The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Claim Jumpers, by Stewart Edward White

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Title: The Claim Jumpers

Author: Stewart Edward White

Release Date: February 4, 2004 [EBook #10942]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE CLAIM JUMPERS

_A ROMANCE_

BY

STEWART EDWARD WHITE

1901

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I.--JIM LESLIE WRITES A LETTER
II.--THE STORY-BOOK WEST
III.--BENNINGTON HUNTS FOR GOLD AND FINDS A KISS
IV.--THE SUN FAIRY
V.--THE SPIRIT MOUNTAIN
VI.--BENNINGTON AS A MAN OF BUSINESS
VII.--THE MEETING AT THE ROCK
VIII.--AN ADVENTURE IN THE NIGHT
IX.--THE HEAVENS OPENED
X.--THE WORLD MADE YOUNG
XI.--AND HE DID EAT
XII.--OLD MIZZOU RESIGNS
XIII.--THE SPIRES OF STONE
XIV.--THE PIONEER'S PICNIC
XV.--THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN
XVI.--A NOON DINNER
XVII.--NOBLESSE OBLIGE
XVIII.--THE CLAIM JUMPERS
XIX.--BENNINGTON PROVES GAME
XX.--MASKS OFF
XXI.--THE LAND OF VISIONS
XXII.--FLOWER O' THE WORLD

CHAPTER I

JIM LESLIE WRITES A LETTER

In a fifth-story sitting room of a New York boarding house four youths
were holding a discussion. The sitting room was large and square, and
in the wildest disorder, which was, however, sublimated into a certain
system by an illuminated device to the effect that one should "Have a
Place for Everything, and then there'll be one Place you won't have to
look." Easels and artists' materials thrust back to the wall
sufficiently advertised the art student, and perhaps explained the
untidiness.

Two of the occupants of the room, curled up on elevated window ledges,
were emitting clouds of tobacco smoke and nursing their knees; the
other two, naked to the waist, sat on a couple of ordinary bedroom
mattresses deposited carefully in the vacant centre of the apartment.
They were eager, alert-looking young men, well-muscled, curly of hair,
and possessing in common an unabashed carriage of the head which, more
plainly than any mere facial resemblance, proved them brothers. They,
too, were nursing their knees.