The riddle of Three-Way Creek

The trail fell away to the heart of a valley, which nursed in its bosom a watercourse that was frozen solid to its bed. The hummocks of the foothills rose up in every direction....

Molly Marton was standing in the storm doorway of her home. She was gazing out at the magnificence of the winter sunset blazing on the crystal peaks of the far-off mountains. Th...

It was the dim-lit interior of a lean-to built against the big barn. It was the farmer’s workshop, littered with the tools that served his simple needs. Marton was propped again...

The hush of the woods was undisturbed by the rhythmic clip of the farmer’s axe. The cloak of winter seemed to muffle the whole world, and transform it into a dour desolation, fi...

The cold fabric of discipline at the Police Headquarters at Calford had been shocked into a flutter of excited interest and anticipation. The machine-like routine of police life...

A world of smiling hope looked out of the man’s tired blue eyes. The sky was brilliant, and flecked with fine-weather cloud. The air was full of a warmth that was increasing wit...

Most of New York--that is, all those more fortunate individuals who were not actually tied to the city by the necessities of business, were somewhere on the seashore, or up in t...

Two years had passed since the calamity at the Marton homestead. Molly’s eyes were smiling again, and all signs of her grief had been swept out of them, driven headlong by the s...

Lightning did not return until sundown, and when he reappeared the hard light of his eyes had deepened, and the thrust of his chin had become more aggressive. Molly realised the...

Whale River meandered pleasantly down the middle of a valley. It was wood and grass from end to end, and the reed and willow banks of the river completed a picture of luxuriant...

Lightning had reached the summit of a “saddle” between two considerable hills. The hills themselves were wood-clad, but the “saddle” between them was grass-grown and open, and a...

In the years of Lightning’s service at the Marton farm he had only penetrated the greater foothills to the south-west as far as Dan Quinlan’s homestead on two or three occasions.

Molly Marton sat leaning over the horn of her saddle. One elbow was propped upon it, while her brown hand supported her chin. The other hand was reaching down holding her mare’s...

Jim Pryse was leaning against one of the verandah posts of his home in the Valley of Hope. And, just behind him, lounging in a low-seated chair, was a red-headed creature, freck...

It was a delightful apartment, lit by carefully-shaded lamps. It was furnished and draped with the inspiration of a cultured woman labouring under the difficulty of remoteness....

It was a well-sheltered patch of ploughing. To the south a fringe of woodland bounded it. Then came a narrow opening. And then again, on the eastern side, a wooded hill rose up...

Andy McFardell’s drift was infinitely more rapid than appeared. The current of indolence was strong in him, and, to a nature such as his, it was irresistible. Since the day of t...

As Andy McFardell rode home from the Marton farm two definite channels of thought preoccupied him. And curiously enough that which had his passionate infatuation for Molly for i...

Lightning was squatting on a box beside the doorway of the bunk-house that had sheltered him for years. The dawn was just beginning to break. A low, yellow tinge was spreading o...

Lightning resettled himself upon his box. He was leaning forward in an attitude of alert concentration, his arms folded across his knees, with an elbow grasped in the palm of ea...

Blanche sighed as she turned from the verandah post, against which she had been leaning, and moved to the chair beside a squat-legged table. She flung herself into it, and smile...

Molly was sitting up in her bed, with the grey daylight searching the night shadows that still lurked in the little bedroom that had known her from her earliest days.

It was noon when Blanche rode up to the barn, to be greeted by a glance of genuine admiration which the old cattleman divided between the golden sorrel and its rider.

Jane and Blue Pete were doing their best. Their massive bodies were a sumptuous feeding-ground for the swarming mosquitoes, which transformed their cheerful roan coats into some...

The things Lightning discovered at McFardell’s homestead and later learned in Hartspool instantly suggested headlong action. He wanted to fling everything to the winds and get a...

Lightning had just reached the barn with his team. His horses stood timidly regarding the thing that held the man aghast. Perhaps they were mildly wondering at the extraordinary...

Blanche had just stepped on to the verandah, and the startled Larry Manford leapt out of his chair. He had been dozing prior to his final evening round of the bunk-houses, and h...

The horses moved along together in friendly rivalry. Pedro gave way not an inch to his black friend. He displayed no sign of the fatigue of the double journey of the day before....

Lightning had never made the trip into Hartspool at such a speed. His horse had understood the thing expected of it at the moment of setting out. The savage Mexican spurs on the...

Blanche knew better than to make any mystery of the situation when she encountered Lightning. She knew it was a moment when frankness alone was possible. For the old man laid ba...

Jim Pryse surveyed the lean figure that suggested nothing so much as a bare frame strung with whipcord. He knew Lightning well enough from his sister’s account of him, and from...

Outwardly the life in the Valley of Hope had undergone no change. The atmosphere of peace and well-being remained. There was not even a ripple to be detected on the surface of t...

It was late in the evening. Jim Pryse and his sister were alone in the apartment where Blanche loved to sit in company with her men-folk. The stove was radiating a pleasant warm...

There was no sound in the room but of the rustle of the sewing upon which Blanche was engaged. It was a blazing afternoon. Beyond the open, mosquito-netted window the nature-sou...

Three days later Blanche’s labours had borne that ample fruit she had looked for. She had known that Nature would fulfil her good work if only she could uproot the mental tares...

The hills were wrapped in the hush of the close of day. The sun had long since dropped behind the skyline of mountain-tops. And now the heavens, which had flamed out in a glorio...

The northern horizon was alight with a splendid aurora. It was still evening, with a prevailing sense of great peace. The two men and two women on the verandah were absorbed in...

For the third time in his life Beelzebub was in the company of Molly’s pinto mare. The little creature was above herself. She was full of oats, and bored to extinction with the...