To Theodore Roosevelt Some of these pages you have seen, some you have praised, one stands new-written because you blamed it; and all, my dear critic, beg leave to remind you of their author’s changel...

Certain of the newspapers, when this book was first announced, made a mistake most natural upon seeing the subtitle as it then stood, A Tale of Sundry Adventures. “This sounds like a historical novel,...

Some notable sight was drawing the passengers, both men and women, to the window; and therefore I rose and crossed the car to see what it was. I saw near the track an enclosure, and round it some laug...

We cannot see ourselves as others see us, or I should know what appearance I cut at hearing this from the tall man. I said nothing, feeling uncertain. “I reckon I am looking for you, seh,” he repeated...

It was for several minutes, I suppose, that I stood drawing these silent morals. No man occupied himself with me. Quiet voices, and games of chance, and glasses lifted to drink, continued to be the pe...

Morning had been for some while astir in Medicine Bow before I left my quilts. The new day and its doings began around me in the store, chiefly at the grocery counter. Dry-goods were not in great requ...

“We are taking steps,” said Mr. Taylor. “Bear Creek ain’t going to be hasty about a schoolmarm.” “Sure,” assented the Virginian. “The children wouldn’t want yu’ to hurry.” But Mr. Taylor was, as I hav...

My personage was a hen, and she lived at the Sunk Creek Ranch. Judge Henry’s ranch was notable for several luxuries. He had milk, for example. In those days his brother ranchmen had thousands of cattl...

Dear Friend [thus in the spring the Virginian wrote me], Yours received. It must be a poor thing to be sick. That time I was shot at Cañada de Oro would have made me sick if it had been a littel lower...

I do not know with which of the two estimates⁠—Mr. Taylor’s or the Virginian’s⁠—you agreed. Did you think that Miss Mary Stark Wood of Bennington, Vermont, was forty years of age? That would have been...

On a Monday noon a small company of horsemen strung out along the trail from Sunk Creek to gather cattle over their allotted sweep of range. Spring was backward, and they, as they rode galloping and g...

Two camps in the open, and the Virginian’s Monte horse, untired, brought him to the Swintons’ in good time for the barbecue. The horse received good food at length, while his rider was welcomed with g...

The Swinton barbecue was over. The fiddles were silent, the steer was eaten, the barrel emptied, or largely so, and the tapers extinguished; round the house and sunken fire all movement of guests was ...

To the circle at Bennington, a letter from Bear Creek was always a welcome summons to gather and hear of doings very strange to Vermont. And when the tale of the changed babies arrived duly by the pos...

There can be no doubt of this:⁠— All America is divided into two classes⁠—the quality and the equality. The latter will always recognize the former when mistaken for it. Both will be with us until our...

My road to Sunk Creek lay in no straight line. By rail I diverged northwest to Fort Meade, and thence, after some stay with the kind military people, I made my way on a horse. Up here in the Black Hil...

“That is the only step I have had to take this whole trip,” said the Virginian. He holstered his pistol with a jerk. “I have been fearing he would force it on me.” And he looked at empty, receding Dak...

It has happened to you, has it not, to wake in the morning and wonder for a while where on earth you are? Thus I came half to life in the caboose, hearing voices, but not the actual words at first. Bu...

Into what mood was it that the Virginian now fell? Being less busy, did he begin to “grieve” about the girl on Bear Creek? I only know that after talking so lengthily he fell into a nine days’ silence...

After this I gave up my experiments in conversation. So that by the final afternoon of our journey, with Sunk Creek actually in sight, and the great grasshoppers slatting their dry song over the sageb...

Judge and Mrs. Henry, Molly Wood, and two strangers, a lady and a gentleman, were the party which had been driving in the large three-seated wagon. They had seemed a merry party. But as I came within ...

“Do you often have these visitations?” Ogden inquired of Judge Henry. Our host was giving us whiskey in his office, and Dr. MacBride, while we smoked apart from the ladies, had repaired to his quarter...

Thunder sat imminent upon the missionary’s brow. Many were to be at his mercy soon. But for us he had sunshine still. “I am truly sorry to be turning you upside down,” he said importantly. “But it see...

We all know what birds of a feather do. And it may be safely surmised that if a bird of any particular feather has been for a long while unable to see other birds of its kind, it will flock with them ...

Love had been snowbound for many weeks. Before this imprisonment its course had run neither smooth nor rough, so far as eye could see; it had run either not at all, or, as an undercurrent, deep out of...

The letter which the Virginian wrote to Molly Wood was, as has been stated, the first that he had ever addressed to her. I think, perhaps, he may have been a little shy as to his skill in the epistola...

It was not even an hour’s visit that the Virginian was able to pay his lady love. But neither had he come a hundred miles to see her. The necessities of his wandering work had chanced to bring him clo...

Resigned to wait for the Judge’s horses, Balaam went into his office this dry, bright morning and read nine accumulated newspapers; for he was behindhand. Then he rode out on the ditches, and met his ...

Except for its chair and bed, the cabin was stripped almost bare. Amid its emptiness of dismantled shelves and walls and floor, only the tiny ancestress still hung in her place, last token of the home...

For a long while after she had left him, he lay still, stretched in his chair. His eyes were fixed steadily upon the open window and the sunshine outside. There he watched the movement of the leaves u...

They kept their secret for a while, or at least they had that special joy of believing that no one in all the world but themselves knew this that had happened to them. But I think that there was one p...

When the first landmark, the lone clump of cottonwoods, came at length in sight, dark and blurred in the gentle rain, standing out perhaps a mile beyond the distant buildings, my whole weary body hail...

I do not know how long I stayed there alone. It was the Virginian who came back, and as he stood at the foot of my blankets his eye, after meeting mine full for a moment, turned aside. I had never see...

We did not make thirty-five miles that day, nor yet twenty-five, for he had let me sleep. We made an early camp and tried some unsuccessful fishing, over which he was cheerful, promising trout tomorro...

Somewhere at the eastern base of the Tetons did those hoofprints disappear into a mountain sanctuary where many crooked paths have led. He that took another man’s possessions, or he that took another ...

It was two rings that the Virginian wrote for when next I heard from him. After my dark sight of what the Cattle Land could be, I soon had journeyed home by way of Washakie and Rawlins. Steve and Shor...

Town lay twelve straight miles before the lover and his sweetheart, when they came to the brow of the last long hill. All beneath them was like a map: neither man nor beast distinguishable, but the ve...

For their first bridal camp he chose an island. Long weeks beforehand he had thought of this place, and set his heart upon it. Once established in his mind, the thought became a picture that he saw wa...