The well in the desert

Blue Gulch was relaxing after the ardors of its working-day. From the direction of the Cheerful Heart Dance Hall issued sounds of mirth and festivity, and a weaving fantasy of s...

The meager little office was a palace compared with the cell from which he had escaped, he thought as he looked about him in the dim light from the open door of the stove.

The shadowy bulk of distant mountains changed to pale blue as the purple of night slowly lightened. The stars faded, one by one, and a spectral moon slipped wearily down the sky...

The morning light did not confirm Gard’s impression that he was in the deep woods. Beyond the thin region of growth fed by the pool the little valley into which he had been led...

The burro got well and throve. Gard devoted the period of her convalescence to teaching her the essential arts of the higher companionship. Her first lesson in burden-bearing wa...

Gard and Jinny were on an expedition after salt. The instinct hidden in the gray little hide was so much more useful in the case than the thinking machinery beneath the man’s th...

The first touch of dawn saw Gard awake and stirring. He went softly about the glade, feeding Jinny in her little corral off at one side, and preparing his own breakfast. The mea...

It was supper-time at the Sylvania Palace Grille. Sylvania was an outfitting town for prospectors and cow-punchers, and the occupants of the little oilcloth-covered tables in th...

The scene in which Gard found himself was of a sort he had known familiarly enough in years past. The low-ceilinged shanty, rough-boarded and blackened; the sawdust-strewn floor...

The desert was a marvel of mauve and yellow and rose-color, under a canopy of blue. The sun was not too hot, and the air was vital and sustaining. Helen Anderson, riding over th...

As Morgan Anderson had predicted, the condition of Gard’s foot next day was such as to make him a captive. The cattleman, surveying it after Jacinta had given the patient his br...

“We’ll let him have his siesta out,” said his host. “I don’t suppose he got any too much sleep last night, with that foot. Helen, you and I can take Westcott to see the new corr...

He spoke lightly, not glancing at the upturned, troubled face. He spoke truthfully. His foot was well on the road to recovery, but he knew, in his heart of hearts, that he was r...

The days immediately following his return to Sylvania were hard ones for Gard. The few cautious inquiries he had dared to make in the investigation of his own affairs had result...

Gard had not been wrong in his reading of the mirage. It _was_ Helen whose presentment that marvel of the desert had set like a bow of promise in the sky. A mood of restlessness...

Sandy Larch was squatted on the sand, against the wall of his shack, lacing a new leather into the cincha-ring of his saddle, and singing The Tune The Old Cow Died On. The ditty...

The Governor of Arizona sprang up from his big desk chair and crossed the room as Mrs. Hallard came into his private office. His manner was cordial, the more so, perhaps, that i...

Westcott’s state of mind, miserable as it was, would have been more unenviable still had he known that Gard was on the train with him during the journey to Bonesta. The lawyer w...

Sandy Larch had driven to Bonesta to meet Mrs. Hallard, Unricht’s telephone message having reached the Palo Verde in due season. The cowboys were all out on the range. There was...

Gard, securely roped, stood with his back against a cottonwood tree, looking at his captors. There was no mistaking their condition, and they left him in no doubt as to their in...

Yelling wildly through the night, the other Palo Verde riders came pounding over the sand. Sandy Larch, who, with Mrs. Hallard, had been investigating the extent of Broome’s inj...

“I am,” answered Gard. “I always have been, from the minute I saw you come around the corner of the house that morning, with your tray and grape-fruit, I’ve been expecting I’d w...