Cat o' mountain

Savage, sinister, yet appallingly human--like the malevolent squall of an infuriated hag--the cry tore through the night shadows whelming the mountain-girt gulf of the Traps. Am...

“Yes, you!” she flared. “Think you’re smart, don’t you? Mebbe you think us folks are a lot of numbskulls, but we ain’t. And seein’ you jest helped me out of a fix, I’ll tell you...

From the far-off crests of the Berkshires light leaped athwart the silvery Hudson and smote the frowning cliffs of the Great Wall of the Wallkill Valley: a grim gray precipice s...

“Don’t you touch him!” blazed Marion. “Don’t you put a hand onto him or I’ll--I’ll use that gun onto you! I might have knowed you was lyin’--if I’d knowed Steve was out I’d neve...

Up on the brink of Dickie Barre, on a triangular outcrop of stone bare of brush but topped by whispering pines, Douglas lounged in luxurious content, basking in the mellow warmt...

Douglas deliberately swung the pack from his back and dropped it. Against it he leaned his gun, making sure, as he did so, that he had restored the safety-lock. As he faced Snak...

Along the Clove road plodded a man with a battered face and a torn shirt, toting a pack and a gun. The face was not so much disfigured as it had been awhile ago, for it had just...

Up on the heights, the light of day still was bright and clear. But down in the bluff-bulwarked valley of the Coxing Kill, a thousand feet lower than the Minnewaska table-land b...

A long minute dragged by while Douglas stood there, the drone of the crickets gnawing at his nerves. Then he pounced at the lamp and bounded up the stairs. At the top he halted...

A week ago, swollen by the deluge of the equinox, the Kill had ramped and roared through this glen, overwhelming both the shallows and the depths in brawling, swirling flood. Bu...

At the edge of the water, beside a little bridge spanning the Kill, Douglas sat on a stone and leisurely chewed at a sandwich. It was an hour since he had bidden Marion good-bye...

“Oh, yas, it’s true ’nough. I’m Lou Brackett,” she admitted sullenly. “An’ jest ’cause I stop to say ‘howdy’ ye go an’ git me into this! I’m in for it now. Cuss the luck!”

Standing there in the doorway, Douglas watched the eyes of the two strangers shift rapidly over him, taking him in from clean-shaven face to laced boots, then returning to the s...

Again and again the man-hunter stabbed at the hay, moving about with each new attack, lunging more viciously as his searching prods brought no result. Douglas felt a little chil...

In guarded tones Douglas outlined the ruse which had saved Steve. As he finished he strode out to the side of the road and looked down it. The two man-hunters still were in sigh...

One by one the October days and nights stole in from the nebulous realm of To-morrow and, like pearls magically taking form on an enchanted thread of gold, added themselves to t...

Rain drizzled monotonously down on the Traps; cold, raw rain swept slantwise by wind. Along Mohonk and the Great Wall crawled clammy fog, blinding all vision and chilling all fl...

Moving rapidly about, Douglas inspected his real bedroom and the spidery attic, finding his bough-tip couch undisturbed and the upper room empty. Back in the main room, he glowe...

Three days of raw chill, leaden cloud, and numbing wind rolled past. No more rain fell, but, except by fitful gleams, no sun shone. Through each gray day the dying leaves flutte...

Along a dim, winding trail, through baffling undergrowth and around half-buried blocks of stone and over prostrate tree-trunks, a man and a maid passed in silence. Under foot th...

Douglas pushed off his hat and ran a hand through his hair, puzzling over what to do now. Despite Marion’s prediction, he had not seriously considered the possibility of an infl...

Nigger Nat lay in his grave, if grave it could be called; a hastily dug hole into which he had been rolled like a dead skunk. No pretense of ceremony, and certainly none of mour...

Douglas felt his hair lift and his skin prickle, ice-cold. But he knocked the door wide and plunged out. In the moonshine stood no horrible figure. The noise was coming from the...

Out of the west they came, a slow, silent, grim array of clouds, drifting steadily above the puny barrier of the mountains, covering the sky from rim to rim--a vast army which a...

Once more he was among the rocks. But these grotesque bulks around him were new; he never had penetrated into this group before. In fact, but for his careful observation of ever...

Aghast, Douglas stood in his dark doorway, staring down into the upturned face of Marion. Around them the dusk was thickening into night, and in the shadow of his porch it was d...

For one fleeting second the pair stood as if petrified. For the same time Snake halted as if blinded. Coming from the outer dark, he had sprung straight into the brightest beam...

Snake reached the doorway. But he went no farther. With the all-concealing darkness before his eyes--something struck him. An arm swooped under his jaw, yanking fiercely back on...

Three men straightened up and turned slowly away from a shot-riddled thing which also had been a man. Their gaze centered on another motionless form a few feet away, its thin ha...

Brilliant morning sunlight flooded the dingy kitchen-dining-living-room of the Oaks house. Late though the season was, the southward-rising sun now lit up the interior more clea...