The Killer
: Red Butte WesternLidgerwood had found little difficulty in getting on the companionable
side of Dawson, so far as the heavy-muscled, silent young draftsman had
a companionable side; and an invitation to the family dinner-table at
the Dawson cottage on the low mesa above the town had followed, as a
matter of course.
Once within the home circle, with Benson to plead his cause with the
meek little woman whose brown eyes held
Lidgerwood had still less difficulty in arranging to share Benson's
permanent table welcome. Though Martha Dawson never admitted it, even to
her daughter, she stood in constant terror of the Red Desert and its
representative town of Angels, and the presence of the superintendent as
the member of the household promised to be an added guaranty of
protection.
Lidgerwood's acceptance as a table boarder in the cottage on the mesa
being hospitably prompt, he was coming and going as regularly as his
oversight of the three hundred miles of demoralization permitted before
the buffoonery of the Red Butte Western suddenly laughed itself out, and
war was declared. In the interval he had come to concur very heartily in
Benson's estimate of the family, and to share--without Benson's excuse,
and without any reason that could be set in words--the young engineer's
opposition to Gridley as Miss Faith's possible choice.
There was little to be done in this field, however. Gridley came and
went, not too often, figuring always as a friend of the family, and
usurping no more of Miss Dawson's time and attention than she seemed
willing to bestow upon him. Lidgerwood saw no chance to obstruct and no
good reason for obstructing. At all events, Gridley did not furnish the
reason. And the first time Lidgerwood found himself sitting out the
sunset hour after dinner on the tiny porch of the mesa cottage, with
Faith Dawson as his companion--this while the joke was still running its
course--his talk was not of Gridley, nor yet of Benson; it was of
himself.
"How long is it going to be before you are able to forget that I am
constructively your brother's boss, Miss Faith?" he asked, when she had
brought him a cushion for the back of the hard veranda chair in which
he was trying to be luxuriously lazy.
"Oh, do I remember it?--disagreeably?" she laughed. And then, with
charming naivete: "I am sure I try not to."
"I am beginning to wish you would try a little harder," he ventured,
endeavoring to put her securely upon the plane of companionship. "It is
pretty lonesome sometimes, up here on the top round of the
Red-Butte-Western ladder of authority."
"You mean that you would like to leave your official dignity behind you
when you come to us here on the mesa?" she asked.
"That's the idea precisely. You have no conception how strenuous it is,
wearing the halo all the time, or perhaps I should say, the cap and
bells."
She smiled. Frederic Dawson, the reticent, had never spoken of the
attitude of the Red Butte Western toward its new boss, but Gridley had
referred to it quite frequently and had made a joke of it. Without
knowing just why, she had resented Gridley's attitude; this
notwithstanding the master-mechanic's genial affability whenever
Lidgerwood and his difficulties were the object of discussion.
"They are still refusing to take you seriously?" she said. "I hope you
don't mind it too much."
"Personally, I don't mind it at all," he assured her--which was
sufficiently true at the moment. "The men are acting like a lot of
foolish schoolboys bent on discouraging the new teacher. I am hoping
they will settle down to a sensible basis after a bit, and take me and
the new order of things for granted."
Miss Dawson had something on her mind; a thing not gathered from Gridley
or from any one else in particular, but which seemed to take shape of
itself. The effect of setting it in speech asked for a complete
effacement of Lidgerwood the superintendent, and that was rather
difficult. But she compassed it.
"I don't think you ought to take them so much for granted--the men, I
mean," she cautioned. "I can't help feeling afraid that some of the
joking is not quite good-natured."
"I fancy very little of it is what you would call good-natured," he
rejoined evenly. "Very much of it is thinly disguised contempt."
"For your authority?"
"For me, personally, first; and for my authority as a close second."
"Then you are anticipating trouble when the laugh is over?"
He shook his head. "I'm hoping No, as I said a moment ago, but I'm
expecting Yes."
"And you are not afraid?"
It would have been worth a great deal to him if he could have looked
fearlessly into the clear gray eyes of questioning, giving her a brave
man's denial. But instead, his gaze went beyond her and he said: "You
surely wouldn't expect me to confess it if I were afraid, would you?
