The Complete Novels of Ernest Haycox. Ernest Haycox

       Ernest Haycox

      The Complete Novels of Ernest Haycox

       Son of the West, Saddle and Ride, Action by Night, The Silver Desert, Bugles in the Afternoon

      e-artnow, 2021

       Contact: [email protected]

      EAN: 4064066309107

Table of Contents

       A Rider of the High Mesa

       Free Grass

       The Octopus of Pilgrim Valley

       Chaffee of Roaring Hors

       Son of the West

       Whispering Range

       The Feudists

       The Kid From River Red

       The Roaring Hour

       Starlight Rider

       Riders West

       The Silver Desert

       Trail Smoke

       Trouble Shooter

       Sundown Jim

       Man in the Saddle

       The Border Trumpet

       Saddle and Ride

       Rim of the Desert

       Trail Town

       Alder Gulch

       Action by Night

       The Wild Bunch

       Bugles in the Afternoon

       Canyon Passage

       Long Storm

       Head of the Mountain

       The Earthbreakers

       The Adventurers

      A RIDER OF THE HIGH MESA

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

       Chapter I. Water

       Chapter II. A Secret Meeting

       Chapter III. The Cross-road's School

       Chapter IV. Night Riders

       Chapter V. The Storm Gathers

       Chapter VI. Disaster

       Chapter VII. A Strange Visitor

       Chapter VIII. The Killing

       Chapter IX. The Fight in the Dark

       Chapter X. The Mob

      CHAPTER I

       WATER

       Table of Contents

      Coming across the flat valley floor, Lin Ballou, riding a paint horse and leading a pack animal, struck the Snake River Road at a point where Hank Colqueen's homestead made a last forlorn stand against the vast stretch of sand and sage that swept eastward mile after mile until checked by the distant high mesa. It was scorching hot. The saddle leather stung his fingers when he ventured to touch it, and the dry thin air seemed to have come straight out of a blast furnace. Colqueen's dreary little tarpaper shack stood alone in all this desolation, with a barbed wire fence running both ways from it along the road—a fence that separated just so much dry and worthless land from a whole sea of dry and worthless land. And by the ditch side, Hank Colqueen himself was working away at a stubborn strand; a slow- moving giant of a man whose face and arms were blistered and baked to the color of a broiled steak.

      Lin Ballou stopped beside the homesteader and threw one leg around the pommel, taking time to build himself a cigarette while passing the news of the day. He had to prime his throat with a little tobacco smoke before the words would issue from its parched orifice.

      "Hank," he said, croaking, "when I see a man laboring in such misery I get mighty curious as to his hope of reward. Being a plumb honest man, just tell me what you figure that effort is going to bring you."

      Colqueen straightened, dropped his wire-puller, and grinned. Speech came slowly to him, as did everything else. And first he must remove his hat and scratch a head as bald as an egg to stimulate thought. His blue eyes swept Lin, the road, the sky, and the distant mesa.

      "Well," he replied at last, "I don't know as I can tell you what I'm working for. But a man's