The Forbidden Trail

Roger was only seven. He was tall for his age and very thin. He had a thick crop of black hair and his eyes were large and precisely the color of the summer sky that lifted abov...

Late in the afternoon, after the men had carried on many and increasingly satisfactory tests on the Plant, Charley joined Roger on the porch. The others were with Dick in the al...

Roger, climbing the steps to the Science Building on the day that he was thirty years old, wondered if his working life was to end as it had begun within its ugly walls.

The three men toiled arduously for two days on the brick making. At the end of that time the desert all about the camp was paved with adobe brick, baking in the sun until Dick s...

"I've been thinking of that," returned Roger. "And we've nearly run through the Prebles' extra supplies. Why don't you go in to Archer's Springs and bring a load out. Dick is pl...

Felicia soon grew weary of the game of fire building and begged off. Roger, with the aid of the ax, gathered a huge pile of grease wood, then with Felicia beside him, wrapped in...

"Oh! That was it, was it?" He looked at Gustav's sweaty face, usually so placid, now distorted with pain and anxiety. "Well, all right, old man! I guess I was a bit hasty. But I...

October came in with a decided diminution of heat and with an accented brilliancy in sky and sand. The work of getting the remainder of the twenty-five acres into alfalfa went o...

In spite of his weariness, Roger could not sleep. He scarcely had closed his eyes when the memory of Dick's curious ugliness made him open them and stare into the darkness. What...

All day Monday, Roger and his two helpers sweated to prepare for the plant's first trial. Roger would let no one touch the engine but himself, but Ernest and Gustav puttered wit...

Although John Moore never became reconciled to the failure of his factory, still he was not really unhappy on the farm. There is something too normal, something too entirely nat...

It was late the next afternoon when Dick drove slowly along the trail. The three men were flat on their backs under the absorber, patching leaks, when they heard the squeak of t...

After the wagon was a receding dust-cloud on the trail, Charley went back up to the adobe, where Elsa was to stay on with her, and Ernest to sleep at night.

The dust storm died down almost as rapidly as it had risen. By four o'clock the three were on their way home across the strange sea of sand. They had reached the home range befo...

The fact that the engine had fallen below expectations brought the Sun Planters' food problem into prominence again. When Elsa had begun housekeeping for the men she had protest...

Roger was awakened the next morning by the sound of Dick uncrating the new pump. He rose at once feeling quite himself. He had his belated breakfast alone, with Charley hovering...

The moon appeared at last and suddenly all the desert lay before them like molten silver. They rose, stiffly, and Charley helped Roger to replace the little pack on Peter. Roger...

"Oh, they had a fine row. She wants his strong box. She said at first that she didn't know what she wanted but later confessed that it was her marriage certificate plus somethin...