The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lions of the Lord, by Harry Leon Wilson

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Title: The Lions of the Lord
A Tale of the Old West

Author: Harry Leon Wilson

Release Date: March 10, 2004 [EBook #11534]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Frontispiece:
LIFTING OFF HIS BROAD-BRIMMED HAT TO HER IN A GRACIOUS SWEEP]

THE
LIONS OF THE
LORD

A Tale of the Old West

By HARRY LEON WILSON

Author of "The Spenders"

Illustrated by ROSE CECIL O'NEILL

Published June, 1903

TO MY WIFE

FOREWORD

In the days of '49 seven trails led from our Western frontier into the
Wonderland that lay far out under the setting sun and called to the
restless. Each of the seven had been blazed mile by mile through the
mighty romance of an empire's founding. Some of them for long stretches
are now overgrown by the herbage of the plain; some have faded back into
the desert they lined; and more than one has been shod with steel. But
along them all flit and brood the memory-ghosts of old, rich-coloured
days. To the shout of teamster, the yell of savage, the creaking of
tented ox-cart, and the rattle of the swifter mail-coach, there go dim
shapes of those who had thrilled to that call of the West;--strong,
brave men with the far look in their eyes, with those magic rude tools
of the pioneer, the rifle and the axe; women, too, equally heroic, of a
stock, fearless, ready, and staunch, bearing their sons and daughters in
fortitude; raising them to fear God, to love their country,--and to
labour. From the edge of our Republic these valiant ones toiled into the
dump of prairie and mountain to live the raw new days and weld them to
our history; to win fertile acres from the wilderness and charm the
desert to blossoming. And the time of these days and these people, with
their tragedies and their comedies, was a time of