Lonesome Land

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Lonesome Land, by B. M. Bower

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Title: Lonesome Land
Author: B. M. Bower
Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8537] [This file was first posted on July 21, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: US-ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, LONESOME LAND ***

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LONESOME LAND
BY B. M. BOWER
Author of "Chip, of the Flying U," etc.
With Four Illustrations BY STANLEY L. WOOD

[Illustration: As he raced over the uneven prairie he fumbled with the saddle string]
Contents
I. THE ARRIVAL OF VAL
II. WELL-MEANT ADVICE
III. A LADY IN A TEMPER
IV. THE "SHIVAREE"
V. COLD SPRING RANCH
VI. MANLEY'S FIRE GUARD
VII. VAL'S NEW DUTIES
VIII. THE PRAIRIE FIRE
IX. KENT TO THE RESCUE
X. DESOLATION
XI. VAL'S AWAKENING
XII. A LESSON IN FORGIVENESS
XIII. ARLINE GIVES A DANCE
XIV. A WEDDING PRESENT
XV. A COMPACT
XVI. MANLEY'S NEW TACTICS
XVII. VAL BECOMES AN AUTHOR
XVIII. VAL'S DISCOVERY
XIX. KENT'S CONFESSION
XX. A BLOTCHED BRAND
XXI. VAL DECIDES
XXII. A FRIEND IN NEED
XXIII. CAUGHT!
XXIV. RETRIBUTION
List of Illustrations
As he raced over the uneven prairie he fumbled with the saddle string
He was jeered unmercifully by Fred De Garmo and his crowd
"Little woman, listen here," he said. "You're playing hard luck, and I know it"
To draw the red hot spur across the fresh VP did not take long
CHAPTER I
THE ARRIVAL OF VAL
In northern Montana there lies a great, lonely stretch of prairie land, gashed deep where flows the Missouri. Indeed, there are many such--big, impassive, impressive in their very loneliness, in summer given over to the winds and the meadow larks and to the shadows fleeing always over the hilltops. Wild range cattle feed there and grow sleek and fat for the fall shipping of beef. At night the coyotes yap quaveringly and prowl abroad after the long-eared jack rabbits, which bounce away at their hunger-driven approach. In winter it is not good to be there; even the beasts shrink then from the bleak, level reaches, and shun the still bleaker heights.
But men will live anywhere if by so doing there is money to be gained, and so a town snuggled up against the northern rim of the bench land, where the bleakness was softened a bit by the sheltering hills, and a willow-fringed creek with wild rosebushes and chokecherries made a vivid green background for the meager huddle of little, unpainted buildings.
To the passengers on the through trains which watered at the red tank near the creek, the place looked crudely picturesque--interesting, so long as one was not compelled to live there and could retain a perfectly impersonal viewpoint. After five or ten minutes spent hi watching curiously the one little street, with the long hitching poles planted firmly and frequently down both sides--usually within a very few steps of a saloon door--and the horses nodding and stamping at the flies, and the loitering figures that appeared now and then in desultory fashion, many of them imagined that they understood the West and sympathized with it, and appreciated its bigness and its freedom from conventions.
One slim young woman had just told the thin-faced school teacher on a vacation, with whom she had formed one of those evanescent traveling acquaintances, that she already knew the West, from instinct and from Manley's letters. She loved it, she said, because Manley loved it, and because it was to be her home, and because it was so big and so free. Out here one could think and grow and really live, she declared, with enthusiasm. Manley had lived here for three years, and his letters, she told the thin-faced teacher, were an education in themselves.
The teacher had already learned that the slim young woman, with the yellow-brown hair and yellow-brown eyes to match, was going to marry Manley--she had forgotten his other name, though the young woman had mentioned it--and would live on a ranch, a cattle ranch. She smiled with somewhat wistful sympathy, and hoped the young woman would be happy; and the young woman waved her hand, with the glove only