The Girl from Montana

The Girl from Montana

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Girl from Montana, by Grace Livingston Hill
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Girl from Montana
Author: Grace Livingston Hill
Release Date: March 7, 2005 [eBook #15274]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GIRL FROM MONTANA***
E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Project Gutenberg Beginners Projects, Emmy, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)

THE GIRL FROM MONTANA
by
GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL
GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
1922

* * * * *
Books By
GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL
April Gold Happiness Hill The Beloved Stranger The Honor Girl Bright Arrows Kerry Christmas Bride Marigold Crimson Roses Miranda Duskin The Mystery of Mary Found Treasure Partners A Girl to Come Home To Rainbow Cottage The Red Signal White Orchids Silver Wings The Tryst The Strange Proposal Through These Fires The Street of the City All Through the Night The Gold Shoe Astra Homing Blue Ruin Job's Niece Challengers The Man of the Desert Coming Through the Rye More Than Conqueror Daphne Deane A New Name The Enchanted Barn The Patch of Blue Girl from Montana The Ransom Rose Galbraith The Witness Sound of the Trumpet Sunrise Tomorrow About This Time Amorelle Head of the House Ariel Custer In Tune with Wedding Bells Chance of a Lifetime Maris Crimson Mountain Out of the Storm Exit Betty Mystery Flowers The Prodigal Girl Girl of the Woods Re-Creations The White Flower Matched Pearls Time of the Singing of Birds Ladybird The Substitute Guest Beauty for Ashes Stranger Within the Gate The Best Man Spice Box By Way of the Silverthorns The Seventh Hour Dawn of the Morning The Search Brentwood Cloudy Jewel The Voice in the Wilderness
Books By
RUTH LIVINGSTON HILL
Mary Arden (_with Grace Livingston Hill_) Morning Is for Joy John Nielson Had a Daughter Bright Conquest

Dedicated to
MISS VIRGINIA COWAN
OF COWAN, MONTANA, WHOSE BRIGHT, BREEZY LETTERS AIDED ME IN WRITING OF ELIZABETH'S EXPERIENCES IN THE WEST

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE GIRL, AND A GREAT PERIL
II. THE FLIGHT
III. THE PURSUIT
IV. THE TWO FUGITIVES
V. A NIGHT RIDE
VI. A CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR MEETING IN THE WILDERNESS
VII. BAD NEWS
VIII. THE PARTING
IX. IN A TRAP
X. PHILADELPHIA AT LAST
XI. IN FLIGHT AGAIN
XII. ELIZABETH'S DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
XIII. ANOTHER GRANDMOTHER
XIV. IN A NEW WORLD
XV. AN EVENTFUL PICNIC
XVI. ALONE AGAIN
XVII. A FINAL FLIGHT AND PURSUIT

CHAPTER I
THE GIRL, AND A GREAT PERIL
The late afternoon sun was streaming in across the cabin floor as the girl stole around the corner and looked cautiously in at the door.
There was a kind of tremulous courage in her face. She had a duty to perform, and she was resolved to do it without delay. She shaded her eyes with her hand from the glare of the sun, set a firm foot upon the threshold, and, with one wild glance around to see whether all was as she had left it, entered her home and stood for a moment shuddering in the middle of the floor.
A long procession of funerals seemed to come out of the past and meet her eye as she looked about upon the signs of the primitive, unhallowed one which had just gone out from there a little while before.
The girl closed her eyes, and pressed their hot, dry lids hard with her cold fingers; but the vision was clearer even than with her eyes open.
She could see the tiny baby sister lying there in the middle of the room, so little and white and pitiful; and her handsome, careless father sitting at the head of the rude home-made coffin, sober for the moment; and her tired, disheartened mother, faded before her time, dry-eyed and haggard, beside him. But that was long ago, almost at the beginning of things for the girl.
There had been other funerals, the little brother who had been drowned while playing in a forbidden stream, and the older brother who had gone off in search of gold or his own way, and had crawled back parched with fever to die in his mother's arms. But those, too, seemed long ago to the girl as she stood in the empty cabin and looked fearfully about her. They seemed almost blotted out by the last three that had crowded so close within the year. The father, who even at his worst had a kind word for her and her mother, had been brought home mortally hurt--an encounter with wild cattle, a fall from his horse in a treacherous place--and had never roused to consciousness again.
At all these funerals there had been a solemn service, conducted by a travelling preacher when one happened to be within reach, and, when there was none, by the trembling, determined, untaught lips