Way of the Lawless

It was ten days later when the band dropped out of the mountains into the Murchison Pass--a singular place for a train robbery, Andrew could not help thinking. They were at the...

The mare herself was in a far from safe condition. And if the marshal had roused himself from his grief and hurried up the slope on foot he would have found the fugitive out of...

By one thing he knew the utter desperation of Hal Dozier. For the man had fired while Andrew's back was turned. The bullet had followed the warning cry as swiftly as the strike...

There was no further attempt at challenging his authority. When he ordered Clune and La Roche to bring in boughs for bedding--since they were to stop in the shack overnight--the...

While he searched desperately for an answer, Andrew found none. Then he saw the stupid, big eyes of Jeff wander from his face to the face of Scottie, and he knew that his previo...

The first ten days of the following time were the hardest; it was during that period that Scottie and the rest were most apt to return and make a backstroke at Dozier and Andrew...

It was not yet noon when he entered the gulch, he was part way up the ravine when something moved at the top of the high wall to his right. He guessed at once that it was a look...

Retrospection made Andrew Lanning's coming to Los Toros a mad freak, whereas it was in reality a very clever stroke. Hal Dozier would have been on the road five hours before if...

Every moment was bringing on the dawn more swiftly, and the eyes of Andy were growing more accustomed to the gloom in the house. He found the door of the girl's room at once. Wh...

He dismounted and gave his horse to one of the others, telling them that he would do the scouting himself this time, and he went back on foot to the house of Pop. He made his st...

In Hal Dozier there was a belief that the end justified the means. When Hank Rainer sent word to Tomo that the outlaw was in his cabin, and, if the posse would gather, he, Hank,...

He waited an eternity; in actual time it was exactly ten minutes. Then a cavalcade tramped down the hall. He heard their voices, and Hal Dozier was among them. About him flowed...

He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but, though he came to the verge of oblivion, the voices from the other room finally waked him. They had been changing subtly during the p...

It took less than five minutes for the deputy sheriff to mount his men; he himself had the pick of the corral, a dusty roan, and, as he drew the cinch taut, he turned to find Ch...

It was, indeed, a grave moment, yet the chances were large that even if he met someone on the road he would not be recognized, for it had been many days since the death of Andre...

To Andrew the last danger of the holdup had been assigned as the rear guard, and he was the last man to pass Allister. The leader had drawn his horse to one side a couple of mil...

Uncle Jas was completely bowled over. Over against the wall as the door closed he was saying to himself: "What's happened? What's happened?" As far as he could make out his neph...

There was, as Andrew had understood for a long time, a sort of underground world of criminals even here on the mountain desert. Otherwise the criminals could not have existed fo...

The bullets of the posse had neither torn a tendon nor broken a bone. Striking at close range and driven by highpower rifles, the slugs had whipped cleanly through the flesh of...

Andy, waiting breathlessly, watched lest the eye of the narrator should swing toward him for the least part of a second. But Scottie seemed utterly oblivious of the fact that he...

He had to be guided by what Uncle Jasper had often described--a mountain whose crest was split like the crown of a hat divided sharply by a knife, and the twin peaks were like t...

Beside the rear window of the blacksmith shop Jasper Lanning held his withered arms folded against his chest. With the dispassionate eye and the aching heart of an artist he sai...

Only one man in the crowd was old enough to recognize that yell, and the one man was Jasper Lanning. A great, singing happiness filled his heart and his throat. But the shouting...

If only the night had been dark, if the gelding had had a fair start; but the moon was bright, and in the thin mountain air it made a radiance almost as keen as day and just suf...

First of all, naturally, he looked at the door. It was now a bright rectangle filled with moonlight and quite empty. There must have been a sound, and he glanced over to the tra...

Even in his own lifetime a man in the mountain desert passes swiftly from the fact of history into the dream of legend. The telephone and the newspaper cannot bring that lonely...

It was a truth long after wondered at, when the story of Andrew Lanning was told and retold, that he had lain in perfect security within a six-hour ride from Tomo, while Hal Doz...

He had never studied any men as he was watching these men at cards. Andrew Lanning had spent most of his life quite indifferent to the people around him, but now it was necessar...

The house would have been more in place on the main street of a town than here in the mountain desert; but when the first John Merchant had made his stake and could build his ho...

Young Andrew Lanning lived in the small, hushed world of his own thoughts. He neither loved nor hated the people around him. He simply did not see them. His mother--it was from...

Far away in the western sky Andy Lanning saw a black dot that moved in wide circles and came up across the heavens slowly, and he knew it was a buzzard that scented carrion and...

At the same time the rifles of the two men of the posse rang, but they must have seen the fall of their leader, for the shots went wild, and Andy Lanning took off his hat and wa...

After that things happened to Andrew in a swirl. They were shaking hands with him. They were congratulating him on the killing of Bill Dozier. They were patting him on the back....

It was a very old man who held, or tried to hold, Andrew from falling to the floor. His shoulders shook under the burden of the outlaw, and the burden, indeed, would have slumpe...

After that forced and early rising, the rest of the house had remained awake, but Anne Withero was gifted with an exceptionally strong set of nerves. She had gone back to bed an...

As Andrew went down the stairs and through the entrance hall he noticed it was filled with armed men. At the door he paused for the least fraction of a second, and during that b...

It was just after the hot hour of the afternoon. The shadows from the hills to the west were beginning to drop across the village; people who had kept to their houses during the...

There was a rush of footsteps behind and around him, a jangle of voices, and there were the four huddled over Hal Dozier. Andrew had risen and stepped back, silently thanking Go...

The excitement kept Andrew awake for a little time, but then the hum of the wind, the roll of voices below him, and the weariness of the long ride rushed on him like a wave and...

The yell with which Andrew Lanning had shot out of Martindale, and which only Jasper Lanning had recognized, was no more startling to the men of the village than it was to Andre...

The thought of Jud now took him up the back trail of Andrew Lanning. He leaned far over with the lantern, studying with intense interest every place where the wounds of the inju...