The Red Debt: Echoes from Kentucky

No imagery can adequately picture the profound grandeur and wide wild beauty of these Kentucky highlands. At the age when its purity was whitest, a great moon hung midway betwee...

Beneath Eagle Crown the four-room cabin reposed in a shelter of spruce-pine, hemlock and cedar. Its plot was covered with countless quaint flowers and its rock-hemmed path to th...

Belle-Ann jumped instantly to her feet, looked, brushed her eyes with her hand, and hastened to meet them, her curls bobbing and her bare legs and arms gleaming in the moon's lu...

A veil of azure morning mist lingered at the apex of Henhawk's knob. A young eagle--aggressively bold in his youth--sallied forth into the mystic dawn, setting himself high on E...

Unconsciously she sat down on the wagon-bed, with the pile of money beside her; and thus, wholly enthralled, she muttered faint exclamations. Orlick's eyes glittered in their de...

The following morning, being Saturday, Cap Lutts held a conclave in the cavern that concealed the illicit still. When the conference was over half a dozen men were scattered abo...

Out into that troublous, tempestuous night a hundred alarmed militant mountaineers rushed down through the jungle shadows, over a score of savage, rugged trails. Onward they has...

Tom-John Benson did not come up to Moon mountain the following week, nor the next. But at the end of the third week he appeared to take Belle-Ann below to Beattyville and across...

"I couldn't bust my vow, Lem. Hit air jest heah in my breast by day an' by night. Hit follers me alers, Lem--follers me like a hant. I don't lay no store by nuthin' till hit air...

At high-noon the next day Lem Lutts was landed at Frankfort, a United States prisoner. This dismal trip represented the first ride Lem had ever made on a railroad. The terrible...

"Sure--that's right," he assented. "Well, Lutts, come with me now. You have to take a bath--everybody that comes in here has to take a bath, the first dash out the box. You ain'...

He was in jail now--he, Lem Lutts,--old Cap Lutts' boy--was gunless to-night; hanging on to the bars of a jail door. His father, seventy-six when he fell in the Church of Hellsf...

Lem ate the cheese and crackers thrust upon him by the generous convict, more to assuage the acute pangs of hunger that now assailed him than to indulge his palate, the while he...

Up on Eagle Crown, dim crest of his benighted world, Buddy Lutts' small shape made a vague shadow, fusing with the dawn-mists that dipped and lifted and swathed the peaks like a...

After getting authentic information from the offices of the six Federal commissioners in the eastern district, and finding, to his deep chagrin, absolutely no trace of Lem Lutts...

A bird's-eye view of Junction City would inspire even a jaded wayfarer to continue on and forfeit what measure of scruffy, uncouth hospitality its lazy, primitive confines might...

However, Barlow's disappearance was a matter of small concern to old Hank. If Steve did not show up, Hank knew that he would never pay the bond and would be a month's board in t...

The three Hatfield men had crawfished back into a dense dewberry patch, while the three in the shop had crawled into the loft and hidden among the miscellaneous rubbish. As ther...

By and by, Hatfield opened his eyes to find that his horse was nosing his face with his warm, rough lips as if bent on waking him up. Johnse lifted his aching eyes toward the mo...

Buddy knew that Hatfield would be compelled to return southward by the same route he had gone. But here the boy was confronted with the problem of the route Orlick had led his p...

Here he slackened to a walk and, turning over, crossed into the road. He felt of his shoulder gingerly. It did not appear to be bleeding much, but the wound under his arm stung...

'Twas some days ere Belle-Ann fitted her mood to her strange environments. The Mission School at Proctor was a beautiful place--a great rambling structure on the apex of a hill...

One evening after class hours, Belle-Ann was in her room engrossed in the pages of her grammar when Miss Worth entered. As the girl leaned over her book, her black curls tumbled...

Arriving at Lexington, the girl was confronted with her first sight of a city. Belle-Ann was agreeably surprised to meet Colonel Tennytown, who had been awaiting their arrival a...

That night Belle-Ann indited a letter to her father, dwelling upon the kindness of Miss Worth, who had proposed to give her a higher education. She told of her delightful visit...

After a time Belle-Ann arose wearily to retire. Then she laid her troubled head on the pillow and closed her tear-wet eyes and finally dropped into a restive sleep. And in this...

"Oh!--Miss Worth!" ejaculated the girl with a noticeable catch in her voice. "My grandfather--you-all can't mean that Colonel Tennytown is my really grandfather?" she pressed ha...

"Belle-Ann," Colonel Tennytown began gently, with a strange new exultation noticeable in his tones, "I have come to ask you to do me a favor--a very great kindness--do you deem...

All through these wretched months, Lem Lutts had weltered in jail. During the first hideous weeks of his incarceration he thought his reason would not serve him longer. He felt...

When finally Lem reached the narrow twist where the trail jutted out and clung to the dew-damp breast of the mountain, he halted and dropping his torn shoes, which he had carrie...

They disbanded, and Lem Lutts returned to the cabin, melancholy and morose. This futile hunt for his elusive arch enemy was prophetic of some strange, dawning evolution. He felt...

The following day Lem Lutts arrayed himself in his newly purchased store clothes and prepared to face a strange, unfriendly world of which he knew little. Not a week, not a day,...

When he reached the ground he dashed along the trail like a madman. On past the cabin he ran in great bounds; down the cypress cut, his speed increasing every second. As he rush...

They were looking into each other's face. The boy with incredulous, wondering eyes, reflecting a heart full to the brim with adoration; she, palpitating, her dimples aflush, her...

Thinking McGill dead, Lem made one step forward and stopped, attracted by a strange, quivering movement; then he beheld the rattlesnake coiled up on Sap's breast. Then a sudden...

In mutual contented silence they stood looking after the three officers leading their sullen prisoner down the mountain trail toward Boon's Ford. With the first wholesome grin t...

Lem had said little, but upon his honest, pleasing face there was now etched the momentous outlines of the most serious, profound problem that had ever confronted his tempestuou...

As the trio approached the church, Buddy hung back reluctantly. He did not relish this nocturnal invasion of the gospel-house where no human foot had trod since the killing of h...

Human senses could not withstand such an onslaught. It startled the three to instant action. The tide of self-preservation ebbed back into their bodies; with one accord they rea...

But as Lem climbed upward, a withering despair mounted abreast with him, like the shadow cast by evil. By the time he had reached the giddy apex of the cliff, he was staggering...

He crushed her to him with a passion that bade fair to stop her breath. He poured out his kisses upon her lips, and face, and eyes. He kissed the little scar that crossed the pa...