The Golden Woman: A Story of the Montana Hills

The camp was sweltering under an abnormal heat. There was not one breath of the usual invigorating mountain air. A few more degrees of humidity, and the cup of endurance would h...

Buck leant over his horse's withers as the laboring creature clawed tenaciously up the face of the rugged hill. His whole poise was that of sympathetic straining. Nor were his e...

From the time of her aunt's going to Leeson Butte to the morning of her return to the farm Joan passed through a nightmare of uncertainty and hopelessness. Every moment of her t...

Beasley Melford was in a detestable mood. For one reason his miserable bar was empty of all customers, and, for another, he knew that he was responsible for the fact.

Buck wondered as he noted the extraordinary picture of jubilation which the approaching crowd presented. In all his association with these people he had never witnessed anything...

The Padre moved about the room a little uncertainly. Its plainness troubled him, but its cleanliness was unquestionable. Both he and Buck had spent over two hours, earlier in th...

The telling of the Padre's story cost Buck a wakeful night. It was not that he had any doubts either of the truth of the story, or of his friend. He needed no evidence to convin...

The westering sun was drooping heavily toward its fiery couch. The purple of evening was deepening from the east, meeting and blending softly with the gold of the dying day. A g...

Joan suddenly threw up her head. There was resentment in the violet depths of her eyes, and her whole expression had hardened. It was as though something of her youth, her softn...

Buck moved out of Cæsar's stall. He had just finished lightly securing the double cinchas of his saddle. The bulging saddle-bags had been made fast behind the cantle and the wal...

The mellow evening light glows with a living warmth of color upon hill, and valley, and plain. The myriad tints shine in perfect harmony, for Nature is incapable of discord whet...

Joan lost no time in carrying out the Padre's wishes. Such was her changed mood, such was the strength of her new-born hope, such was the wonderful healing his words had adminis...

Joan swayed where she stood. She stumbled and fell; and the fall went on, and on, and on. It seemed to her that she was rushing down through endless space toward terrors beyond...

Joan had looked forward to her aunt's coming with very mixed feelings. There were moments when she was frankly glad at the prospect of a companionship which had been hers since...

Buck looked up as two crows flew low over his head and passed on their way, croaking out their alarm and dissatisfaction. Mechanically his eyes followed their movements. For he...

The hills roll away, banking on every side, mounting up, pile on pile, like the mighty waves of a storm-swept ocean. The darkening splendor, the magnificent ruggedness crowds do...

In that brief space she had lived through one of those swiftly-passing epochs in human life when mind, heart and inclination are brought into something approaching actual confli...

Joan was smiling happily, watching the waging of a droll little farmyard warfare. Just now her life was running very smoothly, and the shadows of memory were steadily receding....

Nearly three months had passed and all Beasley Melford's affairs were amply prospering. His new saloon was the joy of his heart. It had been completed more than a week, which we...

She had almost forgotten her purpose so taken up was she in observing this "scallawag," as Mrs. Ransford had called him. Nor did it take her impressionable nature more than a se...

The challenge had gone forth. In those two vivid shafts of light, in the deafening peals of thunder the war of elements had been proclaimed, and these men of the wilderness unde...

All thought of Beasley Melford quickly became lost in feelings of a deeper and stronger nature as Buck passed out into the open. His was not a nature to dwell unnecessarily upon...

An elderly woman looked up from the crystal globe before her. The sound of horse's hoofs, clattering up to the veranda, had caught her attention. But the hard, gray eyes had not...

The new owner of the Padre's farm had quite recovered from the effects of her disastrous journey. Youth and a sound constitution, and the overwhelming ministrations of Mrs. Rans...

The seedling of success planted in rank soil generally develops a wild, pernicious growth which, until the summer of its life has passed, is untameable and pollutes all that wit...

The rightness of Buck's conjecture was proved before evening, but not without long and painful effort. Joan was utterly weary, and the man was reduced to such weakness and disab...

An unusual number of horses were tethered at the posts outside Beasley's saloon, and, a still more unusual thing, their owners, for the most part, were not in their usual places...

It was the morning following the great storm, a perfect day of cloudless sunshine, and the Padre and Buck were on their way from the fur fort to the camp. Their mission was to l...

The fur fort was a relic of ancient days, when the old-time traders of the North sent their legions of pelt hunters from the far limits of the northern ice-world to the sunny we...

The Padre sat staring into space before the stove. Buck was in his favorite position at the open door, gazing out into the darkness of the night. As he smoked his evening pipe h...

The Padre stood at the top of the steps and looked out over the wide stretching valley below him. His long day was drawing to a close, but he felt no weariness of body. There wa...

The golden sun was high in the heavens. Its splendor was pouring down upon a gently steaming earth. But all its joyous light, all its perfect beneficence could not undo one part...

Two hours later two men and a girl gazed out from the plateau of Devil's Hill. The whole earth it seemed was a raging sea of fire. Once more the forests were ablaze in every dir...

Joan was idling dispiritedly over her breakfast. A long, wakeful night had at last ended in the usual aching head and eyes ringed with shadows. She felt dreary, and looked forwa...

From the depths of her high-backed chair Mercy Lascelles stared at the white door beyond which Joan had just vanished. Her gaunt figure was no longer huddled over the fateful cr...

The quiet was profound. All the world seemed so still. There was no sign of life, yet the warm air was thrilling with the unseen life of an insect world. The heat haze rose from...

The thunder roared without intermission. It rose and fell, that was all. From a truculent piano it leapt to a titanic crescendo only to find relief again in a fierce growling di...

Then came another sound. It was the crash of a falling tree. It was louder, but it, too, could scarcely break the stillness, so silent was the world, so desolate was it in the a...

Two hours later saw an extraordinary change at the foot of Devil's Hill. The wonder of the "washout" had passed. Its awe was no longer upon the human mind. The men of the camp r...