Told in the Hills: A Novel

"The de'il tak' them wi' their weeman folk, whose nerves are too delicate for a squaw man, or an Injun guide. I'd tak' no heed o' them if I was well, an' I'll do less now I'm pl...

Do you know the region of the Kootenai that lies in the northwest corner of a most northwestern state--where the "bunch-grass" of the grazing levels bends even now under a chanc...

The speaker was a chubby, matronly figure, enthroned on a hassock of spruce boughs, while the girl stretched beside her was drawing the fragrant spikes of green, bit by bit, ove...

She did not look masculine, however, as she stood there, slender, and brown from the tan of the winds; the unruly, fluffy hair clustering around a face and caressing a neck that...

After their stop at the Indian camp, which Genesee explained was a berrying crowd from the Kootenai tribe, there was, of course, comment among the visitors as to the mixed speci...

The retracing of steps, either figuratively or literally, is always provocative of thought to the individual who walks again over the old paths; the waning of a moon never finds...

Over the crowns of the far hills the moon wheeled slowly up into the sky, giving the shadows a cloak of blue mist, and vying with the forgotten torch in lighting up the group in...

"I allow we are, Miss Hardy," answered the other, a boy of about fifteen, who gazed rather dubiously back over the way they had come and ahead where a half-blind trail led up al...

In the spring that followed, what a spirit of promise and enterprise was abroad on the Hardy ranch! What multitudes of white lambs, uncertain in the legs, staggered and tottered...

Spring, with its showers and promises, drifted into the dim perspective, as summer, with flaunting assumption, took possession of the foreground. All through the changing weeks...

"And so you got back unharmed from the midst of the hostiles?" asked Rachel in mock surprise, when, a week later, Hardy, Stuart, and MacDougall returned from their pilgrimage, b...

The noon was passed when they reached the cabin on Scot's Mountain, and found its owner on the point of leaving for the Maple range. But quickly replacing his gun on its pegs, h...

The snows had dropped a soft cloak over the Kootenai hills, and buried the valleys in great beds of crystallized down. Rachel's prophecy had proven a true one, for the clouds th...

Stories of grizzlies and black bear had grown passe; even the more rare accounts of wild horses spotted in some secluded valley failed to stir his old-time interest. All else ha...

The next morning, bright and early, Kalitan called at the ranch; and Miss Fred, accustomed as she was to the red men, grew rather enthusiastic over this haughty, graceful specim...

Rumors were beginning to drift into camp of hostile intents of the Blackfeet; and a general feeling of uneasiness became apparent as no word came from the chief of their scouts,...

Major Dreyer left the next day, with a scout and small detachment, with the idea of making the journey to Fort Owens and back in two weeks, as matters were to be discussed requi...

The protracted twilight, with its cool grays and purples, had finally faded away over the snow, long after the stars took up their watch for the night. The air was so still and...

The next morning awoke with the balmy air of spring following the sunrise over the snow--a fair, soft day, with treachery back of its smiles; for along in the afternoon the sky...

An hour before dawn the wind came, hurtling down through the mountains and moaning along the valleys; before it drove the flying snow in great chilly sheets, as it was lifted fr...

At the ranch a strange cloak of silence hung around the household in regard to the horse-stealing. The men, hearing of the night raid, had endeavored to keep it from the women f...

An hour before day in the Kootenais! Not the musical dawn of that early autumn, when all the woods were a-quiver with the fullness of color and sound; when the birds called to e...

"Yet he is a horse-thief," she said, in that tone of depreciation that expresses praise, "and he sent me his glove? Well, I am glad he had the grace to be sorry for scattering m...

While they commented, and wondered, and praised, and found fault with him, the day drifted into darkness, the darkness into a dreary dawn; and through all changes of the hours t...

Within the confines of Camp Kootenai there was a ripple of rejoicing. At last, after four days lost because of the snow, Major Dreyer had arrived, pushing on with all possible h...

They brought him--his dark, sad-faced brothers--bearing him on a bed of elastic poles and the skins of beasts; and walking through the lines of blue-coats as if not seeing them,...

The echoes are no longer silent in Tamahnous Peak. The witchcraft of silver has killed the old superstition. The "something" in Genesee's pocket had been a specimen that warrant...