Can the Dead Return to Life?
Before You Answer Read
The Conquering Will
By TED OLSON
GORDON PAIGE is dead now, and surely there can be no harm in giving to the world this mad story, contained in the manuscript he left behind. Many will think that the man WAS mad: many will believe that he was attempting to perpetrate an immense and grotesque hoax. I do not know. I do know that Gordon always impressed me as the sanest of men, and surely he never seemed a man to father so strange and horrible a practical joke. But it is not for me to tell you what I believe, or attempt to force upon you my own opinion. Rather I shall offer the story as he left it, and let you interpret it as a joke or a madman's dream, or a remarkable document from that mysterious border realm of which we know so little.
WHAT is Soul? Who can define it? What is that intangible quality that makes me what I am, that brands me as a creature distinct, individual, with an entity that is my own and none other's?
Who can answer? I do not know. I can only tell you my story—the story of Malcolm Rae—and ask that you give it what credence you can.
It was two years ago that I bade Jane Cavanaugh good-by at the railway station in our little home town of Radford. She was weeping, and clumsily I tried to comfort her.
"I sha'n't be gone long, dearest," I said. "A year isn't long. I'll be back in June, when my work is done. Then—we'll be married. and we'll never be separated again."
"I know," she answered. "I'm foolish." She smiled up at me bravely, an April smile, with the tears still glistening in her brown eyes. "But—I've been frightened, somehow. It seems so far up in that cold wilderness, and I've had you such a short time. I won't be foolish again."
The northbound train began to move, and for the last time I caught her in my arms and pressed my lips to hers.
"In June, dear, I'll be back. I promise. Don't worry," I said again, as I swung upon the step of the Pullman.
She was smiling—that brave, April smile—and I watched her until the train carried me beyond sight of her.
NORTHWARD we went, Dan Murdock and I. Somewhere in those barren mountains in the untrammeled Northwest of Canada, a grizzled old prospector had unearthed a store of that precious stuff, tungsten. Murdock and I had been sent by our government to investigate it, determine its value, its quantity, and report.
It was a long task that awaited us. August was already upon us. The
