The Twins of Suffering Creek

He was swabbing the floor with a rag mop; a voluntary task, undertaken to relieve his wife, who was lounging over the glowing cookstove, reading a cheap story book. Once or twic...

For one passionate moment the woman's radiant face held the gaze of the man. He was swayed with an unwholesome hunger at the sight of her splendid womanhood. The beautiful, terr...

At noon the camp began to rouse. The heavy eyes, the languid stretch, the unmeaning contemplation of the noontide sunlight, the slow struggles of a somnolent brain. These things...

The miners had departed to their claims with a punctuality that suggested Trades Union principles. Such was their existence. They ate to live; they lived to work, ever tracking...

Where all the trail-wise men of Suffering Creek and the district had failed, Scipio, the incompetent, succeeded. Such was the ironical pleasure of the jade Fortune. Scipio had n...

Wild Bill was gazing out across the camp dumps. His expression suggested the contemplation of a problem of life and death, and a personal one at that. Sandy Joyce, too, bore tra...

In the meantime Sunny Oak was executing his orders with a care for detail quite remarkable in a man of his excessive indolence. It was a curious fact, and one that told a great...

Wild Bill stretched himself drowsily. It was noon. He knew that by the position of the patch of sunlight on the floor, which he gazed at with blinking eyes. Presently he reached...

Bill passed straight through the store and set out across the town dumps. And it would have been impossible to guess how far he was affected by Minky's plaint. His face might ha...

It was a blazing afternoon of the "stewing" type. The flies in the store kept up a sickening hum, and tortured suffering humanity--in the form of the solitary Minky--with their...

Bill watched the men depart. The stolid Minky, too, followed them with his eyes. But as they disappeared through the doorway he turned to the gambler, and, in surprise, discover...

The woman turned from the window at the sound of footsteps somewhere behind her. That was her way now. She started at each fresh sound that suggested anyone approaching. Her ner...

The derelicts of a mining camp must ever be interesting to the student of human nature, so wide is the field for study. But it were better to be a student, simply, when probing...

The ordinary woman would probably have resented this second interruption, taking into consideration the nature of Birdie's occupation, and the fact that Toby's visit had hardly...

Wild Bill's hut presented an unusually animated appearance. The customary oil-lamp was receiving the support of two vilely smelling yellow candles. The additional light thus obt...

What a complicated machinery human nature is! It seems absurd that a strongly defined character should be just as full of surprises as the weakest; that the fantastic, the unexp...

Scipio's long day was almost over. The twins were in bed, and the little man was lounging for a few idle moments in the doorway of his hut. Just now an armistice in his conflict...

Wild Bill had many things to think of on his way back to Suffering Creek. He was a tremendously alert-minded man at all times, so alert-minded that at no time was he given to va...

Scipio was washing clothes down at the creek. So much had happened to him that day, so many and various had been the emotions through which he had passed, that there was only on...

Wild Bill ate his supper that evening because it was his custom to do so. He had no inclination for it, and it gave him no enjoyment. He treated the matter much as he would have...

Scipio's impulses were, from his own point of view, entirely practical. Whatever he did, he did with his whole heart. And if his results somehow missed coming out as he intended...

On the veranda of the store was the usual Sunday morning gathering of the citizens of Suffering Creek, an impromptu function which occurred as regularly as the sun rose and set....

Scipio started and looked up as a joyous greeting from the children outside warned him of the approach of a visitor. He was rather glad of the interruption, too. He found the Bi...

"I sure did. Guess they kind o' need airin' some. 'Tain't no use in settin' in their clothes damp; they'll be gettin' sick, sure. Ther's a dandy bit o' grass right here. Best se...

When Wild Bill returned to his hut later on in the afternoon he was consumed by a cold, hard rage, such as comes but rarely in the life of any man. There was no demonstrativenes...

Suffering Creek awoke on the Monday morning laboring under a hideous depression of nightmare. There was no buoyancy in the contemplation of the day's "prospect." It was as thoug...

It was nearly sundown. A chilly mist was stealing down the slopes of the surrounding hills. It densified to a ruddy fog as it caught the glow of the evening sun, and finally set...

James clattered into the empty sitting-room and stared about him. His dark face was flushed with excitement. The savage in him was stirred to its best mood, but it was still the...

Two days of excitement were quite sufficient to upset the nerves of Suffering Creek. The only excitement it was used to was the sudden discovery of an extra good find of gold. T...

Wild Bill's lean hands clawed the reins with muscles of steel. For the moment his six horses occupied his every thought. They were pulling with the madness of high-bred racehors...

A shout of fury. A wild chorus of meaningless blasphemy. A thundering of hoofs. A shriek of pain--an appalling death-cry. The fight has begun--such a fight, in its wanton savage...

It was with strangely mixed feelings that Scipio drove Minky's old mule down the shelving trail leading into the secret valley where stood James' ranch-house. The recollection o...

When Scipio turned his back upon the valley it was with the intention of resting his old mule at the place of the friendly farmer whom he had encountered on his first memorable...

Suffering Creek was again in a state of ferment. It seemed as if there were nothing but one excitement after another in the place now. No sooner was the matter of the gold-stage...

Scipio stood in the doorway of his hut with a hopelessly dazed look in his pale eyes and a perplexed frown upon his brow. He had just returned from Minky's store, whither he had...