Within the memory of those of us still on the sunny side of forty the more remote West has passed from rollicking boyhood to its responsible majority. The frontier has gone to join the good Indian. In place of the ranger who patrolled the border for “bad men” has come the forest ranger, type of the forward lapping tide of civilization. The place where I write this—Tucson, Arizona—is now essentially more civilized than New York. Only at the moving picture shows can the old West, melodramatically overpainted, be shown to the manicured sons and daughters of those, still living, who brought law and order to the mesquite.

As Arthur Chapman, the Western poet, has written:

No loopholes now are framing

Lean faces, grim and brown;

No more keen eyes are aiming

To bring the redskin down.

The plough team’s trappings jingle

Across the furrowed field,

And sounds domestic mingle

Where valor hung its shield.

But every wind careering

Seems here to breathe a song—

A song of brave frontiering—

A saga of the strong.

      Part I.
       The Man from the Panhandle

      (In Which Steve Plays Second Fiddle)

Table of Contents

Chapter I.
A Desert Meeting

Table of Contents

As she lay crouched in the bear-grass there came to the girl clearly the crunch of wheels over disintegrated granite. The trap had dipped into a draw, but she knew that presently it would reappear on the winding road. The knowledge smote her like a blast of winter, sent chills racing down her spine, and shook her as with an ague. Only the desperation of her plight spurred her flagging courage.

Round the bend came a pair of bays hitched to a single-seated open rig. They were driven by a young man, and as he reached the summit he drew up opposite her and looked down into the valley.

It lay in a golden glow at their feet, a basin of pure light and silence stretching mile on mile to the distant edge of jagged mountain-line which formed

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Foreword to Ye Gentle Reader

Part I. The Man from the Panhandle (In Which Steve Plays Second Fiddle)

Chapter I. A Desert Meeting

Part I.
The Man from the Panhandle

(In Which Steve Plays Second Fiddle)

Chapter I.
A Desert Meeting