ridges reached out and halted peremptorily the ugly sweep of it.
The railroad gashed it boldly, after the manner of the iron trail
of modern industry; but the trails of the desert dwellers wound
through it diffidently, avoiding the rough crest of lava rock
where they might, dodging the most aggressive sagebrush and
dipping tentatively into hollows, seeking always the easiest way
to reach some remote settlement or ranch.

Of the men who followed those trails, not one of them but could
have ridden straight to the Peaceful Hart ranch in black
darkness; and there were few, indeed, white men or Indians, who
could have ridden there at midnight and not been sure of blankets
and a welcome to sweeten their sleep. Such was the Peaceful Hart
Ranch, conjured from the sage and the sand in the valley of the
Snake.



CHAPTER II

GOOD INDIAN

There is a saying--and if it is not purely Western, it is at
least purely American--that the only good Indian is a dead
Indian. In the very teeth of that, and in spite of tho fact that
he was neither very good, nor an Indian--nor in any sense
"dead"-- men called Grant Imsen "Good Indian" to his face; and if
he resented the title, his resentment was never made
manifest--perhaps because he had grown up with the name, he
rather liked it when he was a little fellow, and with custom had