Nan of Music Mountain

Nothing in nature, not even the storm itself, is so cruel as the beauty of the after calm. In the radiance of the sunshine next day de Spain, delirious and muttering, was taken...

From a car window at Sleepy Cat may be seen, stretching far down into the southwest a chain of towering peaks, usually snow-clad, that dominate the desert in every direction for...

She stood beside the rock from which the ledge was reached from below, and as if she had just stepped up into sight. Her rifle was so held in both hands that it could be fired f...

Sleepy Cat is not so large a place that one would ordinarily have much trouble in finding a man in it if one searched well. But Duke Morgan drove into town next morning and had...

Lefever, if there was a table in the room, could never be got to sit on a chair; and being rotund he sat preferably sidewise on the edge of the table. One of his small feet--his...

A grizzly bear hidden among the haystacks back of the corral would have given Nan much less anxiety than de Spain secreted in the heart of the Morgan stronghold. But as she hurr...

Sleepy Cat has little to distinguish it in its casual appearance from the ordinary mountain railroad town of the western Rockies. The long, handsome railroad station, the eating...

Scott was called by Lefever to conclude in secret the final arrangements. The ground about the quaking asp grove, and nearest El Capitan, afforded the best concealment close to...

It was well along toward midnight of the same day when two horsemen, after having ridden circumspectly around the outbuildings and corrals, dismounted from their horses at some...

The house in the Gap that had sheltered Nan for many years seemed never so empty as the night she left it with de Spain. In spite of his vacillation, her uncle was deeply attach...

One week went to repairs. To a man of action such a week is longer than ten years of service. But chained to a bed in the Sleepy Cat hospital, de Spain had no escape from one we...

The abduction of Sassoon, which signalized de Spain's entry into the stage-line management, created a sensation akin to the exploding of a bomb under the range. The whole mounta...

There were hours in that night that each had reason long to remember; a night that seemed to bring them, in spite of their devotion, to the end of their dream. They parted late,...

With a sudden, low command to Sassoon to check his horse, and without a movement that could be detected in the dawn ten yards away, de Spain with the thumb and finger of his rig...

De Spain, when he climbed into Sassoon's saddle, was losing sight and consciousness. He knew he could no longer defend himself, and was so faint that only the determination of p...

The mutterings above the mountains now grew rapidly louder and while the two hovered over the fire, a thunder-squall, rolling wildly down the eastern slope, burst over the Gap....

Nan reached her room in a fever of excitement, angry at de Spain, bitterly angry at Gale, angry with the mountains, the world, and resentfully fighting the pillow on which she c...

De Spain took both her hands. He held them against his breast and stood looking into her eyes. When he regarded her in such a way her doubts and fears seemed mean and trivial. H...

Even as the big fellow stepped lightly just inside and to the left--as de Spain stood--of the door and faced him, the encounter seemed to de Spain accidental. While Sandusky was...

He was willing, after a long and bootless search, to confess to himself that he would rather see Nan Morgan for one minute than all women else in the world for a lifetime. The o...

De Spain joined his associates at dark outside the Gap. Neither Sassoon nor his friends had been seen. The night was still, the sky cloudless, and as the three men with a led ho...

With never such apprehension, never such stealth, never so heavy a secret, so sensible a burning in cheek and eye, as when she tiptoed into her uncle's room at midnight, Nan's h...

Without going in to speak to Gale, whom Bull Page, his nurse, reported very cross but not hurt much, Nan left her packet for him and rode home. Her uncle Duke was in town. She h...

They parted that evening under the shadow of Music Mountain. Nan believed she could at least win her Uncle Duke over from any effort of Gale's to coerce her. Her influence over...

Pushing his way hastily forward when he could make haste; crawling slowly on his hands and knees when held by opposing rock; feeling for narrow footholds among loose and treache...

It was a forbidding night. Moisture-laden clouds, drifting over the Superstition Range, emptied their fulness against the face of the mountains in a downpour and buried the Gap...

They had not underestimated the danger from Sassoon's suspicious malevolence. He returned next morning to read what further he could among the rocks. It was little, but it spell...

With the desperation of a joy born of despair she laid her burning cheek hysterically against his cheek. She rained kisses on his ice-crusted brows and snow-beaten eyes. Her arm...

They confronted each other blankly. To Nan's confusion was added her embarrassment at her personal appearance. Her hat was wet, and the limp shoulders of her khaki jacket and th...

He had ridden the trail but a short time when it led him in a wide angle backward and around toward Calabasas, and he found, presently, that the men he was riding after were app...

Few men bear suspense well; de Spain took his turn at it very hard. For the first time in his life he found himself braved by men of a type whose defiance he despised--whose law...

Nothing more than de Spain's announcement that he would sustain his stage-guards was necessary to arouse a violent resentment at Calabasas and among the Morgan following. Some o...

"I don't want any man to go into the Gap with me this morning under any misunderstanding or any false pretense," he began cheerfully. "Bob Scott and Bull will stay right here. I...

Beyond giving his horse a safe headway from the shelter, de Spain made little effort to guide her. He had chosen the Lady, not because she was fresher, for she was not, but beca...