Progress is like the insidious change from youth to old age, except that progress does not mean decay. The change that is almost imperceptible and yet inexorable is much the same,...
Purgatory moved fast, but warily. The black horse seemed to have caught something of his rider's caution. For part of the distance toward the rock the animal traveled straight, lop...
Woman's intuition often far outstrips the slower mental process of the other sex. The mother who has to see a beloved daughter's silent suffering, well knowing another girl to be,...
Supper, which was served in the ranch-house kitchen by Pedro, the Mexican cook, was not enlivened by much conversation. The food was plentiful and of good quality, and the punchers...
Just as Going mounted the steps on the edge of the pit the great gong struck, a roar of a hundred voices developed with the swiftness of successive explosions, the rush of a hundre...
The last place I locked wheels with Mike Butters was in Idaho. I'd just sold a silver-lead prospect and was proclaimin' my prosperity with soundin' brass and ticklin' symbols. I wa...
"You saw two fellows sneaking around our place last evening?" cried Roger, with interest. "I certainly did." "What did they look like?" asked Dave. "I see 'em plainly an' I was won...
When the rangers and the militia stampeded after the Indian scout, Dud Hollister was examining the hoof of his mount. He swung instantly to the saddle and touched his pony with the...
Houck stood over the prostrate man, the smoking revolver in his hand, on his lips a cruel twist and in his throat a wolfish snarl. June, watching him with eyes held in a fascinatio...
A man under thirty needs neighbors and to stop up the current of his life with a long silence is like obstructing a river--eventually the water either sweeps away the dam or rises...
"Say, ain't that Andy and Mig following along behind?" Cal asked after a minute of watching the approach. "Sure, it is. Now what--" "They're drivin' 'em, by cripes!" Big Medicine,...
There were times, even now, when Prosper tried to argue himself back into sardonic self-possession. "Pooh!" said his brain, "you were beside yourself over a loss and then you were...
Since the day he had heard that Harlan had appeared at the Star and had been taken into the outlaw band by Haydon, Deveny had exhibited fits of a sullen moroseness that had kept hi...
Bear Cat was a cow-town, still in its frankest, most exuberant youth. Big cattle outfits had settled on the river and ran stock almost to the Utah line. Every night the saloons and...
As Sam Lewiston backed the horse into the shafts of his backboard and began hitching the tugs to the whiffletree, his wife came out from the kitchen door of the house and drew near...
The Overland drew into Willets, coated from engine to observation with white dust. A porter, in strange contrast of neatness, flung open the vestibule, dropped his little carpeted...
He had already covered a good ten miles, and a large part of that through extremely rough going, but the black ran with his head as high as the moment he pulled out of Rickett that...
"Yuh out last night?" brusquely inquired Gabby, as they were dressing next morning. A direct question from the eccentric individual was so novel that Buck paused in buckling on his...
The bunkhouse of the Slash Lazy D received Bob Dillon gravely and with chill civility. He sat on his bunk that first evening, close enough to touch a neighbor on either hand, and w...
June turned away from the crowd surrounding the dead mad dog and walked into the hotel. The eyes of more than one man followed the slim, graceful figure admiringly. Much water had...
Because he could not persuade him to join in their drinking bouts, Stone nicknamed Curly the good bad man. "He's the prize tough in Arizona, only he's promised his ma not to look o...
Sandy again. Four of the days stipulated by Lieutenant Blakely had run their course. The fifth was ushered in, and from the moment he rode away from the bivouac at the tanks no wor...
The help which Lee Haines wanted, it turned out, was guidance across a difficult stretch of country which he and Buck Daniels wanted to prospect, and while he talked Barry listened...
We had been so expeditious, thanks largely to Joe's good judgment in tumbling into the right hole at the start when he slid down the shale, that we reached home well before sunset,...
It was August. "Old Turtle-back" was showing up at the diggin's and the river would reach low water-mark with less than half a foot. Pole in hand, big John Johnson of the crew stoo...
At exactly eleven o'clock Houck, Bandy Walker, and the big young cowpuncher who had ridden into town with them met at the corner of one of the freight wagons. Houck talked, the oth...
Red Linton had ridden eastward to examine the grass of the range in that direction, for it had been some days since he had sent Stroud to the southern range, and since the cattle h...
Slim rising first from dinner on the next day but one opened the door of the mess-house, and stood there idly picking his teeth before he went about his work. After a minute of lis...
Although the lower counties of southwest Texas are flat and badly watered, they possess a rich soil. They are favored, too, by a kindly climate, subtropic in its mildness. The days...
I One day at Nampa, which is in Idaho, a ruddy old massive jovial man stood by the Silver City stage, patting his beard with his left hand, and with his right the shoulder of a boy...