href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@23242@[email protected]#chap25" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">A GUEST FOR AN HOUR

XXVI   THE CRAZY WOMAN WINS XXVII   KATE DEFIES XXVIII   A DIFFICULT RESOLVE XXIX   HORSEHEAD PASS XXX   THE FUNERAL AND AFTER XXXI   AN ENCOUNTER XXXII   A MESSAGE FROM TENISON XXXIII   THE CANYON OF THE FALLING WALL XXXIV   KATE GETS A SHOCK XXXV   AT KITCHEN'S BARN XXXVI   MCALPIN AT BAY XXXVII   KATE BURNS THE STEAK XXXVIII   THE UNEXPECTED CALL XXXIX   BARB MAKES A SURPRISING ALLIANCE XL   BRADLEY RIDES HARD XLI   THE FLIGHT OF THE SWALLOWS XLII   WARNING XLIII   THE LAST CALL XLIV   TENISON SERVES BREAKFAST

ILLUSTRATIONS

"Hold on, Doubleday," Laramie said bluntly, . . . "You'll
hear what I've got to say" . . . . . . Frontispiece

"And I thought I knew every drop of water in this country"

Knocked forward the next instant in his saddle, Laramie
drooped over his pommel

"No," said a man . . . as he pushed forward . . . "He's not
going to drink!"

LARAMIE HOLDS THE RANGE

CHAPTER I

SLEEPY CAT

All day the heavy train of sleepers had been climbing the long rise from the river—a monotonous stretch of treeless, short-grass plains reaching from the Missouri to the mountains. And now the train stopped again, almost noiselessly.

Kate, with the impatience of girlish spirits tried by a long and tedious car journey, left her Pullman window and its continuous, one-tone picture, and walking forward was glad to find the vestibule open. The porter, meditating alone, stood below, at the car step, looking ahead; Kate joined him.

The stop had been made at a lonely tank, for water. No human habitation was anywhere in sight. The sun had set. For miles in every direction the seemingly level and open country spread around her. She looked back to the darkening east that she was leaving behind. It suggested nothing of interest beyond the vanishing perspective of a long track tangent. Then to the north, whence blew a cool and gentle wind, but the landscape offered nothing attractive to her eyes; its receding horizon told no new story. Then she looked into the west.

They had told her she should not see the Rockies until morning. But the dying light in the west brought a moving surprise. In the dreamy afterglow of the evening sky there rose, far beyond the dusky plain, the faint but certain outline of distant mountain peaks.

Bathed in a soft unearthly light, like the purple of another world; touched here and there by a fairy gold; silent as dreams, majestic as visions, overwhelming as reality itself, Kate gazed on them with beating heart.

Something clutched at her breath: "Are those the Rocky Mountains?" she suddenly asked,