The Project Gutenberg EBook of Branded, by Francis Lynde

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Title: Branded

Author: Francis Lynde

Release Date: October 5, 2006 [EBook #19472]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRANDED ***

Produced by Al Haines

[Frontispiece: The resemblance . . . transformed itself slowly into the
breath-cutting reality, and I was staring up . . . into the face of
Cummings.]

BRANDED

BY

FRANCIS LYNDE

AUTHOR OF

THE TAMING OF RED BUTTE WESTERN, THE CITY OF NUMBERED DAYS, ETC.

FRONTISPIECE BY

ARTHUR E. BECHER

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS ---------- NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published April, 1918

Reprinted April, 1918

To the one who, more clearly than
any other, can best understand and
appreciate the motive for its writing,
this book is affectionately inscribed by

THE AUTHOR

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. THE HEATING OF THE IRON
II. THE SEARING TOUCH
III. IN THE NAME OF THE LAW
IV. SCARS
V. THE DOWNWARD PATH
VI. A GOOD SAMARITAN
VII. THE PLUNGE
VIII. WESTWARD
IX. THE CUP OF TREMBLING
X. THE PLAIN-CLOTHES MAN
XI. NUMBER 3126
XII. A CAST FOR FORTUNE
XIII. FOR THE SINEWS OF WAR
XIV. PAPER WALLS
XV. THE BROKEN WAGON
XVI. IN THE OPEN
XVII. ALADDIN'S LAMP
XVIII. "THE WOMAN . . . WHOSE HANDS ARE AS BANDS"
XIX. A RECKONING AND A HOLD-UP
XX. BROKEN FAITH
XXI. THE END OF A HONEYMOON
XXII. A WOMAN'S LOVE
XXIII. SKIES OF BRASS
XXIV. RESTORATION
XXV. THE MOUNTAIN'S TOP

BRANDED

I

The Heating of the Iron

It was not until the evening when old John Runnels, who had been the
town marshal in my school days, and was now chief of police under the
new city charter, came into the dingy little private banking room to
arrest me that I began to realize, though only in a sort of dumb and
dazed fashion, how much my promise to Agatha Geddis might be going to
cost me.

But even if the full meaning of the promise had been grasped at the
time when my word was given, it is a