The Mine with the Iron Door

“Goodness me, child,” the older woman exclaimed when she had kissed her and held her close for a moment as such mothers do, “you look as if--as if you were going to jump right o...

As consciousness returned to Marta, her first sensation was that of physical comfort. She thought that she was in her own bed at home, awakening from a dream. Slowly she opened...

The old Pardners, when their day’s work was finished, climbed slowly down from the mouth of the tunnel to the creek and, crossing the little stream, climbed as slowly up to the...

All through these lonely months following the disappearance of Hugh Edwards, Marta Hillgrove had lived in the firm conviction that the man she loved would come again. She had no...

“Hugh Edwards is waiting with the horses. We have the pinto and your saddle but I fear you must leave everything else. Not all the men are in there gambling and drinking. There...

The weeks of the spring passed. The gleaming snow fields vanished from the dark pine heights of Mount Lemmon. The creek, which ran through the Cañon of Gold with such boisterous...

The trail, left by Sonora Jack, led Edwards and Natachee down the creek and out of the cañon by the old road. But a mile or two beyond the crossing, the outlaw had left the road...

With a cry of dismay Hugh ran to the place where he kept hidden his hoard of gold. His pitifully small earnings were untouched. Natachee’s bow and quiver of arrows, without whic...

The air was tingling with the fresh and vigorous sweetness of the early morning. From the kitchen door, as she prepared breakfast, she saw the mountain tops, golden in the first...

The house in the Cañon of Gold where the Pardners and their girl lived was little more than a cabin of rough, unpainted boards. But there was a wide porch overrun with vines, an...

“I’ll have to hear what the boss says before I commit myself,” said the sheriff. “How about it, Marta?” he called to the girl who stood in the doorway. “Are you backing the offe...

Marta could not have explained, even to herself, why she was so anxious to see Saint Jimmy and Hugh Edwards together. Certainly she made no effort to find an explanation.

“Me an’ my pardner here was comin’ in to Tucson from the Santa Rosa Mountains, which is down close to the Mexican line. We’d been out for about three months an’ was needin’ supp...

“I returned from Tucson this afternoon,” he said at last. “I came back to my place another way, over the mountains from the south. When the sun was gone I came down here to you.”

“As the ocean calls the water of the rivers, and the rivers call the creeks and springs, so this story, of a treasure hidden in a mine that is lost, has called many people to th...

When he saw that he was discovered, the man who was watching Hugh Edwards came leisurely forward. At the same instant Hugh thought that he glimpsed another figure farther away o...

The weeks of the “Little Spring” passed. The blossoms vanished from mountain and foothill and mesa and desert. The air grew crisp with the tang of frost. On the higher elevation...

Doctor Jimmy Burton and his mother spent their first year in Arizona at Tucson and Oracle. But when they were satisfied that Jimmy could live if he gave up his too strenuous pro...

“Hugh Edwards, the mountain streams that are born up there among those peaks are obedient to the will of Him from whose hand the snows fall. From their cradles among the roots o...

The Lizard’s preliminary inspection of the stranger and his camp might or might not have been prompted by a habit of caution. When it was finished he called a loose-mouthed “How...

There was no friendly moon. The sky was overcast with lowering clouds that shut out the light of the stars. From the thick blackness of the cañon far below, the sullen murmur of...

Slowly the eyes of the Mexican turned from face to face of the silent group. But it was upon Saint Jimmy’s face that his gaze finally rested, and it was to Saint Jimmy that he a...

The victim of the Lizard’s unspeakable brutality was as one dazed by an unexpected blow. Coming, as the fellow’s vicious attack did, so close upon her own uneasy thoughts, it se...

At first, when his mind was able to grasp the terrible facts of the tragedy, Hugh Edwards nearly lost control of himself. But Natachee steadied him. The Indian assured him with...

Every day he spent the greater part of his time under the mesquite trees with Bob, and in the night, they would hear him going out “to see,” as he said, “if his pardner was all...

And Hugh Edwards knew by the light that flashed in the Indian’s somber eyes--by the expression of that dark countenance, and by the proud bearing of the red man, that Natachee h...

When Hugh Edwards left Saint Jimmy and the Indian, he was beside himself with grief and rage. He had prepared himself, in a measure, to lose Marta. He had told himself that his...

And yet--those who look for it still find “color” in the Cañada del Oro. Romance and adventure still live in the Cañon of Gold. The treasures of life are not all hidden in a los...

“Yes, sir,” said the Lizard, “I’m a-tellin’ ye that them thar Pardners an’ their gal--Marta her name is--are th’ beatenest outfit ye er ary other man ever seed. Ain’t nobody kin...

He felt that the Indian was playing some kind of a game--a game which the red man seemed rather to enjoy but which left the white man very much in the dark.

The man who was following the old road up the Cañon of Gold had made his way a mile or more from the point where he was last seen by the Indian, when the deepening twilight warn...

She did not know what it was that had made the man she loved a fugitive from the law. She did not care. She was glad--glad because now her dream of happiness with him was possible.

The Lizard was on his way to Oracle that day when he turned aside from the more direct trail to take the path that led past the little white house on the mountain side. Approach...

“Marta, or Martha, for that is her name, was born in a little city in southwestern Missouri--in the lead and zinc mining district. Her parents were both held in the highest este...

At the point where the road enters the Cañon of Gold, which is as far as an automobile can go on that ancient trail, Hugh and Marta, with old Thad, were waiting.