Don't you despise a coward, Miss Dawson?"
The sun was sinking behind the Timanyonis, and the soft glow of the
western sky suffused her face, illuminating it with rare radiance. It
was not, in the last analysis, a beautiful face, he told himself,
comparing it with another whose outlines were bitten deeply and beyond
all hope of erasure into the memory page. Yet the face warming softly in
the sunset glow was sweet and winsome, attractive in the best sense of
the overworked word. At the moment Lidgerwood rather envied Benson--or
Gridley, whichever one of the two it was for whom Miss Dawson cared the
most.
"There are so many different kinds of cowards," she said, after the
reflective interval.
"But they are all equally despicable?" he suggested.
"The real ones are, perhaps. But our definitions are often careless. My
grandfather, who was a captain of volunteers in the Civil War, used to
say that real cowardice is either a psychological condition or a soul
disease, and that what we call the physical symptoms of it are often
misleading."
"For example?" said Lidgerwood.
"Grandfather used to be fond of contrasting the camp-fire bully and
braggart, as one extreme, with the soldier who was frankly afraid of
getting killed, as the other. It was his theory that the man who dodged
the first few bullets in a battle was quite likely to turn out to be the
real hero."
Lidgerwood could not resist the temptation to probe the old wound.
"Suppose, under some sudden stress, some totally unexpected trial, a man
who was very much afraid of being afraid found himself morally and
physically unable to do the courageous thing. Wouldn't he be, to all
intents and purposes, a real coward?"
She took time to think.
"No," she said finally, "I wouldn't say that. I should wait until I had
seen the same man tried under conditions that would give him time, to
think first and to act afterward."
"Would you really do that?" he asked doubtfully.
"Yes, I should. A trial of the kind you describe isn't quite fair. Acute
presence of mind in an emergency is not a supreme test of anything
except of itself; least of all, perhaps, is it a test of courage--I mean
courage of that quality which endures to-day and faces without flinching
the threatening to-morrow."
"And you think the man who might be surprised into doing something very
disgraceful on the spur of the moment might still have that other kind
of courage, Miss Faith?"
"Certainly." She was far enough from making any personal application of
the test case suggested by the superintendent. But in a world which took
its keynote from the harsh discords of the Red Desert, these little
thoughtful talks with a man who was most emphatically not of the Red
Desert were refreshing. And she could scarcely have been Martha Dawson's
daughter or Frederic Dawson's sister without having a thoughtful cast of
mind.
Lidgerwood rose and felt in his pockets for his after-dinner cigar.
"You are much more charitable than most women, Miss Dawson," he said
gravely; after which he left abruptly, and went back to his desk in the
Crow's Nest.
As we have seen, this bit of confidential talk between the
superintendent and Faith Dawson fell in the period of the jesting
horse-laugh; fell, as it chanced, on a day when the horse-laugh was at
its height. Later, after the storm broke, there were no more quiet
evenings on the cottage porch for a harassed superintendent. Lidgerwood
came and went as before, when the rapidly recurring wrecks did not keep
him out on the line, but he scrupulously left his troubles behind him
when he climbed to the cottage on the mesa.
Quite naturally, his silence on the one topic which was stirring the Red
Desert from the Crosswater Hills to Timanyoni Canyon was a poor mask.
The increasing gravity of the situation wrote itself plainly enough in
his face, and Faith Dawson was sorry for him, giving him silent
sympathy, unasked, if not wholly unexpected. The town talk of Angels,
what little of it reached the cottage, was harshly condemnatory of the
new superintendent; and public opinion, standing for what it was worth,
feared no denial when it asserted that Lidgerwood was doing what he
could to earn his newer reputation.
After the mysterious disappearance of the switching-engine, mystery
still unsolved and apparently unsolvable, he struck fast and hard,
searching painstakingly for the leaders in the rebellion, reprimanding,
suspending, and discharging until McCloskey warned him that, in addition
to the evil of short-handing the road, he was filling Angels with a
growing army of ex-employees, desperate and ripe for anything.
