The Iron Furrow

As Lee Bryant reined his horse to a stop before the small ranch house, a man seated on a stool just within the open doorway rose and came out to join him. He was a man of thin,...

That Sunday afternoon at Sarita Creek! The dinner, so savoury, so delectable; the two girls, arrayed in cool white lawn, rosy-cheeked, beaming; the gay talk and banter and laugh...

About the middle of the next afternoon Lee Bryant was riding southward from camp on the main mesa trail. The road was difficult and his horse Dick made slow time along the snowy...

The Ventisquero Range stretches across the circumference of one's vision in a procession of mountains that come tall and blue out of the distant north and seemingly march past t...

October. And the last golden leaves twirling down from cottonwood and aspen and mountain maple; the lofty brown peaks fresh powdered with snow; the air dazzling, keen, heady lik...

A week of twenty-below-zero weather opened the month of January and halted work on the mesa. At that time four miles of canal remained to be dug. Bryant and Pat Carrigan sat by...

The town of Bartolo slumbered in the July sunshine. Nothing stirred on its one long street, lined with scarcely a break on either side by mud-plastered houses that made a contin...

Though Lee Bryant, during his colloquy with Menocal, had spoken confidently of his ability to obtain money wherewith to construct a canal system linking the Pinas River and the...

The predicted cold weather came, bringing winter in earnest. The frost went deeper into the ground and construction grew slower, but the days continued fine and without gales, t...

Ghastly mistakes! Some cynic has said the only mistake in life a man can make is "to go broke." Bryant did not realize until afterward the irony lurking in the penumbra of the t...

In Kennard next morning Lee Bryant betook himself to a civil engineering firm, which he engaged to print a number of sets of blue-prints from his tracings, one set to be ready f...

Rymer, a sandy-haired, blue-eyed young fellow, one of Bryant's staff, walked out of the shack, pulling on his coat. He had a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, at which he wa...

Charlie Menocal's object in calling upon the young ladies at Sarita Creek was merely diversion. He was fond of girls, especially lively ones, and knew a good many here and there...

On Christmas morning the thought occurred to Lee that he had heard nothing more from Imogene of the plan for him to spend the day at the McDonnells', which she had mentioned the...

Meanwhile Lee, under relentless pressure of work, saw less and less of Ruth. She had come a number of times at the beginning of the drive, sometimes with Gretzinger, sometimes w...

A week later the long-belated big storm appeared at hand. McDonnell telephoned Bryant one morning, a morning in February now, that the weather forecast predicted blizzard condit...

Bryant had asked Carrigan to come to the office at two o'clock, stating that the company was insolvent and but enough money remained to square accounts with the contractor. Pat...

Imogene had been startled by a note in Lee's answer to her bantering question that she never before had heard him use. Though his words were uttered lightly, there nevertheless...

The defect in the ditch proved to be one of minor character, which Bryant corrected after a few observations and half an hour's work with a shovel. While he was thus engaged, Im...

July passed. Followed August, with days likewise hot and unvarying except for a scarcely appreciable retardation of dawn. Perro Creek now showed no water at all in its shallow b...

The first flakes were but the precursors of a heavy fall of snow that almost immediately began, soundless, without wind, filling the air and whitening the earth, and that was st...

Work on the canal section near the river advanced without incident until, one morning early in November, the plows unexpectedly uncovered a forty-foot-wide body of granite just...

For four days the bitter cold and fierce wind held the camps in thrall, then the latter blew itself out. The cold, however, still endured though the sun shone. When one looked f...

"When gentlemen of a dark and sinister cast of mind deliberately set out to frustrate one's legitimate efforts under a misapprehension as to the course to be pursued, the proper...

They were waiting in the sheriff's office in the court house in Bartolo. They were waiting for Mr. Menocal. Winship had sent a messenger for him. At one place in the room, handc...

Louise Graham, entering the dining car for breakfast, received a surprise at beholding Lee Bryant half way along the aisle at one of the smaller tables. He laid down the spoon w...

By noon Bryant and Carrigan had concluded their interviews with members of the Land and Water Board. All of them had listened, asked questions, expressed their regret at the sit...

Charlie Menocal, who after his sleep had read a few chapters in a novel, went out of the shaded room where he had reposed and into the garden. There he discovered his father in...

The first snowflakes of another storm were beginning to flutter down by the time the two men reached camp, and dusk had set in. On the drifted road from Bartolo, over which but...

It was an afternoon in late January, and the banker, bundled in a great overcoat and numerous rugs, had reined his team to a halt at the spot where he found the engineer. The ai...

As by the girls' cabins, so before the Graham house, Lee perceived a motor car. He brought his own machine to a stop near it and cut off his engine. At the same instant the door...

For Bryant there now began a period of activity compared to which his earlier efforts were mere play. Headquarters were moved down to Perro Creek, ten miles nearer Kennard. In a...