The Project Gutenberg EBook of With Hoops of Steel, by Florence Finch Kelly

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Title: With Hoops of Steel

Author: Florence Finch Kelly

Illustrator: Dan Smith

Release Date: April 22, 2009 [EBook #28585]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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WITH
HOOPS OF STEEL

BY
FLORENCE FINCH KELLY

ILLUSTRATED BY
DAN SMITH

"_The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel._"

NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS

Made in the United States of America

COPYRIGHT 1900

THE BOWEN-MERRILL COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

[Illustration: "ON AND ON THROUGH THE NIGHT THEY GALLOPED, NECK TO
NECK AND HEEL TO HEEL."--_p. 63_]

PUBLISHERS' NOTE

Owen Wister's THE VIRGINIAN and Florence Finch Kelly's WITH
HOOPS OF STEEL were the first of the modern cow-boy novels. Twenty-five
years have passed since Mrs. Kelly's enthralling story first
appeared--September, 1900. Most of the novels published then and
since, are dead and forgotten. Not so WITH HOOPS OF STEEL. It
was in continuous demand from its first friendly welcome by the critics
until the World War turned public attention to Europe. Even so its
vitality persisted, justified this new edition, and seems to warrant
the belief that the present generation will find its story interest as
vivid and as exciting as did the past, and its value even greater, for
it presents an authentic portrait of the old southwestern cattlemen
and a fascinating picture of a phase of national development now passed
into history.

THE PUBLISHERS.

WITH HOOPS OF STEEL

CHAPTER I

The soft, muffling dusk settled slowly downward from the darkening
blue sky and little by little smothered the weird gleam that rose from
the gray-white plain. Away toward the east a range of mountains
gloomed faintly, rimming the distance. Another towered against the
western horizon. Cactus clumps and bunches of mesquite and greasewood
blotted the whitely