"I can't help it, Mac," was his invariable reply. "Unless they put me
out of the fight I shall go on as I have begun, staying with it until we
have a railroad in fact, or a forfeited charter. Do the best you can,
but let it be plainly and distinctly understood that the man who isn't
with us is against us, and the man who is against us is going to get a
chance to hunt for a new job every time."
Whereupon the trainmaster's homely face would take on added furrowings
of distress.
"That's all right, Mr. Lidgerwood; that is stout, two-fisted talk all
right; and I'm not doubting that you mean every word of it. But, they'll
murder you."
"That is neither here nor there, what they will do to me. I handled them
with gloves at first, but they wanted the bare fist. They've got it now,
and as I have said before, we are going to fight this thing through to
a complete and artistic finish. Who goes east on 202 to-day?"
"It is Judson's run, but he is laying off."
"What is the matter with him, sick?"
"No; just plain drunk."
"Fire him. I won't have a single solitary man in the train service who
gets drunk. Tell him so."
"All right; one more stick of dynamite, with a cap and fuse in it,
turned loose under foot," prophesied McCloskey gloomily. "Judson goes."
"Never mind the dynamite. Now, what has been done with Johnston, that
conductor who turned in three dollars as the total cash collections for
a hundred-and-fifty-mile run?"
"I've had him up. He grinned and said that that was all the money there
was, everybody had tickets."
"You don't believe it?"
"No; Grantby, the superintendent of the Ruby Mine, came in on Johnston's
train that morning and he registered a kick because the Ruby Gulch
station agent wasn't out of bed in time to sell him a ticket. He paid
Johnston on the train, and that one fare alone was five dollars and
sixty cents."
Lidgerwood was adding another minute square to the pencilled
checker-board on his desk blotter.
"Discharge Johnston and hold back his time-check. Then have him
arrested for stealing, and wire the legal department at Denver that I
want him prosecuted."
Again McCloskey's rough-cast face became the outward presentment of a
soul in anxious trouble.
"Call it done--and another stick of dynamite turned loose," he
acquiesced. "Is there anything else?"
"Yes. What have you found out about that missing switch-engine?" This
had come to be the stereotyped query, vocalizing itself every time the
trainmaster showed his face in the superintendent's room.
"Nothing, yet. I'm hunting for proof."
"Against the men you suspect? Who are they, and what did they do with
the engine?"
McCloskey became dumb.
"I don't dare to say part of it till I can say it all, Mr. Lidgerwood.
You hit too quick and too hard. But tell me one thing: have you had to
report the loss of that engine to anybody higher up?"
"I shall have to report it to General Manager Frisbie, of course, if we
don't find it."
"But haven't you already reported it?"
"No; that is, I guess not. Wait a minute."
A touch of the bell-push brought Hallock to the door of the inner
office. The green shade was pulled low over his eyes, and he held the
pen he had been using as if it were a dagger.
"Hallock, have you reported the disappearance of that switching-engine
to Mr. Frisbie?" asked the superintendent.
The answer seemed reluctant, and it was given in the single word of
assent.
"When?" asked Lidgerwood.
"In the weekly summary for last week; you signed it," said the chief
clerk.
"Did I tell you to include that particular item in the report?"
Lidgerwood did not mean to give the inquiry the tang of an implied
reproof, but the fight with the outlaws was beginning to make his manner
incisive.
"You didn't need to tell me; I know my business," said Hallock, and his
tone matched his superior's.
Lidgerwood looked at McCloskey, and, at the trainmaster's almost
imperceptible nod, said, "That's all," and Hallock disappeared and
closed the door.
"Well?" queried Lidgerwood sharply, when they had privacy again.
McCloskey was shifting uneasily from one foot to the other.
"My name's Scotch, and they tell me I've got Scotch blood in me," he
began. "I don't like to shoot my mouth off till I know what I'm doing. I
suppose I quarrelled with Hallock once a day, regular, before you came
on the job, Mr. Lidgerwood, and I'll say again that I don't like
him--never did. That's what makes me careful about throwing it into him
now."
"Go on," said Lidgerwood.
