The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Long Shadow, by B. M. Bower

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Title: The Long Shadow

Author: B. M. Bower

Release Date: April 29, 2004 [EBook #12192]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONG SHADOW ***

Produced by Suzanne Shell, Alicia Williams, David King, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team

THE LONG SHADOW

BY B.M. BOWER

(B.M. SINCLAIR)

ILLUSTRATIONS BY
CLARENCE ROWE

COPYRIGHT, 1908

TO THOSE
WHO HAVE WATCHED THE SHADOW FALL
UPON THE RANGE.

CONTENTS

I Charming Billy Has a Visitor

II Prune Pie and Coon-can

III Charming Billy Has a Fight

IV Canned

V The Man From Michigan

VI "That's My Dill Pickle!"

VII "Till Hell's a Skating-rink"

VIII Just a Day-dream

IX The "Double-Crank"

X The Day We Celebrate

XI "When I Lift My Eyebrows This Way"

XII Dilly Hires a Cook

XIII Billy Meets the Pilgrim

XIV A Winter at the Double-Crank

XV The Shadow Falls Lightly

XVI Self-Defense

XVII The Shadow Darkens

XVIII When the North Wind Blows

XIX "I'm Not Your Wife Yet!"

XX The Shadow Lies Long

XXI The End of the Double-Crank

XXII Settled In Full

XXIII "Oh, Where Have You Been, Charming Billy?"

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"I'll leave you this, you'll feel safer if you have a gun"

"Hands off that long person! That there's _my_ dill pickle"

"We--we're 'up against it,' as fellows say"

For every sentence a stinging blow with the flat of his hand

[Illustration: "I'LL LEAVE YOU THIS, YOU'LL FEEL SAFER IF YOU HAVE
A GUN." _Frontispiece_.]

CHAPTER I.

_Charming Billy Has a Visitor._

The wind, rising again as the sun went down, mourned lonesomely at the
northwest corner of the cabin, as if it felt the desolateness of the
barren, icy hills and the black hollows between, and of the angry red
sky with its purple shadows lowering over the unhappy land--and would
make fickle friendship with some human thing. Charming Billy, hearing
the crooning wail of it, knew well the portent and sighed. Perhaps he,
too, felt something of the desolateness without and perhaps he,