The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Spirit of Sweetwater, by Hamlin Garland

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: The Spirit of Sweetwater

Author: Hamlin Garland

Release Date: February 27, 2007 [EBook #20695]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPIRIT OF SWEETWATER ***

Produced by David Yingling, Diane Monico, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net. (This book was produced from scanned
images of public domain material from the Google Print
project.)

LADIES' HOME JOURNAL
LIBRARY OF FICTION

THE SPIRIT OF
SWEETWATER

BY

HAMLIN GARLAND

AUTHOR OF
WAYSIDE COURTSHIPS
MAIN-TRAVELED ROADS
PRAIRIE SONGS, ETC.

PHILADELPHIA
CURTIS PUBLISHING
COMPANY

NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY &
McCLURE CO.

Copyright, 1898, by
HAMLIN GARLAND

TO
JESSIE VIOLA
AND
HARRIET EDITH GARLAND

[Illustration: Hamlin Garland]

_THE MYSTERY OF MOUNTAINS_

_As the sun sinks
And the canons deepening in color
Add mystery to silence
Then the lone traveller lying out-stretched
Beneath the silent pines on some high range
Watches and listens in ecstasy of fear
And timorous admiration._

_In the roar of the stream he catches
The reminiscent echo of colossal cataracts;
In the cry of the cliff-bird
He thinks he hears the eagle's scream
Or yowl of far-off mountain-lion;
In the fall of a loose rock
He fancies the menacing footfall of the grizzly bear;
And in the black deeps of the lower canon
His dreaming eyes detect once more
Prodigious lines of buffalo crawling snake-wise
Athwart the stream,
Or files of Indian warriors
Winding downward to the distant plain,
Where camp-fires gleam like stars._

Part I

The Spirit of Sweetwater

CHAPTER I

One spring day a young man of good mental furnishing and very slender
purse walked over the shoulder of Mount Mogallon and down the trail to
Gold Creek. He walked because the stage fare seemed too high.

Two years and four months later he was pointed out to strangers by the
people of Sweetwater Springs. "T