Stewart Edward White

“ But when the bird lay well, then Jim would tread carefully forward as though on eggs, until, his nostrils filled with the warm body-scent, he stood rigid, a living statue of beauty. A moment of breathless excitement ensued. With a burst of sound the bird roared away. There followed the quick crack of the fowling-piece, a cloud of feathers in the air, a long slanting fall. Jim looked up, eager but self-controlled.
"Fetch, Jim," said the man.
At once the dog bounded away, to return after a moment in the pride of an army with banners, carrying the grouse daintily between his jaws. ”

“ Roaring like wild cattle the logs swept by, at first slowly, then with the railroad rush of the curbed freshet. Men were everywhere, taking chances, like cowboys before the stampeded herd. And so, out of sight around the lower bend swept the front of the jam in a swirl of glory, the rivermen riding the great boom back of the creature they subdued, until at last, with the slackening current, the logs floated by free, cannoning with hollow sound one against the other. A half-dozen watchers, leaning statuesquely on the shafts of their peavies, watched the ordered ranks pass by. ”

“ She knew that over through that cool, fascinating forest, only a half-mile away, dwelt the Adamses. The Adamses, too, were only of the woods people, but they were human, and chiffon was chiffon, in the wilderness as in the towns. So Barbara announced her intention, and stepped into the sunlight.
The parasol completed her sense of happiness. She raised it, and slanted it over her shoulder, and drew one of its round tips across her face, playing out to herself a pretty little comedy as she sauntered deliberately down the trail between the stumps and tangled blackberry vines of the clearing. ”

“ Each savage knows that but one will fall, but, cold-blooded, he does not want to be that one; and, since in such disciplined fighters it is each for himself, he promptly ducks behind his mount and circles away to the right or the left. The whole band swoops and divides, like a flock of swift-winged terns on a windy day.
This Alfred relied on in the approaching crisis.
The girl watched the wild sweep of the warriors with strained eyes. She had to grasp her wrist firmly to keep from fainting, and she seemed incapable of thought. Alfred sat motionless on a dog-mound, his rifle across his lap. ”

“ Barbara examined him reflectively, her chin in her hand, her elbow on her knee. She looked at his wavy hair, his kindly, humorous gray eyes, the straight line of his fine-cut nose, his firm lips with the quaint upward twist of the corners, the fine contour of his jaw.
"No-o-o," she agreed, "I don't suppose it does. Only I know you are a gentleman," she added, with delightful inconsistence. Stanton bowed gravely to the fire in ironic acknowledgment.
"Why don't you ever look at me?" burst out Barbara, vexed. "Why do you stare at that horrid fire?" ”

“ A crew of forty or fifty men were at work. They clamped their peavies to the reluctant timbers, heaved, pushed, slid, and rolled them one by one into the current, where they were caught and borne away. They had been doing this for a week. As yet their efforts had made but slight impression on the bulk of the jam, but some time, with patience, they would reach the key-logs. Then the tangle would melt like sugar in the freshet, and these imperturbable workers would have to escape suddenly over the plunging logs to shore. ”

“ Summers came and went with a flurry of thunder-showers that gathered about Harney, spread abroad in long bands of blackness, broke in a deluge of rain and hail and passed out to dissipate in the hot air of the prairies. Autumns, clear-eyed and sweet-breathed, faded wanly in the smoke of their forest fires. Winters sidled by with constant threat of arctic weather which somehow never came; powdering the hills with their snow; making bitter cold the shadows, and warm the silver-like sun. ”

“ Jim was a black-and-white setter dog. Regis Brugiere watched him as he trotted carefully through the woods, his four legs working like pistons, his head high, his soft, intelligent eyes spying for the likely cover. Then when he caught a faint whiff of the game, he would stop short, and look around, and wag his tail. Not one step would he take toward assuring his point until the man had struggled through the thicket to his side. Thus his master obtained many shots at birds flushing wild before the dog which otherwise he would not have had. ”

“ Painfully he turned on his right side and prepared to reach the latch-string. His first movement brought him an agony to be endured only with teeth and eyes closed, only by summoning to the minute task of thrusting his hand upward along the rough door all the forces of his being down to the last shred of vitality. At once the indomitable spirit of the woods-runner answered the call. Regis Brugiere concentrated his will on a pinpoint. Like a sprinter his volition was fixed on a goal, beyond which lay collapse. ”

“ Wyoming breezes are always going somewhere at the rate of from thirty to sixty miles an hour. Beyond the town, in one direction, were some low mountains, well supplied with dark gorges, narrow canons, murmuring water-falls, dashing brooks, and precipitous descents. Beyond the town, in the other direction, lay a broad, rolling country, on which cattle and cowboys dwelt amid profanity and dust. Severne arose in a cold room, washed his face in hard water, and descended to breakfast. ”

“ He and she could never begin young now. They must take up life cold in the moulds, ready fashioned. The delight of influencing each other's development was denied such as they; instead, they must find each other out, must throw a thousand strands of loving-kindness to span the gap which the patient years had sundered between them, a gap which should never have widened at all. ”

“ The girl was not pretty, as we know girls; but she had straight steady eyes, a wide brow, smooth matronly bands of hair, and a wholesome, homely New England character, sweet, yet with a tang to give it a flavour, like the apples on the tree near the old-fashioned, long-armed well. Peter could gain no competence from the stony farm, no consent from the girl. It was to win both that he had come West.
In those days, around the western curve of the earth, every outlook borrowed the tints of sunset. Nothing but the length of the journey stood between a man and his fortune. ”

