Westerns Books

THE MINERAL KINGDOM. The splendor of the world is due to mining and to the perfectness of man's ability to work the minerals which the mines supply. The fields of the world give men food; with food furnished, a few souls turn to the contemplation of higher things; but no grand civilization ever came to an agricultural people until their intellects were quickened by something beyond their usual... more...

CHAPTER I THE QUARRY "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 dangled his legs over the derrick pit. The derrick was out of commission because once more the lift cable had parted. Big Jim Manning, Little Jim's father, was down in the pit with Tomasso, his... more...

CHAPTER I THE TRIP IN THE ERMINIE The “Erminie,” private car of “Railway Boss, Dan Ford,” stood side-tracked at Denver, and his guests within it were the happy people whom, some readers may remember, we left keeping a belated Christmas in the old adobe on the mesa, in southern California. To Dorothy, the trip thus far had been like a wonderful dream. “Just think, Alfy Babcock, of owning a... more...

CHAPTER ONE THE POWER OF CONSOLATION At the first glance there appeared to be nothing unusual in the scene confronting Miss Jane Combs as she stood, broad and heavy, in her doorway that May morning, looking up and down the single street of the little Colorado mining-town. Jane's house was broad and heavy also—a rough, paintless "shack," which she had built after her own ideals on a... more...

THE BESETMENT OF KURT LIEDERS A SILVER rime glistened all down the street. There was a drabble of dead leaves on the sidewalk which was of wood, and on the roadway which was of macadam and stiff mud. The wind blew sharply, for it was a December day and only six in the morning. Nor were the houses high enough to furnish any independent bulwark; they were low, wooden dwellings, the tallest a bare two... more...

CHAPTER I THE UNCONQUERED LAND Bones. Bones of dead buffalo, bones of dead horses, bones of dead men. The tribute exacted by the Kansas prairie: bones. A waste of bones, a sepulcher that did not hide its bones, but spread them, exulting in its treasures, to bleach and crumble under the stern sun upon its sterile wastes. Bones of deserted houses, skeletons of men's hopes sketched in the dimming... more...

CHAPTER I THE GIRL FROM WYOMING Conscious that something had disturbed him, Wallie Macpherson raised himself on his elbow in bed to listen. For a full minute he heard nothing unusual: the Atlantic breaking against the sea-wall at the foot of the sloping lawn of The Colonial, the clock striking the hour in the tower of the Court House, and the ripping, tearing, slashing noises like those of a... more...

CHAPTER I. THE ARRIVAL AT BIG BONANZA.It was just about five o'clock in the afternoon of a cool day in autumn when Young Wild West and his friends rode into a little mining camp called Big Bonanza, which was situated in the heart of the range, known as the Silver Bend Mountains, Nevada. It was the first signs of anything like civilization that the party had seen in two days, and though there were... more...

I Before He Grew Up The little white “digger,” galloping with the stiff, short-legged jumps of the broken-down cow pony, stopped short as the boy riding him pulled sharply on the reins, and after looking hard at something which lay in a bare spot in the grass, slid from its fat back. He picked up the rock which had attracted his eye, and turned it over and over in his hand. His pockets bulged with... more...

THE BLOOD OF JEZEBEL The prognostication made by the citizens of Prouty that it was “gettin’ ready for somethin’” seemed about to be verified out on the sheep range twenty miles distant, for at five o’clock one afternoon the wind stopped as suddenly as it had arisen and heavy snow clouds came out of the northeast with incredible swiftness. Mormon Joe walked to the door of the cook tent and... more...