"Well, you know he wanted to be superintendent of this road. He kept the
wires to New York hot for a week after he found out that the P. S-W. was
in control. He missed it, and you naturally took it over his head--at
least, maybe that's the way he looks at it."
"Take it for granted and get to the point," urged Lidgerwood, always
impatient of preliminary bush-beating.
"There isn't any point, if you don't see any," said McCloskey
stubbornly. "But I can tell you how it would strike me, if I had to be
wearing your shoes just now. You've got a man for your chief clerk who
has kept this whole town guessing for two years. Some say he isn't all
to the bad; some say he is a woman-killer; but they all agree that he's
as spiteful as an Indian. He wanted your job: supposing he still wants
it."
"Stick to the facts, Mac," said the superintendent. "You're theorizing
now, you know."
"Well, by gravels, I will!" rasped McCloskey, pushed over the cautionary
edge by Lidgerwood's indifference to the main question at issue. "What I
know don't amount to much yet, but it all leans one way. Hallock puts in
his daytime scratching away at his desk out there, and you'd think he
didn't know it was this year. But when that desk is shut up, you'll find
him at the roundhouse, over in the freight yard, round the switch
shanties, or up at Biggs's--anywhere he can get half a dozen of the men
together. I haven't found a man yet that I could trust to keep tab on
him, and I don't know what he's doing; but I can guess."
"Is that all?" said Lidgerwood quietly.
"No, it isn't! That switch-engine dropped out two weeks ago last Tuesday
night. I've been prying into this locked-up puzzle-box every way I could
think of ever since. Hallock knows where that engine went!"
"What makes you think so?"
"I'll tell you. Robinson, the night-crew engineer, was a little late
leaving her that night. His fireman had gone home, and so had the
yardmen. After he had crossed the yard coming out, he saw a man sneaking
toward the shifter, keeping in the shadow of the coal-chutes. He was
just curious enough to want to know who it was, and he made a little
sneak of his own. When he found it was Hallock, he went home and thought
no more about it till I got him to talk."
Lidgerwood had gone back to the pencil and the blotting-pad and the
making of squares.
"But the motive, Mac?" he questioned, without looking up. "How could the
theft or the destruction of a locomotive serve any purpose that Hallock
might have in view?"
McCloskey did not mean any disrespect to his superior officer when he
retorted: "I'm no 'cyclopaedia. There are lots of things I don't know.
But unless you call it off, I'm going to know a few more of them before
I quit."
"I don't call it off, Mac; find out what you can. But I can't believe
that Hallock is heading this organized robbery and rebellion."
"Somebody is heading it, to a dead moral certainty, Mr. Lidgerwood; the
licks are coming too straight and too well-timed."
"Find the man if you can, and we'll eliminate him. And, by the way, if
it comes to the worst, how will Hepburn, the town marshal, stand?"
The trainmaster shook his head.
"I don't know. Jack's got plenty of sand, but he was elected out of the
shops, and by the railroad vote. If it comes to a show-down against the
men who elected him----"
"That is what I mean," nodded Lidgerwood. "It will come to a show-down
sooner or later, if we can't nip the ringleaders. Young Rufford and a
dozen more of the dropped employees are threatening to get even. That
means train-wrecking, misplaced switches, arson--anything you like. At
the first break there are going to be some very striking examples made of
all the wreckers and looters we can land on."
McCloskey's chair faced the window, and he was scowling and mouthing at
the tall chimney of the shop power-plant across the tracks. Where had he
fallen upon the idea that this carefully laundered gentleman, who never
missed his daily plunge and scrub, and still wore immaculate linen,
lacked the confidence of his opinions and convictions? The trainmaster
knew, and he thought Lidgerwood must also know, that the first blow of
the vengeful ones would be directed at the man rather than at the
company's property.
"I guess maybe Hepburn will do his duty when it comes to the pinch," he
said finally. And the subject having apparently exhausted itself, he
went about his business, which was to call up the telegraph operator at
Timanyoni to ask why he had broken the rule requiring the conductor and
engineer, both of them, to sign train orders in his presence.
