Category: Historical Novels
Both inmates of the log cabin exchanged a meaning glance. Other movement made they none, save that each man extended an arm and reached down his Winchester rifle, which lay all ready to his hand on the heap of skins against which they were leaning. Within, the firelight glowed...
In silence the "medicine-man" prepared the great pipe, his lips moving in a magical incantation as he solemnly filled it. Then handing the stem to Vipan, who was seated on the r...
17. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN."Say, Vipan. Guess we'd better draw off out o' this for a bit. There's no call for us to help do police work just now, and we can't stand looking on. There'll be hair-lifting he...
21. CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.It was afternoon, and quiet had settled down upon the emigrants' camp once more. While its inmates were despatching their much-needed breakfasts Vipan and Oregon Dave had sallie...
35. CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE.In the villages of the hostiles time was of no account. Dancing and warlike exercises, gossip, story-telling and gambling, and hunting in the adjacent mountains, thus this great...
2. CHAPTER TWO.No idea is more repellent to the mind of a genuine Western man than that of siding with Indians against his own colour. Contested almost step by step, the opening up of the vast...
19. CHAPTER NINETEEN.Nearer, nearer, the sun sank down to the western peaks, and upon the wilderness rested the sweet and solemn stillness of the evening hour. Save the call of a bird at intervals w...
1. CHAPTER ONE.Both inmates of the log cabin exchanged a meaning glance. Other movement made they none, save that each man extended an arm and reached down his Winchester rifle, which lay all...
16. CHAPTER SIXTEEN.With all his failings, the Rev. Dudley Vallance had one redeeming point--he was excessively fond of his children; but it is probable that he loved his only son more than all the...
25. CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.Leaning against a waggon-wheel, lazily puffing at his pipe, his faithful Winchester ever ready to hand, the scout watched their approach as imperturbably as though he had parted...
33. CHAPTER THIRTY THREE.The morning after his arrival in the village of the hostiles Vipan was seated eating his breakfast in the lodge of his host, in company with the latter and one of his brothers,...
39. CHAPTER THIRTY NINE.The lonely ride looked ghostly and drear in the early dusk of the November afternoon. A chill and biting wind moaned through the covert, and now and again a pheasant or rabbit s...
5. CHAPTER FIVE."Right. Get on a hat then," is the reply, in a prompt and decisive, but not ungenial tone, and the head which had been thrust through the partially opened door disappears.
34. CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.If ever a spectacle of hell let loose was vouchsafed to mortal eye, assuredly it must have borne a strong family likeness to that presented by the Indian village, as Vipan and t...
6. CHAPTER SIX.A long, open valley, bounded on either side by flat, table-topped hills, and threaded by a broad but shallow stream, whose banks are fringed by a straggling belt of timber. Shel...
12. CHAPTER TWELVE."I know the chap you dropped," he said, "and he'll be no loss to this territory, nohow. He's one o' them desperate, hard-drinkin', cussin' bullies that a whole township--ay, and...
31. CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.When Vipan recovered consciousness he found himself unable to stir. A lariat rope was tightly coiled around him from head to foot, binding his arms to his sides, and rendering h...
11. CHAPTER ELEVEN.A dull, leaden-grey sky; a few stray feathery flakes floating upon the frosty air; an icebound stream; a dark serrated ridge rising to the heavens on the one hand; on the other...
29. CHAPTER TWENTY NINE."We must hope for the best. Meanwhile, my first care must be for your safety, so we must leave this spot at once. See what comes of allowing oneself to get careless. As a matter...
27. CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.Yet why should she have felt so, seeing that this was by no means the first time she had undertaken an expedition _a deux_ under her present escort? But somehow it seemed to her...
37. CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN.With the first lightening of dawn, the fugitive realised that it behoved him to exercise tenfold wariness. Save one brief halt to rest his steed, he had ridden the night through...
24. CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.There was his usual correspondence, all of which he knew at a glance, and tossed impatiently aside, and two or three missives in an unknown hand, which met with no greater atten...
38. CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT.Mr Vallance sat in his accustomed chair, thinking. His gaze would wander from the window to the blazing fire and back again, and the frown of anxiety deepened on his features. W...
13. CHAPTER THIRTEEN.It might have contained some five score dwellings, mainly of the log-hut order; a few frame houses, with real glazed windows figuring as the aristocratic and advanced representa...
28. CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.Winding along over the wide prairie came the string of great cumbrous vehicles, their white tilts gleaming in the morning sunshine, the monotonous creaking of their axles mingli...
23. CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.If Yseulte Santorex stood lost in amazement at this wholly unlooked-for meeting, there was really considerable excuse for some upsetting of her mental poise. Beyond a brief and...
8. CHAPTER EIGHT.Uncas and Wingenund are very pretty creations, but they represent the savage as he really is about as accurately as the Founder of Christianity represents the average Christian...
9. CHAPTER NINE.The room was a pleasant one, somewhat sombre perhaps--thanks to its panelling of dark oak--but the window commanded a lovely view of the Lant valley. Round the room stood cabine...
18. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.About a month later than the events just detailed, a solitary individual might have been descried occupying one of the high buttes overlooking a large tract of the northern buff...
20. CHAPTER TWENTY."Steady, boys. Here they come!" whispered Vipan, his eyes strained upon the point of a long narrow spit of scrub looming dark and indistinct in the heavy morning mist. Within th...
22. CHAPTER TWENTY TWO."A `tenderfoot,' and--`turned round'!" [Lost.] And the speaker hands his field-glass to his companion. The latter brings it to bear and gazes with interest upon the object under...
10. CHAPTER TEN.The clever author of "Mine is Thine" lays it down as an axiom that nothing so completely transforms the average sensible man into a consummate idiot for the time being as an _ar...
40. CHAPTER FORTY.Summer has come round once more, and again, amid all the glories of a cloudless evening, we stand beside the banks of the rippling Lant-- howbeit not without misgiving, for are...
32. CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.The sun rose. They had passed the intricate defiles of the Bad Lands, and were now threading the rugged and broken country beyond. Piled in chaotic confusion, the great peaks le...
36. CHAPTER THIRTY SIX.Vipan, left alone, felt drowsy, and kicking up the lodge fire into a blaze, rolled himself in a blanket and lay down in the long wicker basket which did duty as his bed. But sle...
3. CHAPTER THREE.It may seem strange that on the face of so forcible a demonstration of the treacherous disposition of their guest, yet a couple of hours after sunrise should see our friends sta...
4. CHAPTER FOUR.On the face of this assertion it is perhaps superfluous to state that the Rev. Dudley was a manifest failure in both capacities--superfluous because if this is not invariably th...
15. CHAPTER FIFTEEN.It is not wonderful, all things considered, that the citizens of Henniker, together with its fortuitous and floating population, should have been moved to such lengths as to res...
30. CHAPTER THIRTY.Not till they had covered at least two miles could Yseulte Santorex regain the slightest control over her recalcitrant steed. In fact, in her fatigue and nervousness it was as m...
14. CHAPTER FOURTEEN.The place, an inner room partitioned off from Murphy's saloon; the time, late evening; the speaker a tall, half-drunken ruffian in frowsy miner's dress; the spoken to, Vipan--wh...
26. CHAPTER TWENTY SIX."Something not quite right there--not quite right. No, sir," said the scout to himself, shaking his head softly as he furtively watched his companion. "And I reckon I can fix it...