The heart of Thunder Mountain

Light came with unutterable mystery. Yet Haig lay for a moment waiting, mistrustful of the peace that encompassed him. Then he cautiously raised his head, and looked. Trixy stoo...

In the night they were awakened by a terrific outburst on the mountain top, surpassing all they had yet heard since their arrival in the valley. The forest roared under the onsl...

She rode casually down the Brightwater, and casually up the Brightwater; she loitered at crossroads, and tarried at Thompson's store; and not one glimpse did she catch of Philip...

Their sufferings, as the days went crawling into weeks, attained a certain dead level of wretchedness. At that level, should nothing worse befall, they felt that they might exis...

When she had unsaddled Tuesday, and left him grazing near the "camp," Marion set out with Murray's hatchet and knife to cut splints for Haig's broken leg. Haig watched her run a...

The forest enveloped her, but she sheltered herself in its heart, and was glad of its soothing silence. The wind had died down to a rustling murmur in the highest foliage; throu...

She sat hunched up in the middle of the silent pasture, where the tall, thin grass ran ripening before the breeze in waves the hue of burnished bronze. Her cow pony grazed greed...

Marion, at the window, was the first to see him; and what she saw caused her to clutch at her throat to stifle a cry. He was not on horseback, though the roads were quite passab...

Out of the tempest came the answering halloo; and Haig redoubled his outcries. Twice it came, whipped and broken by the wind; and then there was but the wind itself. Exhausted b...

For some minutes there was no speech, no sound except the swift beat of the horses' hoofs on the hard roadway, and the crisp crunching of wheels in the sand. Marion sat rigid, s...

The lamp had not been lighted in the sitting-room at Huntington's, but the pitch log blazing in the great fireplace reddened the farthest corners of the room, and flushed the so...

Huntington soon had his revenge on Marion, though, in his blindness, he never knew it. She and Claire, after an unusually protracted Small Talk the night before, arose late one...

Seth had heard at the post-office that the deer were coming down unusually early from their summer haunts high in the mountains. A fine herd had been seen just above Bratner's,...

He was beside himself, almost incoherent, for the moment quite irresponsible. It is very likely that, but for Claire, he would have mounted a horse and pursued Haig to his ranch...

Between two storms, the peace that lay upon the seared and battered head of Thunder Mountain, like the peace that comes to a sufferer between paroxysms of pain, was of a kind un...

A murmur ran through the crowd; a name was passed from mouth to mouth; and the men nearest Huntington began to edge away instinctively, leaving a larger and larger space clear a...

She was awakened by the shrill chatter of the magpies in the tall pine near her window. Often she had resented their quarrelsome dialogue at dawn, but now she slipped eagerly ou...

Marion was not alone in her misery; but knowledge of this, had it by any chance come to her, would not have eased her heart, though it might indeed have hardened it a little aga...

The gap in the fence remained exactly as it had been when it invited her to adventure. But now she halted there, dismounted, and picked up the end of a wire that lay trailing on...

Hillyer's loyal heart was near to bursting with joy. In all the days of his eager courtship Marion had never seemed so close to him, so fairly within his grasp, as now. She had...

Haig arrived at timber line about an hour before nightfall. On the long trail he had considered thoroughly all the chances of his case, and was prepared to undergo delays and di...

It was Thursday, the one day of the week when Paradise needed no apologist. For on Thursdays the stage arrived from Tellurium, bringing the mail and, now and then, a passenger,...

Still no speech came to either of them. After a while Marion rose silently, and went about her work. First, however, she sought the revolver in the grass, and carried it, with h...

Seth was oiling a pair of boots on the veranda, while Claire talked to him about Hillyer, who had pleased her immeasurably by his devotion to Marion, and even more, of course, b...

The days dragged by under the burdens of doubt and torture, and out of the Valley of the Shadow came Philip Haig, with some new and disquieting thoughts to occupy him in his con...

Hillyer was waiting for her at the barn when she came at last, with a smile that eased his anxiety, if only in an inconsiderable degree. But he saw, as he took her handbag and b...

Doctor Wilson, arriving from Tellurium on the third day after the encounter at Paradise, found Huntington in a bad way, due not so much to the wound in his left shoulder as to t...

There had been yellow, mellow weather for weeks on weeks, but this day dawned hard and cold. Some projected rancor of the winter was in the air. Westward the peaks were blankete...

The next afternoon Huntington, with painful diffidence, yet anxious to come to some sort of terms with Marion, proposed that she should begin her shooting lessons. She acquiesce...

August ripened into September, and the Park underwent a subtle and fascinating change. In the meadows the hay lay in long windrows, golden green; on the slopes vermilion flowers...

Late October in the San Luis, and the raw day near its close. Across the melancholy flats the north wind's plaintive note rose at intervals into a wailing cry. The thin grasses...