Thereupon, quite in keeping with the militant state of affairs on a
harassed Red Butte Western, ensued a sharp and abusive wire quarrel at
long range; and when it was over, Timanyoni was temporarily stricken
from the list of night telegraph stations pending the hastening forward
of a relief operator, to take the place of the one who, with many
profane objurgations curiously clipped in rattling Morse, had wired his
opinion of McCloskey and the new superintendent, closely interwoven with
his resignation.
It was after dark that evening when Lidgerwood closed his desk on the
pencilled blotting-pad and groped his way down the unlighted stair to
the Crow's Nest platform.
The day passenger from the east was in, and the hostler had just coupled
Engine 266 to the train for the night run to Red Butte. Lidgerwood
marked the engine's number, and saw Dawson talking to Williams, the
engineer, as he turned the corner at the passenger-station end of the
building. Later, when he was crossing the open plaza separating the
railroad yard from the town, he thought he heard the draftsman's step
behind him, and waited for Dawson to come up.
man rose out of the gloom.]
The rearward darkness, made blacker by contrast with the white beam of
the 266's headlight, yielding no one and no further sounds, he went on,
past the tar-paper-covered hotel, past the flanking of saloons and the
false-fronted shops, past the "Arcade" with its crimson sidewalk eye
setting the danger signal for all who should enter Red-Light Sammy's,
and so up to the mesa and to the cottage of seven-o'clock dinners.
His hand was on the latch of the dooryard gate when a man rose out of
the gloom--out of the ground at his feet, as it appeared to
Lidgerwood--and in the twinkling of an eye the night and the starry dome
of it were effaced for the superintendent in a flash of red lightning
and a thunder-clap louder than the crash of worlds.
When he began to realize again, Dawson was helping him to his feet, and
the draftsman's mother was calling anxiously from the door.
"What was it?" Lidgerwood asked, still dazed and half blinded.
"A man tried to kill you," said Dawson in his most matter-of-fact tone.
"I happened along just in time to joggle his arm. That, and your quick
drop, did the business. Not hurt, are you?"
Lidgerwood was gripping the gate and trying to steady himself. A chill,
like a violent attack of ague, was shaking him to the bone.
"No," he returned, mastering the chattering teeth by the supremest
effort of will. "Thanks to you, I guess--I'm--not hurt. Who w-was the
man?"
"It was Rufford. He followed you from the Crow's Nest. Williams saw him
and put me on, so I followed him."
"Williams? Then he isn't----"
"No," said Dawson, anticipating the query. "He is with us, and he is
swinging the best of the engineers into line. But come into the house
and let me give you a drop of whiskey. This thing has got on your nerves
a bit--and no wonder."
But Lidgerwood clung to the gate-palings for yet another steadying
moment.
"Rufford, you said: you mean the discharged telegraph operator?"
"Worse luck," said Dawson. "It was his brother Bart, the 'lookout' at
Red-Light Sammy's; the fellow they call 'The Killer'."
