A Man in the Open

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....

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...

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...

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...

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.

"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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...