The Project Gutenberg eBook, Where the Trail Divides, by Will Lillibridge

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Title: Where the Trail Divides

Author: Will Lillibridge

Release Date: March 23, 2004 [eBook #11683]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHERE THE TRAIL DIVIDES***

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WHERE THE TRAIL DIVIDES

By WILL LILLIBRIDGE

Author of "BEN BLAIR," Etc.

With Frontispiece in Colors
By The Kinneys

1907

CONTENTS

I. PRESENTIMENT

II. FULFILMENT

III. DISCOVERY

IV. RECONSTRUCTION

V. THE LAND OF LICENCE

VI. THE RED MAN AND THE WHITE

VII. A GLIMPSE OF THE UNKNOWN

VIII. THE SKELETON WITHIN THE CLOSET

IX. THE VOICE OF THE WILD

X. THE CURSE OF THE CONQUERED

XI. THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE

XII. WITHIN THE CONQUEROR'S OWN COUNTRY

XIII. THE MYSTERY OF SOLITUDE

XIV. FATE, THE SATIRIST

XV. THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE

XVI. THE RECKONING

XVII. SACRIFICE

XVIII. REWARD

XIX. IN SIGHT OF GOD ALONE

CHAPTER I

PRESENTIMENT

The man was short and fat, and greasy above the dark beard line. In
addition, he was bowlegged as a greyhound, and just now he moved with a
limp as though very footsore. His coarse blue flannel shirt, open at the
throat, exposed a broad hairy chest that rose and fell mightily with the
effort he was making. And therein lay the mystery. The sun was hot--with
the heat of a cloudless August sun at one o'clock of the afternoon. The
country he was traversing was wild, unbroken--uninhabited apparently of
man or of beast. Far to his left, just visible through the dancing heat
rays, indistinct as a mirage, was a curling fringe of green trees. To
his right, behind him, ahead of him was not a tree nor a shrub nor a
rock the height of a man's head; only ungrazed, yellowish-green
sun-dried prairie grass. The silence was complete. Not even a breath of
wind rustled the grass; yet ever and anon the man paused glanced back
the way he had come, listened, his throat throbbing with the effort of
repressed breathing, in obvious