The Trail Horde

Lawler stayed long enough at the Circle L to speak a word with his mother. His sister Mary had gone to bed when he stepped into the front door of the ranchhouse, to be greeted b...

Gary Warden did not stand at the office window many minutes after he saw Lawler on the street. He drew on his coat, took his hat from a hook, on the wall and descended the stair...

Accident or design had placed the schoolhouse at the eastern edge of town. The invisible power which creates the schoolhouse seemingly takes no account of time or place. It come...

When Lawler spoke to Blackburn regarding the news that had been communicated to him by the horse-wrangler, Blackburn suggested that himself and several of the Circle L men ride...

When Red King struck the river trail he was traveling as strongly as when he began his long race. The miles that had stretched between him and the destination at which his rider...

From the front windows of the Wolf Saloon, Slade, the violent-mannered rider whom Blondy Antrim had left in charge of his men the night he had ridden away from the desert camp f...

From the ceiling of the cabin Lawler had suspended a spare blanket. It hung between the two tiers of bunks, thus providing a certain privacy for both Miss Wharton and Lawler.

When Lawler finally emerged from the schoolhouse door there was no one about. Far down the street, in front of a building, he saw a group of children. Lawler recognized the buil...

Lawler smiled. "Then I reckon we're both surprised, ma'am," he said. "I certainly wasn't expecting the norther to bring you. You had a mighty narrow squeeze. You were pretty nea...

When Lawler returned to the Circle L ranchhouse he found that Mary had gone East, to school. She had left for Willets on the second day following Lawler's departure; and Mrs. La...

When the storm broke Warden had shown by his actions that he was more concerned over Link and Givens than over Della Wharton. He had told Singleton to ride the trail to Willets,...

Lawler went outside with Caldwell and the others--after Caldwell returned from his visit to Gary Warden--and, standing in the flickering glare of light from inside the hotel, he...

Within fifteen minutes after he had left Ruth Hamlin with Slade at the side door of the Wolf, Warden had sent a telegram to Lawler, at the capital, informing him that the girl m...

It was many days before Lawler was strong enough to ride Red King to the Circle L; and many more days joined the regiments that have marched into the ages, before he forgot what...

There were fifty thousand acres within view of the ranchhouse--virgin grass land dotted with sage, running over a wide level, into little hills, and so on to an upland whose ris...

Lawler stiffened. There was no mistaking the deadly threat of the rifle and the man's menacing manner. Lawler's face was pale, but his eyes were unwavering as they looked into t...

The Wolf Saloon was in a big frame building that stood at a little distance from the back of the street, with a wide, open space on each side of it. Lights were flickering from...

At the close of the second day the big trail herd halted at the edge of the vast level over which it had come. The herd had been driven forty miles. Cattle, men, and horses had...

For an hour there was no sound in the cabin. Lawler smoked several cigarettes. Once he got up and threw more wood upon the fire, standing in front of the blaze for several minut...

Sheriff Moreton had left Red King at the livery stable, and after Lawler had thanked the sheriff for his part in the little drama that had just been played, he walked to the sta...

For more than a month--or from a few days following the night on which she had seen her father talking with Dave Singleton--Ruth Hamlin had been aware that her parent was acting...

From the doorway of the cabin on the Rabbit Ear, Antrim had watched Slade and his men ride away. His gaze followed them until they vanished over the edge of the big plain above...

When Lawler reached Willets' one street he saw a buckboard drawn by two gray horses. The vehicle was headed west, away from him, and the horses were walking. The distance betwee...

After the departure of Lawler on the night of Gary Warden's visit to the Hamlin cabin, silence, vast and deep reigned inside. The last golden shadows from the sinking sun were t...

Dawn was just breaking when Lawler dropped from Red King at the windbreak near the line cabin. He put the big horse in the dugout, closed the dugout door and entered the cabin....

The two men had walked to a point near the big fireplace that occupied the greater part of one end of the cabin. The hatless one, big, assertive, belligerent, grinned defiantly,...

Early in the afternoon of the first day of December the sky darkened, and a cold, raw wind began to shriek through Willets. The company corral was empty; and again, as on the da...

The jail was small--merely one room with barred windows and an iron door, opening upon the street. The iron door was supplemented with a wooden one, which halted the glances of...

It had always been lonely at the Hamlin cabin, and it grew more lonely after Kane Lawler left the Circle L. For the barrier between Ruth and the happiness she had a right to exp...

When Gary Warden stepped off the east-bound train at Willets one evening in April--to be met by Singleton, who had been apprised of the day of his coming and who had been in tow...

There had been a day when Willets was but a name, designating a water tank and a railroad siding where panting locomotives, hot and dry from a long run through an arid, sandy de...

Della Wharton had watched from one of the windows of her room in the hotel. She had seen Lawler and Shorty ride down the street to Warden's office; she had seen Shorty come out...

As upon another day that was vivid in his memory, Governor Lawler sat at his desk in his office in the capitol building. A big, keen-eyed man of imposing appearance was sitting...

Jay Simmons, the freight agent, was tilted comfortably in a chair near a window looking out upon the railroad platform when Lawler stepped into the office. The office was on the...

Shorty and a dozen Circle L men--among them Blackburn and the three others who had been wounded in the fight with the rustlers on the plains the previous spring--had been waitin...

Morning had come. She gathered the bedclothes around her and sat up, glancing around the cabin for Lawler. He must have gone out, for the heavy wooden bar had been removed from...

Warden and Singleton had been in Willets on the day the storm broke. They had ridden into town early, and when they saw the low-flying clouds sweeping down from the north Single...

After leaving Jordan and Warden, Lawler walked across the railroad tracks and entered the station, where he sent a telegram to Keppler, the buyer at Red Rock. Then he drew a cha...

From his desk in the big, quiet room in the capitol building Lawler could look out upon a wide sweep of orderly landscape. There were trees--now stripped of their foliage--in se...

Lawler had said little to Sheriff Moreton on the ride to Willets. Nor had he made any comment when, in the Circle L ranchhouse, in the presence of his mother, Moreton had shown...

When Ruth regained the use of her senses she was lying on a bed in a small, evil-smelling room. An oil-lamp burned upon a little stand in one corner. A door--the only one--was c...

Sheriff Moreton waited for Warden to act, as he had promised. And the sheriff continued to wait. For Warden did not appear with his evidence. It seemed that the power behind War...

For an instant following the attack there was no change in the scene inside the cabin. Surprise that Lawler had escaped his blow seemed to retard Link's movements quite as much...