Project Gutenberg's The Valley of Silent Men, by James Oliver Curwood

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Title: The Valley of Silent Men

Author: James Oliver Curwood

Release Date: July 14, 2009 [EBook #29407]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VALLEY OF SILENT MEN ***

Thanks to Al Haines, based on the
non-illustrated version, at
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Thanks to Robert Rowe, Dianne Bean, Charles Franks and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

[Frontispiece: From the girl's revolver leaped forth a sudden spurt of
smoke and flame.]

THE VALLEY OF SILENT MEN

A STORY OF THE THREE RIVER COUNTRY

BY

JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD

AUTHOR OF "THE RIVER'S END," ETC.

THE VALLEY OF SILENT MEN

Before the railroad's thin lines of steel bit their way up through the
wilderness, Athabasca Landing was the picturesque threshold over which
one must step who would enter into the mystery and adventure of the
great white North. It is still _Iskwatam_--the "door" which opens to the
lower reaches of the Athabasca, the Slave, and the Mackenzie. It is
somewhat difficult to find on the map, yet it is there, because its
history is written in more than a hundred and forty years of romance
and tragedy and adventure in the lives of men, and is not easily
forgotten. Over the old trail it was about a hundred and fifty miles
north of Edmonton. The railroad has brought it nearer to that base of
civilization, but beyond it the wilderness still howls as it has howled
for a thousand years, and the waters of a continent flow north and into
the Arctic Ocean. It is possible that the beautiful dream of the
real-estate dealers may come true, for the most avid of all the
sportsmen of the earth, the money-hunters, have come up on the bumpy
railroad that sometimes lights its sleeping cars with lanterns, and
with them have come typewriters, and stenographers, and the art of
printing advertisements, and the Golden Rule of those who sell handfuls
of earth to hopeful purchasers thousands of miles away--"Do others as
they would do you." And with it, too, has come the legitimate business
of barter and tra