Category: Adventure

A Man in the Open

Except the Bear, who is no more, the characters appearing in this volume wish me to say that their breaches of etiquette, homicides, etc., are all original sins. Their infirmities of body, soul, and spirit are their own, not mimicry of yours, not a caricature of your friend, y...

Chapters

1. PART I

2. PART II

3. PART III

Except the Bear, who is no more, the characters appearing in this volume wish me to say that their breaches of etiquette, homicides, etc., are all original sins. Their infirmiti...

4. CHAPTER I

If I wrote this yarn myself, I'd make it good and red from tip to tip, claws out, teeth bare, fur crawling with emotions. It wouldn't be dull, no, or evidence.

5. CHAPTER II

Cap'n Mose of the _Zedekiah W. Baggs_ 'e was a Sunday Christian. All up along 'e'd wear a silk hat, the only one on the Labrador. Yes. Sundays 'e'd be ashore talkin' predestinat...

6. CHAPTER III

Same with me, setting on the beach, with a cap, jersey, overalls, sea boots, paper bag of peanuts, beached wreck of the old _Pawnticket_ in front, and them two graves astern. Go...

7. CHAPTER IV

The Labrador was good to me, the sea was better, the stock range--wall, I'd four years punching cows, and I'm most surely grateful. Thar's plenty trades outside my scope of life...

8. CHAPTER V

Among the Indians, before a boy gets rated warrior, he goes alone afoot, naked, starvin', thirsty, way off to the back side of the desert. Thar he just waits, suns, weeks, maybe...

9. CHAPTER I

My horse was hungry, and wanted to get back to the ranch. I was hungry too, but dared not go. I had left my husband lying drunk on the kitchen floor, and when he woke up it woul...

10. CHAPTER II

N.B.--Mr. Smith, while living alone, had a habit of writing long letters to his mother. After his mother's death the habit continued, but as the letters could not be sent by mai...

11. CHAPTER III

Jesse argues that there's nothing to boast of in the way he saved me. Horse and rifle are like feet to run with, hands to fight with, part of his life. "Now, if I'd rode a giraf...

12. CHAPTER IV

Of his life before he reached this province Jesse will so far tell me nothing, yet his speech betrays him, for under the vivid dialect of the stock range, there is a streak of s...

13. CHAPTER V

Mother, I'm married. I thought I'd got bliss by the horns, but seems I've not roped what I throwed for, and what I've caught is trouble. I wish you weren't in Heaven, which feel...

14. CHAPTER VI

We have started a visitor's book. It opens with press cuttings of interviews with Professor Bohns, the famous archaeologist, who came to examine the paleolithic deposits at Sout...

15. CHAPTER VII

While I made signal fires on the top of the cliff, Mr. Robber came to find out from my wife why for I hadn't called to leave my card at the South Cave. He's picturesque, says sh...

16. CHAPTER VIII

Being married to a lady, and full of dumb yearnings for reform, I axed Dale when he was down to Vancouver to dicker for a book on etiquette. _Deportment for Gents_ being threw a...

17. CHAPTER IX

With creditors, women, robbers, and everything dangerous, you want to be chuck full of deportment, smooth as old Honeypott, and a whole lot tactful. Anything distractful or scre...

18. CHAPTER X

At Hundred Mile House the long table had been removed from the dining hall, the benches set back to the log walls, and at the head of the room an enormous Union Jack draped a ve...

19. CHAPTER XI

Both Jesse and I have a habit of committing our thoughts to paper and not to speech. Things written can be destroyed, whereas things said stay terribly alive. I think if other h...

20. CHAPTER XII

I wonder how many persons live in Jesse's body? On the surface he is the rugged whimsical stockman, lazy, with such powers in reserve as would equip a first-class volcano. Sing...

21. CHAPTER XIII

Jesse allowed that the upper forest does look "sort of wolfy." He would post relays of ponies along the outward trail, so that he and McGee could ride the eighty miles back in a...

22. CHAPTER XIV

The book of our adventures which we began together, was to go on through all our years. We were too young to think how it must some time finish at our parting, that one of us tw...

23. CHAPTER I

The book is not finished. This book of Jesse's life and mine is not finished while she who set us asunder is allowed to live. "Vengeance is mine," saith the Lord, "I will repay....

24. CHAPTER II

This chapter is so difficult to start. It deals with a time when life had become impossible unless one could jump from here to Wednesday next, and thence to Monday fortnight. Of...

25. CHAPTER III

Please thank God for me and say I'm grateful. Tell the neighbor angels how little mothers having sons on earth are badly missed and grudged by hungering mortals. Prayers sent to...

26. CHAPTER IV

Mr. Tom Faulkner, his engineer, surveyed, then let contracts for temporary snow road, log buildings at the falls, and a telegraph line which would secure our business from being...

27. CHAPTER V

It was sixty degrees below zero. The moonlight lay in silver on the pines, the hundred-and-four-mile cabin, deep buried among the drifts, glittered along the eaves with icicles,...

28. CHAPTER VI

"And with regard to burial, it is my will that no money whatever shall be spent, but that my body, wrapped in the flag by right of her majesty's commission, shall be consigned t...