Wild Roses: A Tale of the Rockies

“Well, I’ll die an old maid then, before I’ll sacrifice my self-respect to get a beau. Respect and love go together. That’s what Aunt Betty used to say, and I believe every word...

“Yes, partly; her little farm doesn’t pay much now that she has to let it out on shares; and she’s getting too old to do much for herself. I came up here to earn something to he...

The celebration was going merrily when Fred rode up to the “Ward House,” a large log structure set prominently among the scattered cabins that made the new village. It was used...

Like a hunted wolf, sore-distressed and savage, the defeated White Chief was hidden with two of his followers in the tangled depths of Mystery Grove. He had heard, with murder i...

The two chatted on a little while, then both went to their bunks and quieted down. Fred lay for a few moments listening to the frogs croaking in the pond near by till he dropped...

Crisp autumn time had come. With lavish yet artistic touch the season had painted all the craggy mountain land. The hills, splashed with scarlet, yellow, purple, and other gorge...

Who was this Alta Morgan, he began to wonder. The daughter of some rancher, no doubt. But she gave signs of a greater culture and a wider experience than the ranch life of those...

Some unpoetic old frontiersman first called the place a trapper’s “hole,”--an ugly, misleading name for this wondrous mountain valley, lying up there on the western slopes of th...

“Keep ’em on good feed, and keep ’em away from the common cattle,” Cap Hanks had ordered him. Fred did not neglect his duty, but he found many hours when the cattle herded thems...

It was Flying Arrow who had saved Fred and his old friend. The young chief, true to his friendship for the old mountaineer, stoutly objected to killing the captives, when the Wh...

“Their bloomin’ prayers,” put in Dick; “did you hear that long-faced old elder bawl to the Lord for blessings? I thought he’d never quit; but Teddy here took it like a saint. Th...

With this determination in his troubled head, Fred plunged into his task of helping Pat get the “chuck wagon” ready for the trip. The day had begun badly, vexations of various s...

It was a gloomy night. The sun had gone down in a bank of black clouds. The lightning was playing above the western hills, and the thunder was beginning to grumble. The lightnin...

The Bar B ranch was roused that morning by a rowdy, half-tipsy band of cowboys, who dashed up to the old shack just as the sun pushed his blazing face above the eastern peaks.

If food and clothes and kindness were all that is needed in this old world, Alta Morgan had all she needed. But there is one vital need that these comforts, good as they are, ca...

The scene is a horseshoe cove, or basin, half a mile or more in average width, situated high up the mountain slopes. A rim of ragged rock hides and walls it away from the banks...

A day or two after this Fred was up early and heading his cattle toward the good grass along Sage Creek. For several hours he watched them grazing among the willows; then as the...

“Hate the sagebrush!” exclaimed Alta. “Why that’s one of the most interesting things in this wild West. It makes a fine shaggy blanket for this craggy country; and its purple gr...

It was July twenty-fourth, the day on which, some forty years before, the Mormon Pioneers had entered the valley of the Great Salt Lake. A colony of these people, who had settle...

It was a cheerless night. The clouds, which had smothered the tops of the mountains all day, began about dusk to drip and drizzle a chilly rain. The dispiriting fall storms had...

The shack talk, together with the roundup preparations, touched off the growing desire in Dick and Fred to become “crack cowboys.” Dick especially was stirred to a high pitch of...