es its name from the canon below. It is the
Moonstone Ranch, the home of Louise, whose ancestors, the Lacharmes,
grew roses in old France.

Among the many riders to and from the ranch, there is one, a great,
two-fisted, high-complexioned man, whose genial presence is ever
welcome. He answers to many names. To the youngsters he is "Uncle
Jack,"--usually with an exclamation. To some of the older folk he is
"Mr. Summers," or "Jack." Again, the foreman of the Moonstone Ranch
seldom calls him anything more dignified than "Red." Louise does
sometimes call him--quite affectionately--"Overland."

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OVERLAND RED

CHAPTER I

THE PROSPECTOR

For five years he had journeyed back and forth between the little desert
station on the Mojave and the range to the north. The townspeople paid
scant attention to him. He was simply another "desert rat" obsessed with
the idea that gold was to be found in those northern hills. He bought
supplies and paid grudgingly. No one knew his name.

The prospector was much younger than he appeared to be. The desert sun
had dried his sinews and warped his shoulders. The desert wind had
scrawled thin lines of age upon his face. The desert solitude had
stooped him with its awesome burden of brooding silence.

Slowly his mind had been squeezed dry of all human interest save the
recurrent memory of a child's face--that, and the poignant memory of the
child's mother. For ten years he had been trying to forget. The last
five years on the desert had dimmed the woman's visioned face as the
child came more often between him and the memory of the mother, in his
dreams.

Then there were voices, the voices of strange spirits that winged
through the dusk of the outlands and hovered round his fire at night.

One voice, soft, insistent, ravished his imagination with visions of
illimitable power and peace and rest. "Gold! Lost gold!" it would
whisper as he sat by the meager flame. Then he would tremble and draw
nearer the warmth. "Where?" he would ask, tempting the darkness as a
child, fearfully certain of a reply.

Then another voice, cadenced like the soft rush of waves up the sand,
would murmur, "Somewhere away! Somewhere away! Somewhere away!" And in
the indefiniteness of that answer he found an inexplicable joy. The
vagueness of "Somewhere away" was as vast with pregnant possibilities as
his desert. His was the eternity of ho