and Ernest was not above shooting Wickson's quail and rabbits, and, on occasion, his young bucks.
Indeed, it was a safe refuge. I have said that it was discovered only once, and this brings me to the clearing up of the mystery of the disappearance of young Wickson. Now that he is dead, I am free to speak. There was a nook on the bottom of the great hole where the sun shone for several hours and which was hidden from above. Here we had carried many loads of gravel from the creek-bed, so that it was dry and warm, a pleasant basking place; and here, one afternoon, I was drowsing, half asleep, over a volume of Mendenhall.[1] I was so comfortable and secure that even his flaming lyrics failed to stir me.
I was aroused by a clod of earth striking at my feet. Then, from above, I heard a sound of scrambling. The next moment a young man, with a final slide down the crumbling wall, alighted at my feet. It was Philip Wickson, though I did not know him at the time. He looked at me coolly and uttered a low whistle of surprise.
"Well," he said; and the next moment, cap in hand, he was saying, "I beg your pardon. I did not expect to find any one here."
- ↑ In all the extant literature and documents of that period, continual reference is made to the poems of Rudolph Mendenhall. By his comrades he was called "The Flame." He was undoubtedly a great genius; yet, beyond weird and haunting fragments of his verse, quoted in the writings of others, nothing of his has come down to us, He was executed by the Iron Heel in 1928 A.D.
