The Girl at the Halfway House A Story of the Plains

The land lay trusting and defenceless under a cynical sky, which was unthreatening but mocking. Dotting a stretch of country thirty miles on either side of the railway, and exte...

The opening sentence of the young advocate might have been uttered in burlesque. To call this a court of justice might have seemed sheer libel. There was not the first suggestio...

The Halfway House was an oasis in the desert. To-day it was an oasis and a battle ground. Franklin watched Mary Ellen as she passed quietly about the long, low room, engaged in...

Occupied for a few moments with the other at the wagon, Franklin ceased to watch Juan, as he went slowly but not unskilfully about the work of dressing the dead buffalo. Suddenl...

Franklin crossed the Missouri River, that dividing stream known to a generation of Western men simply as "the River," and acknowledged as the boundary between the old and the ne...

The wife of the section boss sat in conscious dignity, as became a leader of society. She was gowned in purple, newly starched, and upon her bosom rose and fell the cross that J...

Far away, across the wide gray plain, appeared a tiny dot, apparently an unimportant fixture of the landscape. An hour earlier it might not have been observed at all by even the...

One morning when Franklin entered his office he found his friend Battersleigh there before him, in full possession, and apparently at peace with all the world. His tall figure w...

In a certain old Southern city there stands, as there has stood for many generations, and will no doubt endure for many more, a lofty mansion whose architecture dates back to a...

There came over the town of Ellisville that night an ominous quiet. But few men appeared on the streets. Nobody talked, or if any one did there was one subject to which no refer...

Edward Franklin had taken up his law studies in the office of Judge Bradley, the leading lawyer of the little village of Bloomsbury, where Franklin was born, and where he had sp...

One morning Battersleigh was at work at his little table, engaged, as he later explained, upon the composition of a letter to the London Times, descriptive of the Agrarian Situa...

In the early days of Ellisville society was alike in costume and custom, and as unsuspicious as it would have been intolerant of any idea of rank or class. A "beef" was a beef,...

One day Aunt Lucy, missing Quarterly Meeting, and eke bethinking herself of some of those aches and pains of body and forebodings of mind with which the negro is never unprovide...

Franklin found himself swept along with a tide of affairs other than of his own choosing. His grasp on the possibilities of the earliest days of this new civilization had been s...

Franklin's foot took hold upon the soil of the new land. His soul reached out and laid hold upon the sky, the harsh flowers, the rasping wind. He gave, and he drank in. Thus gre...

The summer flamed up into sudden heat, and seared all the grasses, and cut down the timid flowers. Then gradually there came the time of shorter days and cooler nights. The gras...

In this wide, new world of the West there were but few artificial needs, and the differentiation of industries was alike impossible and undesired. Each man was his own cook, his...

The Cottage Hotel of Ellisville was, singularly enough, in its palmy days conducted by a woman, and a very good woman she was. It was perhaps an error in judgment which led the...

At the close of the war Captain Edward Franklin returned to a shrunken world. The little Illinois village which had been his home no longer served to bound his ambitions, but of...

"But it seems as though I had always known you," said Franklin, turning again toward the tall figure at the window. There was no reply to this, neither was there wavering in the...

Hour after hour, in the heat of the day or the cool of the evening, the giant Mexican strode on by the side of the two horsemen, sometimes trotting like a dog, more often walkin...

The bandmaster marshalled his music at the head of the column of occupation which was to march into Louisburg. The game had been admirably played. The victory was complete. Ther...

"Miss Ma'y Ellen," cried Aunt Lucy, thrusting her head in at the door, "oh, Miss Ma'y Ellen, I wish't you'd come out yer right quick. They's two o' them prai' dogs out yer a-cha...

The sheriff of Ellisville sat in his office oiling the machinery of the law; which is to say, cleaning his revolver. There was not yet any courthouse. The sheriff was the law. T...

Colonel Henry Battersleigh sat in his tent engaged in the composition of a document which occasioned him concern. That Colonel Battersleigh should be using his tent as office an...

"I wish, Sam," said Franklin one morning as he stopped at the door of the livery barn--"I wish that you would get me up a good team. I'm thinking of driving over south a little...

In the swift current of humanity then streaming up and down the cattle range, the reputation of the Halfway House was carried far and near; and for fifty miles east and west, fo...

Poor medicine as it is, work was ever the best salve known for a hurting heart. Franklin betook him to his daily work, and he saw success attend his labours. Already against the...

When the band major was twenty miles away in front of Louisburg his trumpets sounded always the advance. The general played the game calmly. The line of the march was to be alon...

Gourdlike, Ellisville grew up in a night. It was not, and lo! it was. Many smokes arose, not moving from crest to crest of the hills as in the past, when savage bands of men sig...

And now there still fared on the swift, sane empire of the West. The rapid changes, the strivings, the accomplishments, the pretensions and the failures of the new town blended...

The occupants of the wagons which trailed off across the prairies, the horsemen who followed them, the citizens who adjourned and went as usual to the Cottage--all these departe...

The band major was a poet. His name is lost to history, but it deserves a place among the titles of the great. Only in the soul of a poet, a great man, could there have been con...

Ike Anderson was drunk--calmly, magnificently, satisfactorily drunk. It had taken time, but it was a fact accomplished. The actual state of affairs was best known to Ike Anderso...

Lifting and shimmering mysteriously in the midday sun, as though tantalizing any chance traveller of that wide land with a prospect alluring, yet impossible, the buildings of th...

IV. BATTERSLEIGH OF THE RILE IRISH V. THE TURNING OF THE ROAD VI. EDWARD FRANKLIN, LAWYER VII. THE NEW WORLD VIII. THE BEGINNING IX. THE NEW MOVERS X. THE CHASE XI. THE BATTLE X...

XVII. ELLISVILLE THE RED XVIII. STILL A REBEL XIX. THAT WHICH HE WOULD XX. THE HALFWAY HOUSE XXI. THE ADVICE OF AUNT LUCY XXII. EN VOYAGE XXIII. MARY ELLEN XXIV. THE WAY OF A MA...

XXX. THE END OF THE TRAIL XXXI. THE SUCCESS OF BATTERSLEIGH XXXII. THE CALLING XXXIII. THE GREAT COLD XXXIV. THE ARTFULNESS OF SAM XXXV. THE HILL OF DREAMS XXXVI. AT THE GATEWAY