A fitful breeze played among the mesquite bushes. The naked earth, where it showed between the clumps of grass, was baked plaster hard. It burned like hot slag, and except for a pa...
From this hour's brief camp, early made, we should have turned southward, to leave the railroad line and cross country for the Overland Stage trail that skirted the southern edge o...
"I have been buffeted by the ages until I dominate the desert. So do the ages buffet one another until they produce a dominating man." MUSINGS OF THE ELEPHANT. Uncle Denny was on t...
I never knew why in the Western States of America a yellow dog should be proverbially considered the acme of canine degradation and incompetency, nor why the possession of one shou...
Cowan's saloon, club, and place of general assembly for the town of Buckskin and the nearby ranches, held a merry crowd, for it was pay-day on the range and laughter and liquor ran...
"You can trust Grey Molly to me, Vic," said Dan, standing at the head of the gray mare. "I'll keep her as safe as if she was Satan." Gregg watched her almost sadly. He had always t...
It was on a Saturday morning that we made this discovery, and as my father and mother had both driven down to San Remo and would not be back till sunset, we could not ask permissio...
Jack Hardy was annoyed. He had planned carefully, expecting to have no difficulty in wiping out the hated McCays and those who sympathized with them. His plans had only partially s...
A huge pipe organ was filling the theater with a vast undertone that was like the whispering surge of a great wind. Jean went into the soft twilight and sat down, feeling that she...
I Should you chance, in crossing a certain mountain pass in southern Catalonia, to find yourself poised above a little valley against the opposite side of which lies a monastery, l...
Andy Green came in from a twenty-hour ride through the Wolf Butte country and learned that another disaster had followed on the heels of the first; that miss Allen had been missing...
Rowdy, with nice calculation, met Miss Conroy just as she had left the school-house, and noted with much satisfaction that she was riding alone. Miss Conroy, if she had been at all...
Sunday happened to be fair, with not too strong a wind blowing. Before noon Little Lost ranch was a busy place, and just before dinner it became busier. Horse-racing seemed to be a...
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 i...
Toward the end of the week Stillwell informed Madeline that Stewart had arrived at the ranch and had taken up quarters with Nels. "Gene's sick. He looks bad," said the old cattlema...
"What do you think of that, fellows?" asked Roger, as he concluded the reading of the letter. "I am not surprised," answered Dave. "Now that Merwell finds he can't show himself whe...
With a deep sigh, Buck lifted his face from the water and regarded her gratefully. "That just about saved my life," he murmured. Mary Thorne carefully set down the improvised water...
"The dream in them of a greater good lifts humans from the level of brutes. Take this dream from them and they are like quenched comets." MUSINGS OF THE ELEPHANT. It was Oscar's tu...
Mrs. Appleby never did quite understand how her barrel of oil had been recovered for her. All she knew for certain was that her good friend, Mr. Connor, had somehow procured it fro...
It was understood that the sheriff should make a perfunctory defense against the mob in order to "square" him with the voters at the election soon to be held. But the word had been...
Patty retired that night with her thoughts in a whirl. So, it was Monk Bethune who, all along, had been plotting to steal the secret of her father's strike? Monk Bethune, with his...
"I am going to keep my eyes open for that cut-throat that was under the bed. There's no telling what he might not do," said John with quiet determination, to Ree, when the peddler...
Jim had disappeared; until when we had made way to another monte table there he was, his hands in his pockets, his cigar half smoked. More of a crowd was here; the voice of the spi...
"An Elephant of Rock, I have lain here in the desert for countless ages, watching, waiting. I wonder for what!" MUSINGS OF THE ELEPHANT. Little Jim sat at the quarry edge and dangl...
For thirty miles down Nail Canyon we marked, in every dusty trail and sandy wash, the small, oval, sharply defined tracks of the White Mustang and his band. The canyon had been wel...
"You're of age," said Bob Birnie, sucking hard at his pipe. "You've had your schooling as your mother wished that you should have it. You've got the music in your head and your fin...
The rain slanted down in sheets and the broken plain, thoroughly saturated, held the water in pools or sent it down the steep sides of the arroyo, to feed the turbulent flood which...
At the top of the fourth flight of steps, Pierre found himself facing a door that stood ajar. Beyond that door was Joan and he knew not what experience of discovery, of explanation...
IT was while Harry Lossing was at the High School that Mrs. Carriswood first saw Tommy Fitzmaurice. He was not much to see, a long lad of sixteen who had outgrown his jackets and w...
Andy, only half awake, tried to obey both instinct and habit and reach up to pull his hat down over his eyes, so that the sun could not shine upon his lids so hotly; when he discov...