Out of the blue

Once upon a time, as the old tales used to begin, a young man came riding down the main street of Fort Worth in the sovereign State of Texas. He was mounted on a bright sorrel h...

East and west across the flat face of Nebraska runs a river, which needs no naming, looping, like a great watery rope, the Rocky Mountains and its ultimate confluence with the B...

When the sun flung its Midas touch across the Nebraska plains the morning after what was but an episode in Clark’s Ford, it struck a ruddy sheen on the sorrel horse Rock Hollowa...

Rock knew where he was going and why. But it was not on the cards that his course was to be direct. Halfway between Milk River and the Marias he rode down a coulee in search of...

Birds twittering in the poplars and willows by the river wakened Rock when the rose-pink dawn was turning to gold. He lay watching, listening. He could hear the ripple of runnin...

Some minutes later he heard her stirring in the house. The sun grows hot early on the plains in midsummer. Rock had planted himself on the porch steps, in the shade, debating hi...

Rock’s horse splashed knee-deep through the sparkling Marias, where it raced down a long, pebbled stretch to foam into a black pool. The draw indicated by Nona opened a yawning...

Under his ready laugh and effervescent smile, Charlie Shaw gave the impression of entire competence. The downright self-reliance demanded by the range of all who would pass must...

By midforenoon Rock had the striking contour of the Goosebill breaking the sky line far on his right. As the team jogged with rattling wagon wheels on a trail that was no more t...

He had been given forty-eight hours! When twenty-four of them had elapsed, Rock lay in his bunk at the TL, staring at roof beams dim above his head. The small noises of the nigh...

She had put one arm protectingly about Alice Snell. That disturbed young woman, her tawny hair in a tangle, her cheeks tear stained, stared at Rock. Her eyes expressed complete...

The crimson stream kept trickling down over Rock’s face. He had no pain except a burning sensation on the top of his head, but the crimson flow annoyed him. He finally hit upon...

Rock staved off Nona Parke’s agitated questions when he asked for food. He robbed his own bed reluctantly, but a promise was a promise, apart from his desire to have Stack out o...

Rock chewed a pencil butt until it looked as if it had been mouthed by an earnest puppy. He wrote and erased the length and breadth of half a dozen telegraph forms before he evo...

Viewed from the southern approach, the triple buttes of the Sweet Grass Hills rise like immense cones abruptly from the level of the plains. Gold Butte stands in the middle. Wes...

On the plain slanting imperceptibly toward the Marias River, a herd grazed south in loose formation, nearly a thousand head of mature cattle. All these horned beasts bore on the...