Desert Dust

What with assorting and stowing the bales of cloth and the other goods in the Jenks two wagons, watering the animals and staking them out anew, tinkering with the equipment and...

What shall I say of a young man like myself, fresh from the green East of New York and the Hudson River, landed expectant as just aroused from a dream of rare beauty, at this Be...

Again we broke camp. We rolled down from the plateau into that wizard basin lying all beautiful and slumberous and spell-locked like some land of heart's desire. We replenished...

From this hour's brief camp, early made, we should have turned southward, to leave the railroad line and cross country for the Overland Stage trail that skirted the southern edg...

With that he went forward. So did I; but the barricade at the end of My Lady's seat was intact, and I sat down in my own seat, to keep expectant eye upon her profile--a decided...

"I'll remember the Queen," said I; and with the envelope smirching my flesh I stepped out, holding my head as high as though my pockets contained something of more value.

The hotel lamps were being lighted by the gnome porter. When I stepped outside twilight had deepened into dusk, the air was almost frosty, and this main street had been made gar...

The sun had set and all the golden twilight was hazy with the dust suspended in swirl and strata over the ugly roofs. In the canvas-faced main street the throng and noise had in...

I was more than ever convinced of her wisdom in choice of garb when in early morning I glimpsed her with the two other women at the Adams fire; for, bright-haired and small, she...

The counsel to don a garb smacking less of the recent East struck me as sound; for although I was not the only person here in Eastern guise, nevertheless about the majority of t...

We found a small table, one of the several devoted to refreshments for the dancers, in a corner and unoccupied. The affair upon the floor was apparently past history--if it meri...

The train had started amidst clangor of bell and the shouts of good-bye and good-luck from the crowd upon the station platform. We had rolled out through train yards occupied to...

The Sioux had quieted. They let the hollow alone, tenanted as it was with death; there was for us a satisfaction in that tribute to our defense. Quite methodically, and with cru...

In the estimate of the affable brakeman (a gentleman wearing sky-blue army pantaloons tucked into cowhide boots, half-buttoned vest, flannel shirt open at the throat, and upon h...

More of a crowd was here; the voice of the spieler more insistent, yet low-pitched and businesslike. He was a study--a square-shouldered, well set-up, wiry man of olive complexi...

They were indistinguishable except as vocal sounds deadened by the impeding fog; but human voices they certainly were. Throwing off her robe she abruptly sat up, seeking, her fe...

"Keep out of sight," she panted. And--"Oh, why did you do it? Why did you? I think you killed him--they'll never forgive. They'll call it treachery. You're lost, lost."

We had camped well beyond a last bunch of the red-shirted graders, so that the thread of a trail wended before, lonely, sand-obscured, leading apparently nowhere, through this d...

The directions had been plain. With the North Star and the moon as our guides we scarcely could fail to strike the stage road where it bore off from the mountains northward into...

So there I stood, amidst silence, gaping foolishly, breathing hard, my revolver smoking in my fingers and my enemy in a shockingly prone posture at my feet, gradually reddening...

A note from a pretty woman always is a potential thing, no matter in what humor it may have been received. The mere possession titillates; and although the contents may be most...

It was six weeks later, with My Lady all recovered and I long since healed, and Fort Bridger pleasant in our memories, when we two rode into Benton once more, by horse from the...