The Desert of Wheat

After Lenore's paroxysm of emotion had subsided and she lay quietly in the dark, she became aware of soft, hurried footfalls passing along the path below her window. At first sh...

Lenore awakened early. The morning seemed golden. Birds were singing at her window. What did that day hold in store for her? She pressed a hand hard on her heart as if to hold i...

Dear Sister Lenore,--It's been long since I wrote you. I'm sorry, dear. But I haven't just been in shape to write. Have been transferred to a training-camp not far from New York...

No doubt entered his mind. The truth, the fact, was a year old--a long-familiar and dreamy state--but its meaning had not been revealed to him until just a moment past. Everythi...

Through the pale obscurity of a French night, cool, raw, moist, with a hint of spring in its freshness, a line of soldiers plodded along the lonely, melancholy lanes. Wan starli...

Three days later, Lenore accompanied her father on the ride to the Bend country. She sat in the back seat of the car with Jake--an arrangement very gratifying to the cowboy, but...

The remarkable happened. Scarcely had the minister left when Kurt Dorn's smiling wonder and happiness sustained a break, as sharp and cold and terrible as if nature had transfor...

Kurt Dorn had indeed no hope of ever seeing Lenore Anderson again, and he suffered a pang that seemed to leave his heart numb, though Anderson's timely visit might turn out as p...

Singing of birds at her window awakened Lenore. The dawn streamed in bright and sweetly fragrant. The wheat-fields seemed a rosy gold, and all that open slope called to her thri...

It was night. Lenore should have been asleep, but she sat up in the dark by the window. Underneath on the porch, her father, with his men as audience, talked like a torrent. And...

Jim's last letter was not taken seriously by the other members of the Anderson family. The father shook his head dubiously. "That ain't like Jim," but made no other comment. Mrs...

Late in June the vast northwestern desert of wheat began to take on a tinge of gold, lending an austere beauty to that endless, rolling, smooth world of treeless hills, where mi...

Kurt rode to Adrian on that freight, and upon arriving in the yards there he jumped off, only to mount another, headed south. He meant to be traveling while it was dark. No pass...

"Many Waters" shone white and green under the bright May sunshine. Seen from the height of slope, the winding brooks looked like silver bands across a vast belt of rainy green a...

The squad of men to which Dorn belonged had to be on the lookout continually for an attack that was inevitable. The Germans were feeling out the line, probably to verify spy new...

Kurt rushed back to the house. Encountering Jerry, he ordered him to run and saddle a couple of horses. Then Kurt got his revolver and a box of shells, and, throwing on his coat...

All afternoon the company of United States troops had marched from far back of the line, resting, as darkness came on, at a camp of reserves, and then going on. Artillery fire h...

Next day was one of the rare, blistering-hot days with a furnace wind that roared over the wheat-fields. The sky was steely and the sun like copper. It was a day which would bri...

Golden Valley was the Garden of Eden of the Northwest. The southern slope rose to the Blue Mountains, whence flowed down the innumerable brooks that, uniting to form streams and...

Late in the forenoon of the next day Kurt Dorn reached home. A hot harvest wind breathed off the wheat-fields. It swelled his heart to see the change in the color of that sectio...

Lenore waited for Kurt, and stood half concealed behind the curtains. It had dawned upon her that she had an ordeal at hand. Her heart palpitated. She heard his quick step on th...

An August twilight settled softly down over "Many Waters" while Lenore Anderson dreamily gazed from her window out over the darkening fields so tranquil now after the day's harv...

At the breakfast-table her father had said, cheerily, to Dorn: "Better take off your coat an' come out to the fields. We've got some job to harvest that wheat with only half-for...

It seemed that Kurt did not altogether lose consciousness, for he had vague sensations of being dragged along the ground. Presently the darkness cleared from his mind and he ope...

A dusty motor-car climbed the long road leading up to the Neuman ranch. It was not far from Wade, a small hamlet of the wheat-growing section, and the slopes of the hills, bare...

Kurt Dorn's neighbor, Olsen, in his kind and matter-of-fact way, making obligation seem slight, took charge of Kurt's affairs, and made the necessary and difficult decisions. No...

"We've got over sixteen hundred acres in fallow ground, a half-section in rye, another half in wheat--Turkey Red--and this section you see, six hundred and forty acres, in Blues...

Toward the end of July eastern Washington sweltered under the most torrid spell of heat on record. It was a dry, high country, noted for an equable climate, with cool summers an...

For a long time she felt the warm, tight clasp of Dorn's hand on hers as he had said good-by. Very evidently he believed that was to be his last sight of her. Lenore would never...

Lenore told her conception of the history and the romance of wheat to Dorn at this critical time when it was necessary to give a trenchant call to hope and future.

The sun was up, broad and bright, burning over the darkened wheat-fields, when Kurt and Jerry reached home. Kurt had never seen the farm look like that--ugly and black and bare....

Thirty masked men sat around a long harvest mess-table. Two lanterns furnished light enough to show a bare barnlike structure, the rough-garbed plotters, the grim set of hard li...