“ It is sordid!"
"The beautiful shines through the dreariness, as it does in the real life people live," he objected, stubbornly.
"The beautiful is in the imagination," she cried, with some heat; "and the imagination is God-given; it is the only direct manifestation of the divine on earth. Without imagination no writing can have life."
As this bordered on sentiment, abhorred of realism, Severne muttered something that sounded like "fiddlesticks." ”

“ These shallows did the business. When the logs had bumped through the tribulations of the rapids, they seemed to insist obstinately on resting in the shallows, like a lot of wearied cattle. The rear crew had to wade in. They heaved and pried and pushed industriously, and at the end of it had the satisfaction of seeing a single log slide reluctantly into the current. Sometimes a dozen of them would clamp their peavies on either side, and by sheer brute force carry the stick to deep water. When you reflect that there were some twenty thousand pieces in the drive, and that a good fifty per cent. ”

“ At Camp Twenty-eight he was able to dodge unseen into the men's camp. When Morgan, the camp foreman, finally discovered his presence, the mischief had been done. Everybody was smoking cigars, everybody was happily conscious of a warm glow at the pit of the stomach, everybody was firmly convinced that Silver Jack was the best fellow on earth. Morgan could do nothing. An attempt to eject Silver Jack, an expostulation even, would, he knew, lose him his entire crew. The men, their heads whirling with the anticipated delights of a spree, would indignantly champion their new friend. ”

“ When the three men lay still on the trampled snow, they stooped, nearer and nearer. Then they towered. One of the men had stirred.
Richard Darrell painfully cleared his eyes and dragged himself to a sitting position, sweeping the blood of his shallow wound from his forehead. He searched out the axe. With it he first smashed in the whiskey jugs. Then he wrecked the cutter, chopping it savagely until it was reduced to splinters and twisted iron. By the time this was done, his antagonists were in the throes of returning consciousness. He stood over them, dominant, menacing. ”

“ This made Severne angry. Girls are so unreasonable!
"What do you suppose I care how your foolish imaginary people brush their teeth and button their suspenders and black their boots? I know how old man Smith opposite does, and that is more than enough for me!" she cried.
"The insight into human nature expresses itself thus," he argued, gloomily.
"Rubbish!" she rejoined. "The idea of a man's wasting the talents heaven has given him in describing as minutely and accurately as he can all the nasty, little, petty occurrences of everyday life! ”

“ Most of the recumbent vaqueros merely cursed a little deeper and drew their serapes closer, but José Guiterrez grunted, threw off his blanket, and approached the fire.
Sam rolled the whites of his eyes up at him for a moment, grinned in a half-perplexed fashion, and turned again to his pots and pans. José, being sulky and childish, wanted to do something to somebody, so he insolently flicked the end of his long quirt through a mess of choice but still chaotic flap-jacks. The quirt left a narrow streak across the batter. Sam looked up quickly. ”

“ Over on the hill the bucks had arisen from their little fires of buffalo chips, and were watching. On the summit of the farther ridge rode silhouetted sentinels.
Alfred selected a tuft and fired just ahead of it. A crack at his side indicated that the stranger, too, had gone to work. It was a discouraging and nervous business. The shooter could never tell whether or not he had hit. The only thing he was sure of was that the line was wriggling nearer and nearer. He felt something as though he were shooting at a man with blank cartridges. ”

“ The logs were rolling, falling, diving against the laden man. He climbed as over a treadmill, a treadmill whose speed was constantly increasing. And when he finally gained the top, it was as the gap closed splintering beneath him and the man he had saved.
It is not in the woodsman to be demonstrative at any time, but here was work demanding attention. Without a pause for breath or congratulation they turned to the necessity of the moment. The jam, the whole jam, was moving at last. Jimmy Powers ran ashore for his peavie. Roaring Dick, like a demon incarnate, threw himself into the work. ”

“ Then it had expired, and poor Sam had to begin all over again. The Mexicans smoked yellow-paper cigarettes and watched his off-and-on movements with sullen distrust; they were firmly convinced that he was indulging in some sort of a practical joke. So they hated him fervently and wrapped themselves in their serapes. Tom sat on a wagon-tongue swinging a foot and repeating vaguely to himself in a singsong inner voice, "passing the love of woman, passing the love of woman," over and over again. ”

“ Into the confusion Alfred emptied the last two shots of his Winchester, and was fortunate enough merely to cripple a pony with one of them. The kicking, screaming, little beast interposed a momentary but effective barrier between the sheriff and his foes. A rattling fire from one of his six-shooters into the brown of the hesitating charge broke it. The self-induced excitement ebbed, and the Indians swerved and swept on by. ”

“ The sentinel on the distant ridge was riding his pony in short-looped circles and waving a blanket in a peculiar way above his head. From the grass nine Indians arose, stooped, and scuttled off like a covey of running quail. Over by the fires warriors were leaping on their ponies, and some were leading other ponies in the direction of the nine. An air of furtive but urgent haste characterised all these movements. Alfred lent an attentive ear. ”

“ It is not nice to be shot at in the best of circumstances, but to be shot at by odds of thirty to one, and the thirty of an out-landish and terrifying species, is not nice at all. Miss Caldwell had gone to pieces badly, and Alfred looked grave. He thoughtfully drew from its holster his beautiful Colt's with its ivory handle, and laid it on the grass. Then he blushed hot and cold, and looked at the girl doubtfully. A sudden movement in the group of savages, as the war-chief rode to the front, decided him. ”

“ Back of the eastern hills the stars became a little dimmer, and the soft night breeze, which had been steadily blowing through the darkened hours, sank quietly to sleep. The subtle magic of nature began to sketch in the picture of day, throwing objects forward from the dull background, taking them bodily out of the blackness, as though creating them anew. Fresh life stirred through everything. ”