The Lone Trail

Inspector Barker, of the Royal North-West Mounted Police, raised his frowning eyes from the weekly report he was scrawling, to watch absent-mindedly the arrival of the Calgary e...

Corporal Faircloth hung up the telephone receiver and strolled to the door, still bridling at the Inspector's ridicule. For several minutes he stood looking thoughtfully out on...

As the loading fell to a routine it quickened its pace. Every seven or eight minutes the two loaded cars were replaced by empty ones whose floors had already been strewn with sa...

Presently the policeman gathered up his reins and came on, casting his eyes about him. While still some distance away, Stamford recognised Corporal Faircloth, his favourite in t...

Cattle shipping, as any other event that collected cowboys, was a time of some anxiety in Medicine Hat. Stores closed early, citizens with any claim to being old-timers--and tha...

Morton Stamford sat in his office staring at a blank sheet of copy paper. Already he was an hour behind his schedule for the day, and the compositors upstairs had sent down twic...

Cockney Aikens was striding up and down the little gravel walk before the ranch-house--the walk that Mary herself had built from the loose rock of the river-bed--his hands thrus...

"It's my place all right," he moaned. "I don't care what ranch it is. I didn't think Canada was so wide as that sixty miles of prairie. Sixty miles! Humph! I've a complete set o...

Long after midnight of the short summer night, Cockney Aikens and his wife drove up to the Provincial Hotel, the team in a lather but Pink Eye with lots of the devil left. Mary...

Cockney and Mary Aikens returned home to find Morton Stamford established at the ranch. He had enlisted Bean Slade's special interest in an effort to maintain himself in a saddl...

Stamford raised his eyes from the wobbling wheels to the seat of the buckboard. Instantly he felt, rather than saw, that it was the Professor and his sister. Beside him Mary Aik...

They did not go fossil-hunting on the morrow. Instead, the Professor preferred to spend much of the day with his countrymen at the cook-house, while Isabel hunted Dakota up and...

After dinner the Professor announced his intention of strolling across to his friends at the cook-house, but learned from Cockney that only Bean Slade was about the place, the r...

Stamford, softly lifting the screen from his window, with the thrills of a conspirator, climbed through and looked about. Once before he had stood in the midst of the darkened p...

It was after nine the next morning when Stamford's eyes opened on a world that seemed out of focus. He examined his watch incredulously; the dink of breakfast dishes and the rum...

Stamford climbed into bed with a feeling of discomfort. He always knew beforehand when he would not sleep. Even as a youngster the aftermath of indigestible luxuries, nightmare,...

Sleep trifled with him--beckoned him on, only to elude him maddeningly. He spoke sternly to himself in language favoured by the cowboys. The fact was that he was frightened, and...

Long before the guests appeared at the breakfast table next morning Cockney was away on Pink Eye; so that there was nothing to fear from him. A singular and confusing reticence...

Stamford folded his fishing-rod, threw his lunch strap over his shoulder, and started back for the house, forgetting the big sturgeon lying in the sun. His clothes were almost d...

Morton Stamford may not have been a sick man when he arrived at the H-Lazy Z ranch; he was at least a stronger man at the end of his month's stay. His riding he continued only a...

Next morning Stamford started off the instant breakfast was over, but he did not go further than the cook-house. He found it deserted, the outfit having departed the day before...

Stamford tossed about when he should have been sleeping, worried by a thousand questions, a thousand disturbing suspicions. And through them all ran the thread of his love for I...

The next morning Stamford was again disappointed: the cowpunchers had not returned. He walked on from the cook-house to Pink Eye's corral, to see by daylight what had seemed so...

Mary Aikens, alone at the ranch-house, went about her morning work with fumbling hands and tired brain. The shadow of impending crisis was over her though she recognised only th...

Her first impression was of a warm, tender hand holding a cold cloth to her temples. She reached up and seized it; but it was jerked from her grasp. She opened her eyes and look...

The heart-stricken man staggered down the gravel path before the house and struck blindly across the prairie toward the river. Pink Eye, standing with drooping rein, tilted his...

Stamford came to the raft-landing on the river's edge, tired and perturbed, and seated himself to rest. He was very weary and hungry. Dakota had gone on faster and faster. Sudde...