Black Jack

The fine gray head, the hawklike, aristocratic face, and the superior manner of Waters procured him admission to many places where the ordinary man was barred. It secured him ad...

When she first glimpsed Bear Valley from the summits of the Blue Mountains, it seemed to her a small paradise. And as she rode lower and lower among the hills, the impression ga...

An hour's ride brought them to the environs of the little town. But it was already nearly the middle of night and the village was black; whatever life waked at that hour had bee...

When the door closed on her, Terry remained standing in the middle of the room watching the flame in the oil lamp she had lighted flare and rise at the corner, and then steady d...

That scent of smoke was a clear proof that there was an open way through the loft to the room of the bank below them. But would the opening be large enough to admit the body of...

It was some time before Terry could sleep, though it was now very late. When he put out the light and slipped into the bed, the darkness brought a bright flood of memories of th...

Looking back, he could understand everything easily. The horse was the main objective of Pollard. He had won the money so as to tempt Terry to gamble with the value of the blood...

"Forbid Terry?" she echoed, and then smiled. Decidedly this was her first tone, a soft tone that came from deep in her throat. Instinctively Vance contrasted it with the way she...

"It don't mean nothing," Pollard hastened to assure Terry. "It don't mean a thing in the world except that she's a fool girl. The queerest, orneriest, kindest, strangest, wildes...

So turned, Terry could not see her clearly. He caught a glimmer of red bronze hair, dark in shadow and brilliant in high lights, and a sheen of greenish eyes. Otherwise, he only...

When they reached the front porch, they saw Terence Colby coming up the terrace from the river road on Le Sangre. And a changed horse he was. One ear was forward as if he did no...

Elizabeth left the ordering of the guests at the table to Vance, and she consulted him about it as they went into the dining room. It was a long, low-ceilinged room, with more w...

There had been a profound reason behind the sudden turning of Terry Hollis's horse and his riding down the hill. For as he sat the saddle, quivering, he felt rising in him an al...

Terry left the hotel more gloomy than he had been even when he departed from the ranch that morning. The certainty of Denver that he would find it impossible to stay by his prog...

Twenty-four years made the face of Vance Cornish a little better-fed, a little more blocky of cheek, but he remained astonishingly young. At forty-nine the lumpish promise of hi...

Terence Hollis had gone out of the room and up the stairs like a man stunned or walking in his sleep. Not until he stepped into the familiar room did the blood begin to return t...

It was characteristic of the two that when the uproar broke out Vance Cornish raised his eyes, but went on lighting his pipe. Then his sister Elizabeth ran to the window with a...

A moment later, from the side door which led from the store into the main body of the hotel, stepped the chunky form of Denver Pete, quick and light of foot as ever. He went str...

Gainor's dignity split the force of their rush. They recoiled as water strikes on a rock and divides into two meager swirls. And when one or two went past him on either side, he...

It was as if a gate which had hitherto been closed against him in the Pollard house were now opened. They no longer held back from Terry, but admitted him freely to their counse...

She spoke as she whirled from her chair to her feet. It was strange to see her direct all her attention to Slim, when Phil Marvin seemed the one about to draw.

Down the Bear Creek road Terence Hollis rode as he had never ridden before. To be sure, it was not the first time that El Sangre had stretched to the full his mighty strength, b...

"I was saying," proceeded the sheriff, "that they scared their babies in these here parts with the name of Jack Hollis. Which they sure done. Well, sir, he was bad."

The sleep of the night seemed to blot out the excitement of the preceding evening. A bright sun, a cool stir of air, brought in the next morning, and certainly calamity had neve...

The first thing the people in Pollard's big house knew of the return of the two was a voice singing faintly and far off in the stable--they could hear it because the door to the...

It made Terry thoughtful for reasons which he himself did not understand. He had a peculiar desire to climb into the saddle on El Sangre and trail her across the hills. But he w...

But while he had been working at a distance, things had been going on apace at the ranch, a progress which had now gathered such impetus that he found himself incapable of check...

Terry did not come down for dinner. It was more or less of a calamity, for the board was quite full of early guests for the next day's festivities. Aunt Elizabeth shifted the bu...

"I got a name around here for keeping my mouth shut and not butting in on another gent's game. But I always noticed that when a gent is in a losing run, half the time he don't k...

There were not many guests. Elizabeth had chosen them carefully from families which had known her father, Henry Cornish, when, in his reckless, adventurous way, he had been layi...

"There was a great deal of talk," said Vance--he must make doubly sure of Terence now. "And they even started a little lynching party. But we stopped all that. Gainor made a ver...

The door had hardly closed on him when Terence wanted to run after him and call him back. There was a thrill still running in his blood since the time the yegg had leaned so clo...

She went straight down to the big living room and drew Vance away, mindless of her guests. He came humming until he was past the door and in the shadowy hall. Then he touched he...

"Not back to the house!" said Denver with an oath, when they straightened back to the house of Pollard. "That's the first place McGuire will look, after what you said to him the...

The talk was fitful in the living room. Elizabeth Cornish did her best to revive the happiness of her guests, but she herself was a prey to the same subdued excitement which sho...

There was no exuberant joy to meet this suggestion. McGuire had, as a matter of fact, made his territory practically crime-proof for so long that men had lost interest in planni...

Vance's work was not by any means accomplished. Rather, it might be said that he was in the position of a man with a dangerous charge for a gun and no weapon to shoot it. He sta...

He froze in his place, staring straight before him; but Terry gathered an impression of the most intense watchfulness--as though, while he stared straight before him, he had sen...

There was an astonishing deal of life in the town, however. A large company had reopened some old diggings across the range to the north of Calkins, and some small fragments of...