The wonder woman

“Perhaps not prettier,” I responded. “Wanza looking out from beneath the pink-lined umbrella on her peddler’s cart is very charming, indeed. But the woman I see in the fire is--...

ONCE, years ago, when I was a lad, in an old volume of poems in my father’s library I came across a steel engraving of a beautiful woman. She had a small head with raven black t...

ALL night the rain pelted furiously against my window, and the wind blew a hurricane, roaring in the pine trees, maundering in my chimney, and rattling the loose casements. In t...

We were sitting on the river bank in the shade of some cottonwoods, having met at the village post-office. We had met at three o’clock, and it was close onto five when I propoun...

I SEEMED to have cut myself off quite effectually from communication with either Haidee or Wanza. The days went by, colorless and unlovely. And June came at last, bringing new w...

WANZA’S father had always been an interesting personality to me. He was a portly, ponderous-speaking man, with a rubicund visage, a twinkling eye, and a jovial smile. There was...

ONE sunny afternoon in the following week I again took my canoe and slipped down the river to the small aperture in the willows. This time I did not hesitate, but entered the le...

IT was into the sunshine of a cloudless June morning that Joey and I fared in quest of adventure. Our caravan was well provisioned with necessities, well equipped with cooking u...

SOME two weeks later Joey informed me that he could play “Bell Brandon” on his flute. I doubt if any one familiar with the piece would have recognized it as rendered by Joey on...

JOEY did not get his wish concerning the departure of the big man, for the next morning the big man was in no condition to go anywhere. He was still lying in his bunk when I wen...

THE doctor came early the next morning and he rendered me incredibly favorable reports of both his patients; so that I was able to buoy myself up with the hope of seeing Haidee...

IT seemed to me during the next few days that Wanza bloomed magically; as she worked she chirruped, her feet were light, a bird seemed to sing in her breast. I knew not to what...

ABOUT this time I wrote in my diary: “A man in love is an oaf. How awkward and lumbering he is in the presence of his Dulcinea. How undesirable and like a clod away from her. He...

“There is little to know, kind friend. Eight years ago, when I was twenty-four, I came to Idaho. I took up a homestead on the Cœur d’Alene River. I proved up on it, and I have s...

SOMETIMES I grew perverse, and went about the tedious common round of my tread-mill existence doggedly, taking umbrage at Mrs. Olds for the many unnecessary, trivial services sh...

ABOUT this time I began to hear strange stories in the village of a silver-tip bear that was committing grave depredations in the community. I recounted exploits of grizzlies to...

A FEW days later I was summoned to the big man’s side as he sat, fully dressed for the first time, outside the cabin in the shade of a cedar. I sat beside him while he thanked m...

THE bathing and dressing of Joey on Sunday morning, with Sunday school in prospect, had always been an indeterminate process, a sort of blind bargain. But with each week that wa...

Thank you for my cedar chest (she wrote). It reached me safely, but I have been ill in body and mind and unable to write sooner. Oh, the joy my bit of cedar wood is to me. When...

ALONE the next day I took up the search for Joey, beating back and forth between Roselake and Cedar Dale, and penetrating to Wallace and Wardner. It was to Wanza that I spoke my...

THAT night in my lonely cabin I fell ill, and burned with fever, and shook with ague so that I was unable to drag myself about the cabin, but lay all the next day and the next i...

JOEY and I slept that night at Cedar Dale, and the next morning as early as might be I obtained permission to visit Wanza in the village jail. We looked into each other’s eyes f...

ONE day close on to Christmas, Wanza was tried for the murder of Randall Batterly, and after a record-breaking trial that lasted but five hours, acquitted. The verdict said that...

I SAT by my fire throughout the long night. When dawn came I rose, went to the door and threw it wide and stepped outside into the unstained air of the morning. There was a carp...

WHEN May came I began to look forward in earnest to the return of Haidee and Joey. Every day since the beginning of spring I had gone to Hidden Lake to tend the vines and shrubs...

I began it by ploughing in the field back of the cabin. I went not near the shop. I did not venture into the cabin for lunch at noon. I had made up my mind to work doggedly till...

WHEN I saw Master Joey smiling at me wanly from his pillow the next morning, his fever gone, his eyes without the abnormal brightness of the previous two days, and heard his mod...