VI 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, appealing to the stolid porter. She told Belle long
afterward, she knew her voice must have quivere