Hidden Creek

Hilliard's first messenger had been hindered by death. Several times it seemed that his second messenger would suffer the same grim prevention. But this second messenger was you...

All the vitality of Millings--and whatever its deficiencies the town lacked nothing of the splendor and vigor of its youth--throbbed and stamped and shook the walls of the Town...

Sheila stood and drew breath. The shadow of the high peak, in the lap of which she stood, poured itself eastward across the warm, lush, narrow land. This was different from the...

There came to the restaurant where Dickie worked, a certain sallow and irritable man, no longer in his early youth. He came daily for one of his three meals: it might be lunch o...

The lobby, empty of its crowd when Sheila passed through it on her way up to her rooms, was filled by a wheezy, bullying voice. In front of the desk a little barrel of a man wit...

Hilliard rode up along Hidden Creek on a frosty October morning. Everywhere now the aspens were torches of gold, the cottonwood trees smoky and gaunt, the ground bright with fal...

Babe tiptoed up the first flight, walked solidly and boldly up the second, and ran up the third. She had decided to have a talk with Sheila, to soothe her indignation, and, if p...

No sight more familiar to the corner of Main and Resident Streets than that of Sylvester Hudson's Ford car sliding up to the curb in front of his hotel at two o'clock in a summe...

Dickie Hudson pushed from him to the full length of his arm the ledger of The Aura Hotel, tilted his chair back from the desk, and, leaning far over to one side, set the needle...

In January a wind blew steadily from the east and snow came as if to bury them alive. The cabin turned to a cave, a small square of warmth under a mountain of impenetrable white...

Out of the Wyoming Bad Lands--orange, turquoise-green, and murky blue, of outlandish ridges, of streaked rock, of sudden, twisted cañons, a country like a dream of the far side...

Even in the shadow of after events, those first two months at Miss Blake's ranch swam like a golden galleon through Sheila's memory. Never had she felt such well-being of body,...

On that night, while all Millings was preparing itself for the Greelys' dance, while Dickie, bent close to his cracked mirror, was tying his least crumpled tie with not too stea...

Thatcher spoke to his horses, now fatherly, now masterly, now with a professorial sarcasm: "Come on, Monkey, there's a good girl! Get out of that, you Fox! Dern you! You call th...

The first misery of loneliness takes the form of a restless inability to concentrate. It is as if the victim wanted to escape from himself. After Cosme's departure Sheila prowle...

Winter snapped at Hidden Creek as a wolf snaps, but held its grip as a bulldog holds his. There came a few November days when all the air and sky and tree-tops were filled with...

Hilliard carried Sheila into the house that he had built for her and laid her down in that big bedroom that "got the morning sun." For a while it seemed to him that she would ne...

"Why, girl! This isn't very pleasant for me. I aimed to make you happy when I brought you out to Millings. I kind of wanted to work myself into your Poppa's place, kind of meant...

Dickie's room in The Aura Hotel was fitted in between the Men's Lavatory and the Linen Room. It smelt of soiled linen and defective plumbing. Also, into its single narrow window...

So Sheila Arundel left the garret where the stars pressed close, and went with Sylvester Hudson out into the world. It was, that morning, a world of sawing wind, of flying paper...

The social life of Rusty, already complicated by the necessity it was under to atone for a mistake, was almost unbearably discomposed by the arrival of a strange lady. This was...

Back of his sallow, lantern-jawed face, Sylvester Hudson hid successfully, though without intention, all that was in him whether of good or ill. Certainly he did not look his hi...

These exclamations called in a resonant, deep-chested voice succeeded at last in attracting Sheila's attention. She had lingered at the alley's mouth, shirking her entrance into...

The next morning, it seemed Miss Blake's humor had completely changed. It showed something like an apologetic softness. She patted Sheila's shoulder when she passed the girl at...

A hot, dry day followed on the cool dawn. In his room Dickie lay across his bed. The sun blazed in at his single long window; the big flies that had risen from the dirty yard bu...

There was a light of dawn in the room and through the open window blew in the keen air of daybreak. Dickie was standing quite still in the middle of the floor. He was more neat...

The city rippled into light. It bloomed, blossom on blossom, like some enchanted jungle under the heavy summer sky. Dickie sat on a bench in Washington Square. He sat forward, h...

On the studio skylight the misty autumn rain fell that night, as the snow fell against Sheila's window-panes, with a light tapping. Below it Dickie worked. He had very little le...

Just before his death, Marcus Arundel, artist and father of Sheila, bore witness to his faith in God and man. He had been lying apparently unconscious, his slow, difficult breat...

I. SHEILA'S LEGACY II. SYLVESTER HUDSON COMES FOR HIS PICTURE III. THE FINEST CITY IN THE WORLD IV. MOONSHINE V. INTERCESSION VI. THE BAWLING-OUT VII. DISH-WASHING VIII. ARTISTS...

I. THE HILL II. ADVENTURE III. JOURNEY'S END IV. BEASTS V. NEIGHBOR NEIGHBOR VI. A HISTORY AND A LETTER VII. SANCTUARY VIII. DESERTION IX. WORK AND A SONG X. WINTER XI. THE PACK...