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[Illustration: "He tried to shoot once more, into the very face of the oncoming brute."--FRONTISPIECE. _See Page 245._]
Published by Arrangements with Little, Brown & Company
CHAPTER PAGE I The Forbidden Pasture 1 II The Road to Paradise 15 III Seth Huntington's Opportunity 26 IV The Highest Bidder 37 V "He Shall Tell Me!" 50 VI The Story of the Scar 60 VII The Way of a Maid With a Man 71 VIII The End of Her Stratagem 86 IX Hearts Insurgent 99 X Strictly Confidential 112 XI Avalanche 121 XII Sunnysides 133 XIII Hillyer's Dilemma 144 XIV Coals of Fire 155 XV The Valley of the Shadow 166 XVI Questions and Answers 176 XVII Interlude 186 XVIII The Challenge of the Brute 193 XIX Smythe's Last Budget 202 XX "The Trail Held True" 215 XXI In the Hollow of the Storm 228 XXII The Narrow Passage 238 XXIII The Miracle 252 XXIV Haig's Argument 264 XXV Diana 278 XXVI The Snow 288 XXVII The Voice in the Hurricane 302 XXVIII The Man Who Did Not Forget 316 XXIX Ghosts 330 XXX The Lamp Relighted 344 XXXI Sangre De Cristo 359
She sat hunched up in the middle of the silent pasture, where the tall, thin grass ran ripening before the breeze in waves the hue of burnished bronze. Her cow pony grazed greedily a few yards away, lifting his head now and then to gaze inquiringly at her, and then returning to his gluttony with a satisfied snort, commendatory of this long rest. The girl had removed her small sombrero to adjust the masses of tawny hair that had become disordered in her morning ride; and the breeze now played with it, and the sun sought out its glints of gold. She was fair, of a curiously rich complexion with soft golden tints beneath the skin, as if the rusty gold in her hair was just the outcropping of what ran in solution in her veins. And there was a certain air about her that contrasted strangely with the scene upon which she now gazed intently, with her head bent forward, and her hands clasped round her upthrust knees.
It was a little valley she had come upon by chance, snugly tucked away among the hills. Below the bronze-colored slope there were lush meadows of a brilliant green, and a shallow, swift stream that flashed over black bowlders and white sand; beyond the meadows lay more shining pastures rising to pale-green aspen groves and then to dark-green pines; and above all these the foothills climbed swiftly to the mountains, and the mountains more swiftly to the sky. There were faint blue mists in the foothills, fainter violet shadows on the distant fields, an icy whiteness on the peaks; and in the sky no more than two small puffs of cloud like eiderdown adrift in the depths of blue. What at first had seemed an utter silence laid upon that summer landscape had now become, as she looked and listened, a silence full of sound; of that indefinable humming undertone of nature maturing in the sun; of insects busy at their harvest; of birds in the distance calling; of grasses rustling in the breeze; of pines on the long ridge droning like an organ in the Recessional.