Lonesome Land

Polycarp Jenks came ambling into the coulee, rapped perfunctorily upon the door-casing, and entered the kitchen as one who feels perfectly at home, and sure of his welcome; as w...

A house, it would seem, is almost the least important part of a ranch; one can camp, with frying pan and blankets, in the shade of a bush or the shelter of canvas. But to do any...

The blackened prairie was fast hiding the mark of its fire torture under a cloak of tender new grass, vividly green as a freshly watered, well-kept lawn. Meadow larks hopped her...

The fire had been burning a possible half-hour when Kent, jogging aimlessly toward a log ridge with the lazy notion of riding to the top and taking a look at the country to the...

For more than two hours Kent sat outside in the shade of the house, and stared out over the black desolation of the coulee. His horse was gone, so that he could not ride anywher...

Kent jerked open the stable door, led in his horses, turned them into their stalls, and removed the saddles with quick, nervous movements which told plainly how angry he was.

In northern Montana there lies a great, lonely stretch of prairie land, gashed deep where flows the Missouri. Indeed, there are many such--big, impassive, impressive in their ve...

A calamity expected, feared, and guarded against by a whole community does sometimes occur, and with a suddenness which finds the victims unprepared in spite of all their elabor...

“No, I must see Manley before I can tell you whether we shall want to stay or not,” she replied to Arline's insistence that she “go right up to a room” and lie down. “I feel qui...

“Well, old-timer, how you coming? You sure do sleep sound--this is the third time I've come to tell you breakfast is ready and then some. You'll get the bottom of the coffeepot,...

“And so,” Val finished, rather apathetically, pushing back the fallen lock of hair, “it has come to that. I can't remain here and keep any shred of self-respect. All my life I'v...

Kent Burnett, bearing over his arm a coat newly pressed in the Delmonico restaurant, dodged in at the back door of the saloon, threw the coat down upon the tousled bed, and push...

Hot sunlight, winds as hot, a shimmering heat which distorted objects at a distance and made the sky line a dazzling, wavering ribbon of faded blue; and then the dull haze of sm...

To Val the days of heat and smoke, and the isolation, had made life seem unreal, like a dream which holds one fast and yet is absurd and utterly improbable. Her past was pushed...

After two nights and a day of torment unbearable, Kent bolted from his work, which would have taken him that day, as it had done the day before, in a direction opposite to that...

For almost three years the letters from Manley had been headed “Cold Spring Ranch.” For quite as long Val had possessed a mental picture of the place--a picture of a gurgly litt...

With a blood-red sun at his back and a rosy tinge upon all the hills before him, Manley rode slowly down the western rim of Cold Spring Coulee, driving five rebellious calves th...

Quite as marked had been the change in Val that year. Every time Kent saw her, he recognized the fact that she was a little different; a little less superior in her attitude, a...

To saddle two horses when the night has grown black and to lead them, unobserved, so short a distance as two hundred yards or so seems a simple thing; and for two healthy young...

It was the middle of the next forenoon when Manley came riding home, sullen from drink and a losing game of poker, which had kept him all night at the table, and at sunrise sent...

Sunday it was, and Val had insisted stubbornly upon going back to the ranch; somewhat to her surprise, if one might judge by her face, Arline Hawley no longer demurred, but put...

“He thought it was I burned out that, brand; did you notice what he said?” Val, as frequently happens in times of stress, spoke first of a trivial matter, before her mind would...

To the east, to the south, to the north went the riders of the Wishbone, gathering the cattle which the fires had driven afar. No rivers stopped them, nor mountains, nor the dee...

At the brow of the hill, which was the western rim of the coulee, Kent turned and waved a farewell to Val, watching him wistfully from the kitchen door. She had wanted to go alo...