Westerns Books

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 A GENTLEMAN RANKER Dan McLagan shifted his cigar, and his face lit with a grin of satisfaction. “Seventy-five per cent, of calves,” he murmured, glancing out at the sunlit yards. “Say, it’s been an elegant round-up.” Then his enthusiasm rose and found expression. “It’s the finest, luckiest ranch in Montana––in the country. Guess I’d be within my rights if I said ‘in the... 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 I It was just at sunset that the train which had crawled across the desert drew up, puffing and panting, before the village of Paloma, not many miles from the Salton Sea. After a moment's delay, one lone passenger descended. Paloma was not an important station. Rudolf Hanson, the one passenger, whom either curiosity or business had brought thither, stood on the platform of the little... more...

THE BIG SNOW. "We're going to have snow to-night!" Ted Strong, leader of the broncho boys, was sitting on the back of Sultan, his noble little black stallion, on the ridge of a prairie swell, looking at a lowering sky. Out of the northwest a chilling wind, damp and raw, was sweeping dull-gray clouds before it. Ted had addressed his remark to Bud Morgan, his chum and able lieutenant, who... more...

CHAPTER I "All ready, Miss Welse, though I'm sorry we can't spare one of the steamer's boats." Frona Welse arose with alacrity and came to the first officer's side. "We're so busy," he explained, "and gold-rushers are such perishable freight, at least—" "I understand," she interrupted, "and I, too, am behaving as though I were perishable.... more...

PROLOGUE The sun was westering over Ike Brandon’s ranch at Twin Forks. It was the first year of a new century when the old order was giving place to the new. Yet there was little to show the change that had already begun to take place in the old West. The desert still stretched away drearily to the south where it ended against the faint, dim line of the Esmeralda Mountains. To the north it stretched... more...

I. RED LAKE Shefford halted his tired horse and gazed with slowly realizing eyes. A league-long slope of sage rolled and billowed down to Red Lake, a dry red basin, denuded and glistening, a hollow in the desert, a lonely and desolate door to the vast, wild, and broken upland beyond. All day Shefford had plodded onward with the clear horizon-line a thing unattainable; and for days before that he had... more...

Riding at ease in the lazy afternoon sunshine a single troop of cavalry was threading its way in long column of twos through the bold and beautiful foothills of the Big Horn. Behind them, glinting in the slanting rays, Cloud Peak, snow clad still although it was late in May, towered above the pine-crested summits of the range. To the right and left of the winding trail bare shoulders of bluff, covered... more...