Shadow Mountain

When a woman treads the ways of deceit she smiles--like Mona Lisa. But was the great Leonardo deceived by the smile of his wife when she posed for him so sweetly? No, he read he...

Like the way of an eagle in the air or the way of a man with a maid, the ways of a mining promoter must be shrouded in mystery and doubt. For when he wants to buy, no man will s...

The Widow Huff was burdened with a tray and her eye sought wildly for Virginia but when she glimpsed Wiley moving swiftly towards the door she set down his dinner with a bang. T...

To seek always for Truth and Justice and the common good of mankind has seldom had its earthly reward but, twenty-three hundred and fifteen years after he drank the cup of hemlo...

Christmas came to Keno in a whirling snowstorm that shrouded Shadow Mountain in white and, as he stepped out in the morning and looked up at the peak, Wiley Holman felt a thrill...

The way to the Ube-Hebes lay across a low flat, glistening white with crystals of alkali; and as his car trundled on Wiley came to a strip of sand, piled up in the lee of a pros...

While his blood was pounding and his heart was high, Wiley Holman went down into his mine. He rode down on the bucket, deftly balanced on the rim and fending off the wall with o...

The wind was still blowing when Wiley was awakened by the cold of the October morning. In the house all was dark, on account of the blankets which Death Valley had nailed over t...

It is the curse of success that it raises up enemies as Jason's dragon teeth brought forth armed men. When he was skating around the country, examining mines and taking out opti...

How the Colonel had come to be reported dead it was easy enough now to surmise. Some desperate fugitive, or rambling hobo miner seeking a crosscut to the Borax Mines below, had...

The madness of the Widow and Old Charley and Stiff Neck George was no mystery to Wiley Holman--it was the same form of mania which he encountered everywhere when he went to see...

If there was anything left of his mill but the frame, Wiley's ears had played him false; and yet he stood and looked after Virginia. This grinding crash, this pandemonium of des...

The heights and depths of life are sounded by emotions--cold reason lags behind. As thought cannot compass, so words cannot describe the anguished spirit's flight; and whether i...

"Well?" inquired the Widow as her daughter came back from her ride with Wiley Holman; but Virginia was not giving out confidences. At last, and by a trick, she had surprised the...

Since he had turned back, far out on the desert, and braved the storm to inspect the Paymaster Mine, Wiley Holman had met nothing but disaster; but as he lay on the ground with...

The next two weeks of Wiley Holman's life were packed so full of trouble that there were those who almost pitied him, though the word had been passed around to lay off. It was S...

The broad streets of Vegas were swarming with traffic as Wiley glided swiftly into town and he noticed that people looked at him curiously. Perhaps it was all imagination but it...

The long quarrel was over, they had made up--and kissed--and yet to Wiley it all seemed unreal. That is, all but the kiss. It was that, perhaps, which made the rest seem unreal,...

The weary work of packing had gone on endlessly in the bare rooms of the old Huff house and now Virginia, with two kittens in her arms and the mother cat following behind, was p...

In the justice court at Vegas the Widow Huff met her match in the person of the magistrate, who warned her peremptorily that if she interrupted again he would commit her for con...

What was Wiley Holman up to? Virginia paced the floor in a very unloverlike mood; and at last she sat down and wrote a scathing letter to the assayer, demanding her assay at onc...

The Colonel was sitting in the shade of a wild grapevine rapping out a series of questions at Charley, but at sight of the young people coming back hand in hand, he paused and s...

She was covered by a cloak and there was a man's hat on her head, but Wiley knew her--it was Virginia Huff. The moon had mounted high and the chill of the morning was in the air...

"I came for my stock," said Virginia coolly as she met his questioning eye and Wiley turned and rummaged in a drawer. The stock was hers and since she came and asked for it--he...

There are moments when his great secret rises to every man's lips and flutters to wing away; but a thought, a glance, a word said or unsaid, turns it back and he holds it more c...

Under the rim of Shadow Mountain, embraced like a pearl of great price by the curve of Bonanza Point and the mined-out slope of Gold Hill, the deserted city of Keno lay brooding...

If the benevolent Samuel Blount could have seen Wiley Holman's monthly statement from that mysterious "other bank" he would have crushed him with one blow of his ready, financia...

What is a kiss waved by a drunken hand, to a man whose love is like the hills? And yet that kiss, wafted so amorously to Virginia, stirred up a rage in Wiley Holman's heart. Was...

The old, settled quiet returned to sleepy Keno--the quiet of the desert and of empty, noiseless houses stretching in long, sunburned rows down the canyon. The black lava patch,...

As the sun paled to nothing in the yellow murk of dust, a high cloud of sand overleapt the northern peaks and came sifting down the slopes of Shadow Mountain. The gusts of wind...

The wrath of a man who is slow to anger cannot lightly be turned aside and, though Virginia drooped her lashes, the son of Honest John brushed past her without a word. She had f...

To be a Huff, of course, was to be brave and true and never go back on a friend; but as the Colonel that evening began to speak on the subject, Virginia crept off to bed. She wa...

A cool breeze drew down through Emigrant Wash and soothed the fever heat of Death Valley, and as the morning star rose up like a blazing beacon, Wiley carried Virginia to Stovep...

It was the nature of the Widow to resort to violence in every crisis of her life and at each fresh memory of the effrontery of Wiley Holman she searched the empyrean for words....

"Oh, draw on me--any time," broke in Blount, smiling radiantly. "I'd be only too glad to accommodate you. That's my business, you know; loaning out money on good security, and y...