CHAPTER I IN THE DANGER ZONE She stood on the crown of the hill, silhouetted against a sky-line of deepest blue. Already the sun was sinking in a crotch of the plains which rolled to the horizon edge like waves of a great land sea. Its reflected fires were in her dark, stormy eyes. Its long, slanted rays were a spotlight for the tall, slim figure, straight as that of a boy. The girl's gaze was... more...

CHAPTER I GOING "IN" The midnight sun had set, but in a crotch between two snow-peaks it had kindled a vast caldron from which rose a mist of jewels, garnet and turquoise, topaz and amethyst and opal, all swimming in a sea of molten gold. The glow of it still clung to the face of the broad Yukon, as a flush does to the soft, wrinkled cheek of a girl just roused from deep sleep. Except for a... more...

CHAPTER I STEVE MAKES A MISTAKE Steve Yeager held his bronco to a Spanish trot. Somewhere in front of him, among the brown hill swells that rose and fell like waves of the sea, lay Los Robles and breakfast. One solitary silver dollar, too lonesome even to jingle, lay in his flatulent trouser pocket. After he and Four Bits had eaten, two quarters would take the place of the big cartwheel. Then would... more...

CHAPTER I CONCERNING A STREET TWELVE MILES LONG "I like yore outfit," Red Hollister grumbled. "You're nice boys, and good to yore mothers—what few of you ain't wore their gray hairs to the grave with yore frolicsome ways. You know yore business and you got a good cook. But I'm darned if I like this thing of two meals a day, one at a quarter to twelve at night and the other... more...

CHAPTER 1. ENTER "BEAR-TRAP" COLLINS She had been aware of him from the moment of his spectacular entrance, though no slightest sign of interest manifested itself in her indolent, incurious eyes. Indeed, his abundant and picturesque area was so vivid that it would have been difficult not to feel his presence anywhere, let alone on a journey so monotonous as this was proving to be. It had been... more...

CHAPTER 1 Of all the remote streams of influence that pour both before and after birth into the channel of our being, what an insignificant few—and these only the more obvious—are traceable at all. We swim in a sea of environment and heredity, are tossed hither and thither by we know not what cross currents of Fate, are tugged at by a thousand eddies of which we never dream. The sum of it all makes... more...

The ladies of St. James’s Go swinging to the play; Their footmen run before them With a “Stand by! Clear the way!” But Phyllida, my Phyllida! She takes her buckled shoon. When we go out a-courting Beneath the harvest moon. The ladies of St. James’s! They are so fine and fair, You’d think a box of essences Was broken in the air: But Phyllida, my Phyllida! The breath of heath and furze When... more...