The Project Gutenberg EBook of Under Handicap, by Jackson Gregory

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Under Handicap
A Novel

Author: Jackson Gregory

Release Date: March 14, 2006 [EBook #17981]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNDER HANDICAP ***

Produced by David Garcia, Sankar Viswanathan, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

[Illustration: CONNISTON HAD SEEN HER FIRST, A HUDDLED HEAP, ALMOST AT
HIS FEET]

Under Handicap

A NOVEL

By JACKSON GREGORY

AUTHOR OF
"The Outlaw," Etc.

With Frontispiece

A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York

Published by arrangement with HARPER & BROTHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1914 BY HARPER & BROTHERS

TO
"MY LADY"
LOTUS McGLASHAN GREGORY
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

UNDER HANDICAP

CHAPTER I

Outside there was shimmering heat and dry, thirsty sand, miles upon
miles of it flashing by in a gray, barren blur. A flat, arid,
monotonous land, vast, threatening, waterless, treeless. Its immensity
awed, its bleakness depressed. Man's work here seemed but to
accentuate the puny insignificance of man. Man had come upon the
desert and had gone, leaving only a line of telegraph-poles with their
glistening wires, two gleaming parallel rails of burning steel to mark
his passing.

The thundering Overland Limited, rushing onward like a frightened
thing, screamed its terror over the desert whose majesty did not even
permit of its catching up the shriek of the panting engine to fling it
back in echoes. The desert ignored, and before and behind the
onrushing train the deep serenity of the waste places was undisturbed.

Within the train the desert was nothing. Man's work defied the heat
and the sand and the sullen frown outside. Here in the Pullman
smoking-car were luxury, comfort, and companionship. Behind drawn
shades were the whir of electric fans, an ebo