Category: Children & Young Adult Reading

The Girl from Sunset Ranch; Or, Alone in a Great City

The strawberry roan tossed her cropped mane and her dainty little hoofs clattered more quickly over the rocky path which led up from the far-reaching grazing lands of Sunset Ranch to the summit of the rocky eminence that bounded the valley upon the east.

Chapters

17. Chapter 17

"I have ascertained," the gentleman said, in his most pompous way, "that Mr. Fenwick Grimes is in town. He has recently returned from a tour of the West, where he has several mi...

12. Chapter 12

Helen was already very sick of her Uncle Starkweather's home and family. But she was too proud to show the depth of her feeling before the old serving man in whose charge she ha...

27. Chapter 27

Helen chanced that evening to be entering the area door just as Mr. Starkweather himself was mounting the steps of the mansion. Her uncle recognized the girl and scowled over th...

30. Chapter 30

Just at this time Helen Morrell wasn't thinking at all about wreaking vengeance upon those who might have ill-treated her when she was alone in the great city. Instead, her hear...

13. Chapter 13

"You are very young and very foolish, Helen--ahem! A mystery of sixteen or seventeen years' standing, which the best detectives could not unravel, is scarcely a task to be attem...

22. Chapter 22

The little old lady "tidied" her own room. She hopped about like a bird with the aid of the ebony crutch, and Helen and Miss Van Ramsden heard the "step--put" of her movements w...

1. Chapter 1

The strawberry roan tossed her cropped mane and her dainty little hoofs clattered more quickly over the rocky path which led up from the far-reaching grazing lands of Sunset Ran...

19. Chapter 19

"Why, of course it is!" he cried, smiting the desk before him with the flat of his palm. "Don't you see that your father's name will be cleared of all doubt? And quite right, to...

16. Chapter 16

From the stair-well some little light streamed up into the darkness of the ghost-walk. And into this dim radiance came a little old lady--her old-fashioned crimped hair an aureo...

2. Chapter 2

The victim of the accident made no sound. No scream rose from the depths after he disappeared. The buckskin pony rolled over, scrambled to its feet, and cantered off across the...

20. Chapter 20

"No," Sadie told Helen, afterward, "I am very sure that poor Lurcher man doesn't drink. Some says he does; but you never notice it on him. It's just his eyes."

15. Chapter 15

An hour later Helen was dressed in a two-piece suit, cut in what a chorus of salesladies, including old Mrs. Finkelstein and Sadie herself, declared were most "stylish" lines--a...

21. Chapter 21

And often when the rest of the family thought the unwelcome visitor had retired to her room at the top of the house, she was shut in with Flossie, trying to guide the stumbling...

5. Chapter 5

As Helen walked up and down the platform at Elberon, waiting for the east-bound Transcontinental, she looked to be a very plain country girl with nothing in her dress to denote...

10. Chapter 10

The Starkweather mansion was a large dwelling. Built some years before the Civil War, it had been one of the "great houses" in its day, to be pointed out to the mid-nineteenth c...

3. Chapter 3

Dudley Stone had begun to peer wonderingly at this strange girl. When he had first sighted her riding her strawberry roan across the plateau he supposed her to be a little girl-...

23. Chapter 23

That was a wonderful breakfast at the Casino. Not that Helen ever remembered much about what she ate, although Dud had ordered choice fruit and heartier food that would have tem...

8. Chapter 8

She had some idea of how city people lived, having been to school in Denver. It seemed impossible that Uncle Starkweather and his family could reside in such a place as this. An...

14. Chapter 14

The two girls stood on the sidewalk and let the tide of busy humanity flow by unnoticed. Both were healthy types of youth--one from the open ranges of the Great West, the other...

6. Chapter 6

It was not as though Helen Morrell had never been in a train before. Eight times she had gone back and forth to Denver, and she had always ridden in the best style. So sleepers,...

24. Chapter 24

"Them folks you're living with must have had a change of heart, Helen," said Sadie Goronsky, as the two girls sallied forth--Sadie with her new hat set jauntily on her sleek head.

4. Chapter 4

This being yielded to and never thwarted, even by her father, might have spoiled a girl of different calibre. But there was a foundation of good common sense to Helen's nature.

9. Chapter 9

Helen had to wait only a short time; but during that wait she was aware that she was being watched by a pair of bright eyes at a crevice between the portieres at the end of the...

11. Chapter 11

"Well, I'll tell you one thing right now!" snapped the older girl. "I've ordered her things taken out of that chamber. Her shabby old trunk has gone up to the room at the top of...

26. Chapter 26

As her cousins were not at all interested in what became of Helen during the day, neither was Helen interested in how the three Starkweather girls occupied their time. But on th...

25. Chapter 25

Helen met Dud Stone and his sister on the bridle-path one morning by particular invitation. The message had come to the house for her late the evening before and had been put in...

18. Chapter 18

Helen sat down quickly and stared across the room at the queer old man. The latter at first seemed to pay her no attention. But finally she saw that he was skillfully "taking st...

28. Chapter 28

Dud Stone had that very day seen the fixtures put into the little millinery store downtown, and it was ready for Sadie Goronsky to take charge; there being a fund of two hundred...

7. Chapter 7

This impression came to her after the train had rolled past miles of streets--all perfectly straight, bearing off on either hand to the two rivers that wash Manhattan's shores;...

29. Chapter 29

An hour later Helen and the old man hurried out of the lodging house and Helen led him across town to the office where Dudley Stone worked. At first the old man peered all about...