Westerns Books

THE HOME-COMING OF CALUMET MARSTON Shuffling down the long slope, its tired legs moving automatically, the drooping pony swerved a little and then came to a halt, trembling with fright. Startled out of his unpleasant ruminations, his lips tensing over his teeth in a savage snarl, Calumet Marston swayed uncertainly in the saddle, caught himself, crouched, and swung a heavy pistol to a menacing poise.... more...

THE WATER-HOLE 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 panting lizard here and there, or a dust-gray jack-rabbit, startled from its covert, nothing animate stirred upon its face. High and motionless in the blinding sky a buzzard poised; long-tailed Mexican crows... more...

INTRODUCTION The life of Bret Harte divides itself, without adventitious forcing, into four quite distinct parts. First, we have the precocious boyhood, with its eager response to the intellectual stimulation of cultured parents; young Bret Harte assimilated Greek with amazing facility; devoured voraciously the works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Irving, Froissart, Cervantes, Fielding; and, with creditable... 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 It seemed that Father Anthony gathered all the warmth of the short northern summer and kept it for winter use, for his good nature was an actual physical force. From his ruddy face beamed such an ardent kindliness that people literally reached out towards him as they might extend their hands toward a comfortable fire. All the labors of his work as an Inspector of Jesuit institutions across... more...

THE ALL-IN-ONE Down through the Bad Lands the Little Missouri comes in long windings, white, from a distance, as a frozen river between the ash-gray hills. At its margin there are willows; on the small forelands, which flood in June when the mountain waters are released, cottonwoods grow, leaning toward the southwest like captives straining in their bonds, yearning in their way for the sun and winds of... more...

COMANCHE Coming to Comanche, you stopped, for Comanche was the end of the world. Unless, of course, you were one of those who wished to push the boundary-line of the world farther, to make homes in the wilderness where there had been no homes, to plant green fields in the desert where none had been before. In that case you merely paused at Comanche, like the railroad, to wait the turn of events. Beyond... more...

A POET WITHOUT HONORBefore I die, I'll ride the sky;I'll part the clouds like foam.I'll brand each star with the Rolling R,And lead the Great Bear home.I'll circle Mars to beat the cars,On Venus I will call.If she greets me fair as I ride the air,To meet her I will stall.I'll circle high—as if passing by—Then volplane, bank, and land.Then if she'll smile I'll stop... more...

GRIT "Mormon" Peters carefully shifted his weighty bulk in the chair that he dared not tilt, gazing dreamily at the saw-toothed mountains shimmering in the distance, sniffing luxuriously the scent of sage. "They oughter spell Arizona with three 'C's,'" he said. "Why?" asked Sandy Bourke, wiping the superfluous oil from the revolver he was meticulously cleaning.... more...

THE GRUB-STAKER I "There's gold in the Sierra Blanca country—everybody admits it," Sherman F. Bidwell was saying as the Widow Delaney, who kept the Palace Home Cooking Restaurant in the town of Delaney (named after her husband, old Dan Delaney), came into the dining-room. Mrs. Delaney paused with a plate of steaming potatoes, and her face was a mask of scorn as she addressed the group,... more...