No,’ said the little girl, ‘I didn’t.’ ” “Th,at night when the little girl was asleep the Dream Fairy sent her a dream. In this dream she saw a pretty brown squirrel with a big, bushy, and plumy tail. If only she had the pretty squirrel! But a dainty Fairy Princess danced up and sat on his back and away they went. The little girl followed and killed the squirrel and with him she crushed the tiny fairy. The ' little girl woke up with a start. It was morning and her mother was calling her. This morning as she went out she carefully picked her way among the flowers, and did not kill any bugs or bees. Three days later she was walking in the field and she heard a chatter under a bush. A little squirrel was sitting under the bush blinking his eyes. Around his neck was a gold chain, and a piece of paper, on which was written in the daintiest hand a fairy PAGE 18