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He brought Satan back to a hand canter, and so he pulled around the next curve of the gulch and saw the trap squarely in front. He came to a full halt. For he saw a tall, strong barbed-wire fence stretching across the stream-bed, and beyond the fenc... The Kid Has Ideas Of His Own
The Old Man sat out in his big chair on the porch, smoking and staring dully at the trail which led up the bluff by way of the Hog's Back to the benchland beyond. Facing him in an old, cane rocking chair, the Honorable Blake smoked with that air of ... The Kid Is Used For A Pawn In The Game
Did you ever stop to think of the tremendous moral lesson in the Bible tale of David and Goliath? And how great, human issues are often decided one way or the other by little things? Not all crises are passed in the clashing of swords and the boom o... The Kid Learns Some Things About Horses
The Kid--Chip's Kid and the Little Doctor's--was six years old and big for his age. Also he was a member in good standing of the Happy Family and he insisted upon being called Buck outside the house; within it the Little Doctor insisted even more st... The Killer
Lidgerwood had found little difficulty in getting on the companionable side of Dawson, so far as the heavy-muscled, silent young draftsman had a companionable side; and an invitation to the family dinner-table at the Dawson cottage on the low mesa... The King Of The Big Horn Country
Two months before this time Helen Messiter had been serenely teaching a second grade at Kalamazoo, Michigan, notwithstanding the earnest efforts of several youths of that city to induce her to retire to domesticity "What's the use of being a schoolm... The Kingdom Of Joy
A prince of the Kingdom of Joy rode the Piceance trail on a morning glad with the song of birds and the rippling of brooks. Knee to knee with him rode his princess, slim and straight, the pink in her soft smooth cheeks, a shy and eager light in th... The Knife
In every community, be it never so small, there are undesirable citizens; and, while the little party was still at breakfast on the following morning, three such members of society came around the cabin and let fall their packs, greeting the occup... The Lady From The Past
Stratton's first feeling was that the girl must have made a mistake. In a dazed fashion he stepped forward and helped her out of the buckboard, but this was a more or less mechanical action and because she so evidently expected it. As he took her ... The Land Of The Musk-ox
A far cry it was from bright June at Port Chippewayan to dim October on Great Slave Lake. Two long, laborious months Rea and Jones threaded the crooked shores of the great inland sea, to halt at the extreme northern end, where a plunging rivulet ... The Last Frontier
Many men were in debt to the trader at Flambeau, and many counted him as a friend. The latter never reasoned why, except that he had done them favors, and in the North that counts for much. Perhaps they built likewise upon the fact that he was eve... The Last Herd
Over gray No-Man's-Land stole down the shadows of night. The undulating prairie shaded dark to the western horizon, rimmed with a fading streak of light. Tall figures, silhouetted sharply against the last golden glow of sunset, marked the rounded cr... The Leopardess
Pierre stood before the cheap bureau of his ugly hotel bedroom turning a red slip of cardboard about in his fingers. The gas-jet sputtering above his head threw heavy shadows down on his face. It was the face of hopeless, heartsick youth, the musc... The Letter In The Chaps
Though hours may drag themselves into the past so sluggishly that one is fairly maddened by the snail's pace of them, into the past they must go eventually. Jean had sat and listened to the wheels of the Golden State Limited clank over the cryptic ... The Light Of Western Stars
Blinded, like a wild creature, Madeline Hammond ran to her room. She felt as if a stroke of lightning had shattered the shadowy substance of the dream she had made of real life. The wonder of Danny Mains's story, the strange regret with which she ha... The Little Missouri
A week later we crossed the Belle Fourche, sometimes called the North Fork of the Big Cheyenne. Like its twin sister on the south, it was a mountain river, having numerous affluents putting in from the Black Hills, which it encircled on the north an... The Living Dead
"Oh, I want to go back to the Rio Grande! The Rio! That's where I long to be!" The words, sung in a soft and musical tenor, died away and changed to a plaintive whistle, leaving the scene more lonely than ever. For a few moments n... The Long Arm Of Power
Presently Corrigan lit a cigar, biting the end off carefully, to keep it from coming in contact with his bruised lips. When the cigar was going well, he looked at Braman. "What is Trevison?" Pale, still dizzy from the effects of the blow on t... The Long Arm Of The Law
From the first the wound healed rapidly, for Vic's blood was perfectly pure, the mountain air a tonic which strengthened him, and his food and care of the best. The high-powered rifle bullet whipped cleanly through his shoulder, breaking no bone and... The Long Trail
The round-up crew started early the next morning, just about sun-up. Senor Johnson rode first, merely to keep out of the dust. Then followed Torn Rich, jogging along easily in the cow-puncher's "Spanish trot" whistling soothingly to quiet the horse... The Long Way Round
