Six Feet Four

All day long, from an hour before the pale dawn until now after the thick dark, the storm had raged through the mountains. Before midday it had grown dark in the cañons. In the...

Hap Smith, the last to come in, opened the front door which the wind snatched from his hands and slammed violently against the wall. In the sudden draft the old newspapers on on...

Those who had rushed into the outer darkness in the wake of the highwayman returned presently. Mere impulse and swift natural reaction from their former enforced inactivity rath...

"These little cotton-tail rabbits," he said to her slowly, without turning his eyes from hers to those of whom he spoke, "haven't any more sense than you'd think to look at them...

Dry Town never looked less dry. As Buck Thornton drew rein in front of the one brick building of which the ugly little village could boast, the mud was above his yellow-sorrel's...

A faint smile for a moment threatened to drive the sternness away from Templeton's lips. But it was gone in a quick tightening of the mouth, and he answered briefly.

It was hardly noon. Here the county road, cutting straight through the rolling fields, was broad, wet and black, glistening under the sun. Out yonder in front of him the stage,...

There was a rough board table, oilcloth-covered, in front of the fireplace. There were coffee, bread and butter, crisp slices of bacon, a dish of steaming tinned corn. There wer...

After that there were no more uncomfortable silences in the Harte cabin. Thornton found a lamp, lighted it and placed it on the table. And with the act he seemed to take upon hi...

She stood there in a bright patch of moonlight looking up into his face, seeing every line of it in the rich flood of light from the full moon, wondering dully if she had lost h...

All thoughts of denouncing Buck Thornton before these people fled before the girl had followed the rancher's wife into the cabin. They spoke of him only in tones warm with frien...

IT was barely noon, the air clear, the sky cloudless, when Winifred Waverly rode into Hill's Corners. She had shaken her head at the suggestion of further escort. Here, in the o...

Buck Thornton had returned to the Poison Hole ranch. But first he had ridden from the Smith place down the trail to Harte's, where he made swift, careful search for some sign to...

Twenty yards from the door he drew rein, sitting still, frowning into the darkness. Not for the first time was he realizing that the note might not be from Clayton at all; that...

He had planned to have his errand over early, to have seen the Kid and to have turned back toward the ranch before noon. For he knew the town's habit of late sleeping and he wan...

"Why do you suffer it?" she cried hotly. "The man knows that I was not deceived by his idiotic mask, he knows that I have told you, and still you let him go free where he please...

After all it seemed that for some reason the time was not yet ripe for Cole Dalton to put his rope on "Mr. Badman". For the days ran on smoothly for Buck Thornton, the weeks gre...

Deer Creek schoolhouse stood in a tiny, emerald valley half a dozen miles from Hill's Corners, some fifteen miles from Thornton's cabin, its handful of barefooted pupils coming...

Winifred Waverly looked steadily into Buck Thornton's eyes, suddenly determined that she would see in them the guile which must be there. Surely a man could not do the things wh...

The promise of the night flat and stale in his mouth, Thornton turned his back upon the merriment in the little schoolhouse and strode away to his horse awaiting him under the o...

She did not fully understand, she could not grasp everything yet, she was filled with doubts and suspicions and a growing terror. What had her uncle said to Thornton, what had t...

Old man King, red eyed with wrath, had gone out after the cattle rustlers in his own direct fashion, seeking to follow the trail of running steers through the mountain passes, h...

She felt her heart beating wildly ... if at that second he had spoken to her she could not have found immediate voice in answer were it to save her life. But further, she knew t...

Thornton returned rather early that night to the ranch cabin. That he came in at all, instead of remaining far out upon the range border as his men were doing, was because tomor...

It was a pitch black night, the stars hidden by dense drifting clouds, and intensely still. Buck Thornton and Two-Hand Billy Comstock, riding side by side with few words, turned...

Thornton returned to his cabin long before the first faint streak of daylight, and not once during the night did he think of sleep. At his little table in the light of his coal-...

A horseman was riding toward him upon the far bank of the Big Little River where it straightened out beyond the cabin. He recognized the horse and a moment later the rider now w...

Upon the first day of the month the stage leaving the Rock Creek Mines in the early morning carried a certain long, narrow lock-box carefully bestowed under the seat whereon sat...