The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Snowshoe Trail, by Edison Marshall

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Title: The Snowshoe Trail

Author: Edison Marshall

Posting Date: March 8, 2009 [EBook #24695]
Release Date: February 26, 2008

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SNOWSHOE TRAIL ***

Produced by Ben Collver. HTML version by Al Haines.

THE SNOWSHOE TRAIL

by

EDISON MARSHALL

Author of "The Strength of the Pines,"
"The Voice of the Pack," etc.

With Frontispiece by Marshall Frantz

A.L. Burt Company Publishers, New York
Published by arrangement with Little, Brown and Company.

Copyright 1921, By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved

To Agnes, of the South--this story of the North

The Snowshoe Trail

I

It was not the first time that people of the forest had paused on the
hill at twilight to look down on Bradleyburg. The sight always seemed
to intrigue and mystify the wild folk,--the shadowed street, the spire
of the moldering church ghostly in the half-light, the long row of
unpainted shacks, and the dim, pale gleam of an occasional lighted
window. The old bull moose, in rutting days, was wont to pause and
call, listen an instant for such answer as the twilight city might give
him, then push on through the spruce forests; and often the coyotes
gathered in a ring and wailed out their cries over the rooftops. More
than once the wolf pack had halted here for a fleeting instant; but they
were never people to linger in the vicinity of men.

But to-night it was not one of these four-footed wild folk--this tall
form--that emerged from the dark fringe of the spruce forest to gaze
down at the town. But he was none the less of the forest. Its mark was
upon him; in the silence of his tread, the sinuous strength of his
motions; perhaps it lay even in a certain dimness and obscurity of
outline, framed by the thickets as he was, that was particularly
characteristic of the wild denizens of the woods. But even in the
heavy shadows his identity was clear at once. He was simply a
woodsman,--and he held his horse by the bridle rein.

The long file of pack horses