Miss Allen turned to yell encouragingly to the Kid, and she saw that he was going on slowly, his head turned to watch her. She told him to wait where he was, and she would come around the mountain and get him and take him home. "Do you hear me, baby... The Lost Landslide Mine
"They cut the ropes! See, here is where it was done, on this jagged rock!" As Dave spoke he pointed to a sharp edge of stone. Beneath it were bits of rope, showing how the fetters had been sawed in twain. "One of 'em must have got loose and t... The Lost Mine Of The Padres
In the cool, starry evenings the campers sat around a blazing fire and told and listened to stories thrillingly fitted to the dark crags and the wild solitude. Monty Price had come to shine brilliantly as a storyteller. He was an atrocious liar, ... The Love Of Poleon Doret
To the girl crouching at the stern of Runnion's boat it seemed as if this day and night would never end. It seemed as if the procession of natural events must have ceased, that there was no longer any time, for she had been suffering steadily for ... The Luck Of Roaring Camp
There was commotion in Roaring Camp. It could not have been a fight, for in 1850 that was not novel enough to have called together the entire settlement. The ditches and claims were not only deserted, but "Tuttle's grocery" had contributed its gam... The Lumbermen
For a full moment I just lay still, hugging the ground, and I did not seem to think at all. Voices loud in anger roused me. Raising myself, I guardedly looked from behind the tree. One of the lumbermen threw brush on the fire, making it blaze brig... The Magic Of Ben Stark
Before the party came in sight, the sound of their voices reached the cabin, and Burrell rose nervously and sauntered to the door. Uncertain how this affair might terminate, he chose to get first look at his enemies, if they should prove to be suc... The Makon Road
"Always the strongest coyote makes the new trail. The pack is content to continue in the old." MUSINGS OF THE ELEPHANT. The building of the road from the valley to the crevice edge was not a ... The Malice Of A Squaw
Good Indian looked in the hammock, but Evadna was not there. He went to the little stone bench at the head of the pond, and when he still did not see her he followed the bank around to the milk-house, where was a mumble of voices. And, standing in t... The Man From The Shoshone Fastnesses
Though the sharpshooter's rifle cracked twice during his run for the cottonwood, the sheepman reached the tree in safety. He could dodge through the brush as elusively as any man in Wyoming. It was a trick he had learned on the whitewashed football ... The Man Of Destiny
"Now, then, I'll explain," said Alaire, turning to the men. "Longorio declares he won't have me except as his wife, and I think he means it. He is amazingly egotistical. He has tremendous ambitions. He thinks this war is his great opportunity, and... The Man Of No Account
His name was Fagg--David Fagg. He came to California in '52 with us, in the SKYSCRAPER. I don't think he did it in an adventurous way. He probably had no other place to go to. When a knot of us young fellows would recite what splendid opportunitie... The Man On The Other Bank
I. It was before Smoke Bellew staked the farcical town-site of Tra-Lee, made the historic corner of eggs that nearly broke Swiftwater Bill's bank account, or won the dog-team race down the Yukon for an even million dollars, that he and Shor... The Man On The Train
Travelling was a new experience to me, and on the first night after I left home I lay awake until we reached Altoona. We rolled out of smoky Pittsburg at dawn, and from then on the only bitter drop in my cup of bliss was that the train went so fast ... The Man Under The Bed
The Eagle tavern was a long, low structure and stood close beside the highway, on the opposite side of which was the weather-beaten log and frame barn to which John had referred. Near the tavern was a well and an old-fashioned sweep towering above... The Man With Nerve
At about ten o'clock of the Fourth of July a rider topped the summit of the last swell of land, and loped his animal down into the single street of Pereza. The buildings on either side were flat-roofed and coated with plaster. Over the sidewalks e... The Man With The Chihuahua Hat
A little dust cloud was traveling up the trail toward the Bar Double G, the center of which presently defined itself as a rider moving at a road gait. He wore a Chihuahua hat and with it the picturesque trappings the Southwest borrows on occasion ... The Marathon
"I have seen a thing that humans call friendship. It is clearer, higher, less frequent than the thing they call love." MUSINGS OF THE ELEPHANT. At 66th street, Jim had passed the Califo... The Mask Ball
"I have seen in the coyote pack that coyotes who will not hunt and fight for the pack must starve and die." MUSINGS OF THE ELEPHANT. "You are not!" returned Pen flatly. "You don't see the hum... The Masked Rider
Venters looked quickly from the fallen rustlers to the canyon where the others had disappeared. He calculated on the time needed for running horses to return to the open, if their riders heard shots. He waited breathlessly. But the estimat...