The Quirt

"You goin' after them posts, or shall I?" he inquired glumly, which, by the way, was his normal tone. "Jim and Sorry oughta git the post holes all dug to-day. One of us better t...

Twice in the next week Lone found an excuse for riding over to the Sawtooth. During his first visit, the foreman's wife told him that the young lady was still too sick to talk m...

For a time the trail seemed to lead toward Whisper. Then it turned away and seemed about to end abruptly on a flat outcropping of rock two miles from Whisper camp. Lone frowned...

When the sun has been up just long enough to take the before-dawn chill from the air without having swallowed all the diamonds that spangle bush and twig and grass-blade after a...

Still dreaming her dreams, still featuring herself as the star of many adventures, Lorraine followed the brakeman out of the dusty day coach and down the car steps to the platfo...

In her fictitious West Lorraine had long since come to look upon violence as a synonym for picturesqueness; murder and mystery were inevitably an accompaniment of chaps and spur...

Brit Hunter finished washing the breakfast dishes and put a stick of wood into the broken old cook-stove that had served him and Frank for fifteen years and was feeling its age....

Brit was smoking his pipe after supper and staring at nothing, though his face was turned toward the closed door. Lorraine had washed the dishes and was tidying the room and loo...

Lorraine, following instinct rather than thought, pulled Yellowjacket into the first opening that presented itself. This was a narrow, rather precipitous gully that seamed the s...

"Frank come yet?" The peevish impatience of an invalid whose horizon has narrowed to his own personal welfare and wants was in Brit's voice. Two weeks he had been sick, and his...

Lone Morgan was a Virginian by birth, though few of his acquaintances knew it. Lone never talked of himself except as his personal history touched a common interest with his fel...

Before sundown they reached the timberland on Bear Top. The horses slipped on the pine needles when Al left the trail and rode up a gentle incline where the trees grew large and...

There was no opportunity for further conference. Senator Warfield showed no especial interest in Swan, and the Swede was permitted without comment to take his dog and strike off...

A chill wind that hurried over Bear Top ahead of the dawn brought Swan and Jack clattering up the trail that dipped into Spirit Canyon. Warfield rose stiffly from the one-sided...

Oppression is a growth that flourishes best in the soil of opportunity. It seldom springs into full power at once. The Sawtooth Cattle Company had begun much as its neighbors ha...

Quirt Creek flowed sluggishly between willows which sagged none too gracefully across its deeper pools, or languished beside the rocky stretches that were bone dry from July to...

Past the field where the horses were grazing and up the canyon on the side toward Skyline Meadow, that lay on a shoulder of Bear Top, the dog nosed unfalteringly along the trail...

Lone Morgan, over at Elk Spring camp, was just sitting down to eat his midday meal when some one shouted outside. Lone stiffened in his chair, felt under his coat, and then got...

Lorraine Hunter always maintained that she was a Western girl. If she reached the point of furnishing details she would tell you that she had ridden horses from the time that sh...

Lorraine had once had a nasty fall from riding down hill at a gallop. She remembered that accident and permitted Snake to descend Granite Ridge at a walk, which was fortunate, s...

A car with dimmed lights stood in front of the Quirt cabin when Swan drove around the last low ridge and down to the gate. The rattle of the wagon must have been heard, for the...

At daybreak Swan was striding toward the place where Frank Johnson had been found. Lone, his face moody, his eyes clouded with thought, rode beside him, while Jack trotted loose...

Swan cooked himself a hasty meal while he studied the various possibilities of the case and waited for further word from headquarters. He wanted to be sure that help had started...

The story itself is ended. To go on would be to begin another story; to tell of the building up of the Quirt outfit, with Lone and Lone's savings playing a very important part,...