Big Laurel

Where the narrow, rocky road from Big Laurel Cove taps the main highway down the valley, a limpid trout stream refuses to give up its right of way and forces a ford. Here, one a...

When Captain Edward Allston, A.E.F., received his discharge from the army, he returned to his home in Baltimore to put up, as graciously as possible, with the fuss about his saf...

Bud Childers sat before the open fire in his log shack on Big Laurel Cove. He sat alone. It is not good for a man to be alone unless he is either poet or philosopher. Bud was ne...

It was little Tom Culley, weasel-faced and dirty, who, for a pint of moonshine whiskey offered by Bud, took to Roxie at the Howe bungalow one night the lying message that her mo...

Allston, at first, was not inclined to take the situation seriously. The scene, like an act of melodrama, was not sufficiently motivated to convince him. Here was a dark, scowli...

“He needs to know his man. Childers has no code. If he couldn’t shoot a man in front, he’d shoot him in the back. Such a chap has one idea and only one--to get his man; by fair...

In a cane-bottomed chair beside the threshold of the post-office--a flimsy board building owing all its distinction, like a dirty uniform, to the magic influence of those two le...

It was a dangerous fever--a fever bred of baffled desire, of jealousy, of hate. Since he had been old enough to stand on his two feet and fight back, he had never been bullied a...

For a few moments Bud Childers, safely hidden in the undergrowth, studied Allston as he sat within a few feet of Wilmer Howe in that sunlit cove on the side of Green Mountain. H...

For centuries philosophers have attempted to disentangle dreams from reality and to fix definite boundaries between the two. They have not found it easy. It is doubtful whether,...

It was not often that Wilmer remained long awake after retiring to her room. Her days came to a calm and untroubled close with the first approach of drowsiness. The problems whi...

A rain lasting three days delayed Bud Childers. But with the cards he now held he could afford to wait. Moreover, he found himself interested in a new occupation. He could use t...

She crossed to the table and blew down the chimney. It was necessary to blow twice. Then she made for the stairs that opened from the kitchen to the rear room she occupied.

Allston talked rather more than usual that evening and he laughed often. But he was strangely restless. At least a half-dozen times he rose abruptly from his chair and walked ab...

Allston blew out the big lamp on the table and sank down in a chair before the open fire. He was tired neither physically nor mentally. And yet in some ways he was glad to be al...

Allston, from where he stood outside the shack, had Childers within range, and as he saw the big fellow standing before the shrinking figure of Roxie, he was tempted to shoot. H...

In the dark hall, bound hand and foot, Bud Childers lay flat on his back staring into Hell. In the old days of the Spanish Inquisition devilish minds spent days of thought in de...

Roxie Kester had ridden up here this evening sitting behind Bud and holding to the man’s big shoulders to keep from falling. Bud had kept the mare to a walk and they had journey...

Bud had escaped. That was the meaning of the flickering lamp. And Roxie understood well the danger to Allston of standing exposed, after this, in a lighted room. Bud’s gun was h...

Bud, after making his escape, ran down the mountain road to the home of Roge Carver, where he borrowed a rifle and ammunition. Roge loaned both without either question or commen...

Allston did not minimize the danger of his situation. He knew that the odds were against him and that those odds increased with every passing hour. After dawn his chances of get...

It was half-past nine when Wilmer left Allston alone in front of the open fire and went upstairs. And though it was after midnight before she fell asleep, she had not then heard...

The fact that Allston had gone last night and had not yet returned was as convincing proof to Wilmer of some mishap to him as a direct message would have been. Had he accomplish...

At the sharp, staccato crack of Bud’s rifle Roxie had sprung from the cabin. She was out before Allston fell. But as he fell, she fell too. Her legs gave way and a dark cloud se...

A man may look dead, and yet by no means be dead; a man may be very close to the borderland of death, and yet, if he has not actually crossed, may be dragged back by the strong...

Bud had never heard a woman cry as Roxie cried. He had heard them whine and heard them lament and seen their faces grow stolid with grief, but that was all in the day’s work. He...

Before she grasped the full meaning of his words, he was across the threshold and in the open, his gun half-raised, his eyes full upon the eyes of Bud Childers.