The Branding Iron

I. Joan Reads by Firelight 3 II. Pierre Lays his Hand on a Heart 12 III. Two Pictures in the Fire 21 IV. The Sin-Buster 25 V. Pierre Becomes Alarmed about his Property 32 VI. Pi...

I. A Wild Cat 151 II. Morena's Wife 161 III. Jane 170 IV. Flight 182 V. Luck's Play 191 VI. Joan and Prosper 205 VII. Aftermath 215 VIII. Against the Bars 227 IX. Gray Envelopes...

There is no silence so fearful, so breathless, so searching as the night silence of a wild country buried five feet deep in snow. For thirty miles or so, north, south, east, and...

Maud Upper was the first girl of her own age that Joan had ever seen. Joan went in terror of her and Maud knew this and enjoyed her ascendancy over an untamed creature twice her...

The period which followed had a quality of breathless, almost unearthly happiness. They were young, savage, simple, and their love, unanalyzed, was as joyous as the loves of ani...

In the fall, when the whole country had turned to a great cup of gold, purple-rimmed under the sky, Pierre went out into the hills after his winter meat. Joan was left alone. Sh...

The next time Holliwell came, he brought the books, and, finding Pierre at home, he sat with his host after supper and talked men's talk of the country; of game, of ranching, a...

A log fell forward and Joan lifted her head. She had not come to an end of Isabella's tragedy nor of her own memories, but something other than the falling log had startled her;...

The man who had entered with such violence upon so violent a scene, stood waiting till the smoke of Pierre's discharge had cleared away, then, still holding his gun in readiness...

It is not the people that have led still and uneventful lives who are best prepared for emergencies. They are not trained to face crises, to make prompt and just decisions. Joan...

The house that Prosper Gael had built for himself and for the woman whom Joan came to think of as the "tall child," stood in a cañon, a deep, secret fold of the hills, where a c...

Perhaps, in spite of his gruesome boast as to dead men, it was as much to satisfy his own spirit as to comfort Joan's that Prosper actually did undertake a journey to the cabin...

Joan waited for Holliwell and, waiting, began inevitably to regain her strength. One evening as Wen Ho was spreading the table, Prosper looked up from his writing to see a tall,...

"What are you writin' so hard for, Mr. Gael?" Joan voiced the question wistfully on the height of a long breath. She drew it from a silence which seemed to her to have filled th...

On that evening Prosper began to talk. The unnatural self-repression he had practiced gave way before the flood of his sociability. It was Joan's amazing beauty as she stumbled...

It was a January night when Joan, her rough head almost in the ashes, had read "Isabella and the Pot of Basil" by the light of flames. It was in March, a gray, still afternoon,...

She was pale, gaunt, and imperturbable. He gave her a quick look, one that turned to amusement, for Joan was really as appealing to his humor as a child. She had such immense gr...

There were times, even now, when Prosper tried to argue himself back into sardonic self-possession. "Pooh!" said his brain, "you were beside yourself over a loss and then you we...

And it was spring-time; these prisoners of frost were beautifully sensitive. They, too, with the lake and the aspens and the earth, the seeds and the beasts, had suffered the se...

The Lazy-Y ranch-house, a one-storied building of logs, was built about three sides of a paved court. In the middle of this court stood a well with a high rustic top, and about...

Betty Morena was sitting in a rustic chair before an open fire, smoking a cigarette. She was a short woman, so slenderly, even narrowly built, as to appear overgrown, and she wa...

After that night, there began a sort of persecution, skillfully conducted by Jasper and Betty, against the ferocity of Jane. It was a persecution impossible to imagine in any ot...

There was a girl named Joan who followed Pierre Landis because he laid his hand upon her wrist, and there was another Joan who fled up the mountain-side at sight of him, as thou...

A young man who had just landed in New York from one of the big, adventurous transatlantic liners hailed a taxicab and was quickly drawn away into the glitter and gayety of a br...

The situation was no doubt an extraordinary, an unimaginable one, but it had to be met. When he returned to the box, Prosper had himself in hand, and, sitting a little farther b...

Joan waited for Prosper on the appointed afternoon. There was a fire on her hearth and a March snow-squall tapped against the window panes. The crackle of the logs inside and th...

Jasper Morena had stood for an hour in a drafty passage of that dirty labyrinth known vaguely to the public as "behind the scenes," listening to the wearisome complaints of a lo...

It was with more than the usual sinking of heart that Jasper let himself that evening into the beautiful house which Betty and he called their home. Joan's too expressive look h...

Betty held the receiver languidly. Her face had grown very thin and her eyes were patient. They were staring now absently through the front window of Woodward Kane's sitting-roo...

"The Reverend Francis Holliwell." Morena turned the card over and over in his hand. "Holliwell. Holliwell. Frank Holliwell." Yes. One of the fellows that had dropped out. Big, a...

Pierre stood before the cheap bureau of his ugly hotel bedroom turning a red slip of cardboard about in his fingers. The gas-jet sputtering above his head threw heavy shadows do...

At the top of the fourth flight of steps, Pierre found himself facing a door that stood ajar. Beyond that door was Joan and he knew not what experience of discovery, of explanat...