Category: Novels
Years ago, I came upon an old and hoary tavern when I as a fashion of refugee was flying from strong drink. Its name, as shown on the creaking sign-board, was The Black Lion Inn. My coming was the fruit of no plan; the hostelry was strange to me, and my arrival, casual and des...
Last Chance was a hamlet in southeastern Kansas. Last Chance, though fervid, was not large. Indeed, a cowboy in a spirit of insult born of a bicker with the town marshal had sai...
7. CHAPTER VII.--THE PITT STREET STRINGENCY.The speaker is a loud young man, clad in garments of violence. The derby tilted over eye, the black cigar jutting ceilingward at an agle of sixty degrees, the figured shirt wher...
2. CHAPTER II.--THE WINNING OF SAUCY PAOLI.Gray Wolf sits within the shadow of the agency cottonwood and puffs unhappy kinnikinic from his red stone pipe. Heavy, dull and hot lies the August afternoon; heavy, dull and ho...
15. CHAPTER XV.--HOW MOH-KWA FED THE CATFISH.One day Moh-Kwa, the Wise Bear, had a quarrel with Ish-koo-dah, the Fire. Moh-Kwa was gone from home two days, for Moh-Kwa had found a large patch of ripe blackberries, an’ he s...
11. CHAPTER XI.--THAT SMUGGLED SILK.Should your curiosity invite it, and the more since I promised you the story, we will now, my friends, go about the telling of that one operation in underground silk. It is not...
22. CHAPTER XXII.--HOW PRINCE RUPERT LOST.My father, you should know, was a lawyer of eminence and wide practice at the New York bar. His income was magnificent; yet--thriftless and well living--he spent it with both ha...
25. CHAPTER XXV.--HOW THE FILIBUSTERER SAILED.It will come to you as strange, my friends, to hear objection--as though against an ill trait--to that open-handed generosity which is held by many to be among the marks of supr...
20. CHAPTER XX.--THE GERMAN GIRL’S DIAMONDS.It cannot be said, my friends, that I liked my position in that sink of evil, the New York Customs. I was on good terms with my comrades, but I founded no friendships among them...
23. CHAPTER XXIII.--WHEN I RAN THE SHOTGUN.About this time the city of Providence fell midspasm in a fit of civic morality. Communities, like individuals, are prone to starts of strenuous virtue, and Providence, bewailin...
16. CHAPTER XVI.--THE EMPEROR’S CIGARS.It is not the blood which flows at the front, my friends, that is the worst of war; it is the money corruption that goes on at the rear. In old Sparta, theft was not theft unles...
8. CHAPTER VIII.--THAT STOLEN ACE OF HEARTS.When I, at the unripe age of seventeen, left my father’s poor cottage-house on Tom’s Run and threw myself into life’s struggle, I sought Pittsburg as a nearest promising arena o...
4. CHAPTER IV.--THAT TOBACCO UPSET.When the war was done and the battle flags of that confederacy which had been my sweetheart were rolled tight to their staves and laid away in mournful, dusty corners to moulder...
5. CHAPTER V.--THE SIGN OF THREE.Such confession may come grotesquely enough from one of education and substance, yet all the day long I’ve been thinking on omens and on prophecies. It was my servant who brough...
27. CHAPTER XXVII.--THE FLIM FLAM MURPHY.Chicken Bill was not beautiful with his shock of coarse hair and foul pipe in mouth. Doubtless, Chicken Bill was likewise an uncompromising villain. Indeed, Pike’s Peak Martin,...
19. CHAPTER XIX.--MOH-KWA AND THE THREE GIFTS.This is in the long time ago when the sun is younger an’ not so big an’ hot as now, an’ Kwa-Sind, the Strong Man, is a chief of the Upper Yellowstone Sioux. It is on a day in th...
14. CHAPTER XIV.--HOW TO TELL THE LAST FOUR.Casino Joe, when thirty years ago he came about the Bowery, was in manner and speech a complete expression of the rustical. His brow was high and fine and wise; but lank hair of...
26. CHAPTER XXVI.--HOW MOH-KWA SAVED STRIKE-AXE.This shall be the story of how Moh-Kwa, the Wise Bear, saved Strike Axe from the medicine of Yellow Face, the bad medicine man, who would take his life an’ steal the Feather, hi...
6. CHAPTER VI.--THAT WOLFVILLE CHRISTMAS.This yere can’t be called a story; which it can’t even be described none as a sketch. Accordin’ to the critics, who, bein’ plumb onable to write one themse’fs, nacherally knows...
10. CHAPTER X.--HOW STRONGARM WAS AN ELK.Moh-Kwa was the wisest of all the beasts along the Upper Yellowstone; an’ yet Moh-Kwa could not catch a fish. This made Moh-Kwa have a bad heart, for next to honey he liked fish...
3. CHAPTER III.--HOW FORKED TONGUE WAS BURNED.The time is long, long ago. Ugly Elk is the great chief of the Sioux, an’ he’s so ugly an’ his face so hideous, he makes a great laugh wherever he goes. But the people are caref...
9. CHAPTER IX.--CHIQUITA OF CHAPARITA.Which I doubts some if I’m a proper party to be a historian of Mexicans. Nacherally I abhors ’em; an’ when a gent abhors anything, that is a Caucasian gent, you-all can gamble t...
12. CHAPTER XII.--THE WIPING OUT OF McCANDLAS.Tell you-all a tale of blood? It shore irritates me a heap, gents, when you eastern folks looks allers to the west for stories red an’ drippin’ with murder. Which mighty likely...
18. CHAPTER XVIII.--THE RESCUE OF CONNELLY.Equipped as we are for the conquest of comfort with fresh pipes, full mugs, and the flavor of a best of suppers still extant within our mouths, it may be an impertinence for one...
21. CHAPTER XXI.--THE LUCK OF COLD-SOBER SIMMS.Which this yere tale is mighty devious, not to say disjointed, because, d’you see! from first to last, she’s all the truth. Now, thar is folks sech as Injuns an’ them sagacious...
17. CHAPTER XVII.--THE GREAT STEWART CAMPAIGN.As I states, I saveys nothin’ personal of politics. Thar’s mighty little politics gets brooited about Wolfville, an’ I ain’t none shore but it’s as well. The camp’s most likely...
24. CHAPTER XXIV.--WHEN THE CAPITOL WAS MOVED.When the joobilant Texans set down to kyarve out the destinies of that empire they wrests from the feeble paws of the Mexicans an’ Santa Anna, they decides on Austin for the Cap...
1. CHAPTER I.--HOW I CAME TO THE INN.Years ago, I came upon an old and hoary tavern when I as a fashion of refugee was flying from strong drink. Its name, as shown on the creaking sign-board, was The Black Lion Inn...