Bonanza: A story of the Gold Trail

In front of the long one-story adobe station a man waited, eyes turned to the west. His hand rested on the flat straight back of a spirited chestnut horse. Byers was small and w...

Placerville was busy as a hive of bees on a warm June afternoon. Its hotels and restaurants were crowded to capacity. The saloons were doing a rush business and the gambling hal...

Hugh McClintock drew his horse to a walk and skirted the base of a hill. He patted the shiny neck of the bay affectionately. The boy loved the mounts he rode. His life depended...

Mark Twain tells us that in the early Nevada days it gave a man no permanent satisfaction to shoot an enemy through both lungs, because the dry air was so exhilarating that the...

Through the throngs that crowded, not only the dilapidated sidewalks, but also the street itself, Scot guided his brother deftly toward the hotel. The whole appearance of the pl...

From every state and many nations the pioneers of California came, young, ardent, hopeful, strong. Round the Horn in clipper ships, across the fever-swept Isthmus, by way of the...

After what had just taken place at the Crystal Palace the bright sunshine of Nevada was welcome to both brothers. Inside the gambling house had been unwholesome excitement, pass...

A Washoe zephyr was playing impish tricks in Virginia City. It screamed down the side of Mt. Davidson in a gale of laughter, filling the air with the white powder of alkali dust...

The weeks passed, became months. Spring browned to summer and summer crisped to autumn. Hugh and Scot saw nothing of each other. The younger brother had given up riding and join...

The loyalty Mollie had cherished to her early ideal of marriage burned low for lack of fuel to feed upon. Her husband had practically deserted her. When he returned to camp it w...

Hugh wrote Scot from Aurora, where the boy was filling a wood contract. He proposed that Scot join him in the new camp. The older brother declined. He could not leave the neighb...

Hugh was no hero of romance, but a normal American youth whose education from childhood had fitted him to meet the emergencies that might confront him. The school of the frontie...

A letter from Scot delayed Hugh for a time from carrying out his intention of joining the army. The older brother wrote that he had been offered a commission and was anxious to...

The pink of apple blossoms was in Mollie’s cheeks, the flutter of a covey of quails in her blood. At the least noise her startled heart jumped. Sometimes it sang with a leaping...

Fortune picks her favourites strangely. While the McClintocks were away at the war Robert Dodson, incompetent and worthless, developed from a pauper to a millionaire. His was on...

Hugh strolled down Turkey Creek Avenue and lost himself in the crowd which filled the walks and jostled its overflow into the road. Piodie called itself a city, but it had as ye...

“When’s the funeral, Jim?” asked McClintock. “I’ll be there if it’s soon. Like to be right sure he’s buried. Don’t mind pilin’ a big flat rock on top o’ that single-breasted coa...

The owner of the printing plant looked the copy over a second time. “’Course, I’m not here to turn business away, Mr. McClintock, but—well, are the dodgers necessary? Wouldn’t t...

Hugh’s advertisement did not appear in the _Banner_ next morning. The editor had killed it as soon as he learned that its purpose was to annoy Dutch. He knew several safer amuse...

When he had finished his argument Hugh grinned. “May be here. May not. A fifty to one bet I’d call it, us on the short end. But that’s mining. No can tell. Might as well stick u...

The McClintocks decided after all not to put in a freight outfit to Piodie. The Dodsons beat them to it by putting in a large number of wagons as adjuncts to the stages they ran...

Vicky was enjoying herself tremendously. All her young life she had been chaperoned and directed. Teachers had watched over and instructed her. She had better do this; it was no...

With a swift movement of her supple body Vicky was on her knees beside the man. She slipped an arm under his head. Icy sleet encrusted his clothes. It clung in icicles to his ha...

Jim Budd had picked up a new song. Much to the relief of his sore-tried wife, he occasionally monotoned it in place of the Grimes catalogue of virtues and clothing.

It was generally recognized that the Republicans would carry the state that year. The war was still so near that it would have a determining influence on thousands of voters. Th...

While Hugh was still at the bedside of his brother he began to make arrangements for the thing he meant to do. Already he knew that Sam Dutch had left town. Word had come to him...

As the three friends hurried up Pine Nut Gulch toward the Katie Brackett the youngest of them reflected that the method of approach had been made smooth for him. It was not now...

Through the crowd at the mouth of the mine word flashed that the cage was coming up. All night they had waited there, the wives and children of the imprisoned miners, the reside...

Vicky, in her bedroom at Mrs. Budd’s, flogged herself with a whip of scorn. She had acted on imperative impulse, just as she used to do when she was a little girl. Her cheeks fl...

A boy rode up the street leading two saddled horses. He stopped in front of the Budd house, from which three persons emerged in answer to his shrill whistle. The lookout in the...

They found Scot still defying the predictions of the doctors by hanging on to the thread of life that tied him to this world. He was asleep when the travellers arrived. Within a...

Sulky, morose, sluggish as a saurian, Dutch lay in his cell and waited for deliverance. The weeks passed. The Dodsons sent him word to say nothing, that when the time came they...

The girl hesitated. “Hadn’t I better go with you?” she said. It was not necessary for her to say in words that she was afraid to leave the chaplain alone with Dutch. All three o...

The room with the bullet hole in the swing door at the Ormsby House had become a place of pilgrimage. The proprietor of the hotel and its patrons pointed it out with pride to st...

Miss Lowell, schoolmarm, sat in the parlour of her boarding house and corrected spelling papers. Across the lamplit table from her was Hugh McClintock. He was browsing through a...

“It’s an insult if these roughs are not being paid by you. Can you tell me that they’re not?” demanded Hugh, eyes cold as the steel-gray waters of Lake Tahoe on a wintry morning.

The McClintocks climbed the ridge and looked down into the park. It was filled with dead and down piñon. Two years before a fire had started there, had raged furiously for a day...

After night had fallen men drifted inconspicuously to the Pony Express Corral. They were armed, all of them with revolvers, two or three with rifles. If any one had studied the...

Scot was called back to Carson on official business, so that it was Hugh who entrained for Austin to join Browning on his search for evidence. In the old days of the pony expres...

But after full discussion, the Bald Knob mine owners decided to let the case go to the jury. They wanted to put the Dodsons on record in order to make stronger a criminal action...

Tommie the red-headed stayed after school to bring in kindling and a supply of piñon wood for the big drum stove in the centre of the room. Ever since his teacher had whipped hi...

Bald Knob hummed with activities. The Ground Hog was taking out quantities of rich ore. On Vicky’s claim the leasers had struck a vein which might or might not develop into a pa...

Vicky floated back to consciousness and a world that for a moment did not relate itself to her previous experience. Hugh McClintock’s arms were round her, his anxious face looki...

Robert Dodson, appalled at the horrible thing he had done, fled with his accomplice during the night. They reached Reno, were hidden on the outskirts of the town by a friend, an...