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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LURE OF THE DIM TRAILS *** Produced by Simon Page, and David Widger



THE LURE OF THE DIM TRAILS


By B. M. Bower





Contents CHAPTER I. IN SEARCH OF THE WESTERN TONE CHAPTER II. LOCAL COLOR IN THE RAW CHAPTER III. FIRST IMPRESSIONS CHAPTER IV. THE TRAIL-HERD CHAPTER V. THE STORM CHAPTER VI. THE BIG DIVIDE CHAPTER VII. AT THE STEVENS PLACE CHAPTER VIII. A QUESTION OF NERVE CHAPTER IX. THE DRIFT OF THE HERDS CHAPTER X. THE CHINOOK CHAPTER XI. FOLLOWING THE DIM TRAILS! CHAPTER XII. HIGH WATER CHAPTER XIII.    โ€œI'll STAYโ€”ALWAYSโ€





CHAPTER I. IN SEARCH OF THE WESTERN TONE

โ€œWhat do you care, anyway?โ€ asked Reeve-Howard philosophically. โ€œIt isn't as if you depended on the work for a living. Why worry over the fact that a mere pastime fails to be financially a success. You don't need to writeโ€”โ€

โ€œNeither do you need to slave over those dry-point things,โ€ Thurston retorted, in none the best humor with his comforter โ€œYou've an income bigger than mine; yet you toil over Grecian-nosed women with untidy hair as if each one meant a meal and a bed.โ€

โ€œA meal and a bedโ€”that's good; you must think I live like a king.โ€

โ€œAnd I notice you hate like the mischief to fail, even though.โ€

โ€œOnly I never have failed,โ€ put in Reeve-Howard, with the amused complacency born of much adulation.

Thurston kicked a foot-rest out of his way. โ€œWell, I have. The fashion now is for swashbuckling tales with a haze of powder smoke rising to high heaven. The public taste runs to gore and more gore, and kidnappings of beautiful maidens-bah!โ€

โ€œFollow the fashion thenโ€”if you must write. Get out of your pink tea and orchid atmosphere, and take your heroines out Westโ€”away out, beyond the Mississippi, and let them be kidnapped. Or New Mexico would do.โ€

โ€œNew Mexico is also beyond the Mississippi, I believe,โ€ Thurston hinted.

โ€œPerhaps it is. What I mean is, write what the public wants, since you don't relish failure. Why don't you do things about the plains? It ought to be easy, and you were born out there somewhere. It should come natural.โ€

โ€œI have,โ€ Thurston sighed. โ€œMy last rejection states that the local color is weak and unconvincing. Hang the local color!โ€ The foot-rest suffered again.

Reeve-Howard was getting into his topcoat languidly, as he did everything else. โ€œThe thing to do, then,โ€ he drawled, โ€œis to go out and study up on it. Get in touch with that country, and your local color will convince. Personally though, I like those little society skits you doโ€”โ€

โ€œSkits!โ€ exploded Thurston. โ€œMy last was a four-part serial. I never did a skit in my life.โ€

โ€œBeg pardon-which is more than you did after accusing my studies of having untidy hair. Don't look so glum, Phil. Go out and learn your West; a month or so will put you up to dateโ€”and by Jove! I half envy you the trip.โ€

That is what put the idea into Thurston's head; and as Thurston's ideas generally bore fruit of one sort or another, he went out that very day and ordered from his tailor a complete riding outfit, and because he was a good customer the tailor consented to rush the work. It seemed to Thurston, looking over cuts of the very latest styles in riding clothes, that already he was breathing the atmosphere of the plains.

That night he stayed at home and dreamed, of the West. His memory, coupled

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