Dorn Of The Mountains Read Online Free PDF

will be takin’ sides…some fer me an’ some fer Al. Most are fer me…. Where do you stand? Al Auchincloss never had no use fer you, an’, besides, he’s a dyin’ man…. Are you goin’ on his side?”
    “Yes, I reckon I am.”
    “Wal, I’m glad you’ve declared yourself,” rejoined Beasley shortly, and he strode away with the ponderous gait of a man who would brush any obstacle from his path.
    “Milt, thet’s bad…makin’ Beasley sore at you,” said Lew Harden. “He’s on the way to boss this outfit.”
    “He’s sure goin’ to step into Al’s boots,” said another.
    “Thet was white of Milt to stick up for poor old Al,” declared Lew’s brother.
    Dorn broke away from them and wended a thoughtful way down the road. The burden of what he knew about Beasley weighed less heavily upon him, and the close-lipped course he had decided upon appeared wisest. He needed to think before undertaking to call upon old Al Auchincloss, and to that end he sought an hour’s seclusion under the pines.

Chapter Three
    In the afternoon Dorn, having accomplished some tasks imposed on him by his old friends at Pine, directed slow steps toward the Auchincloss Ranch.
    The flat square stone and log cabin, of immense size, stood upon a little hill, half a mile out of the village. A home as well as fort, it had been the first structure erected in that region, and the process of building had more than once been interrupted by Indian attacks. The Apaches had for some time, however, confined their fierce raids to points south of the White Mountain range. Auchincloss’s house looked down upon barns and sheds and corrals of all sizes and shapes, and hundreds of acres of well-cultivated soil. Fields of oats waved, gray and yellow, in the afternoon sun; an immense green pasture was divided by a willow-bordered brook, and there were droves of horses, and out on the rolling bare flats were straggling herds of cattle.
    The whole ranch showed many years of toil, and the perseverance of man. The brook irrigated the verdant valley between the ranch and the village. Water for the house, however, came down from the high wooded slope of the mountain, and had been brought there by a simple expedient. Pine logs of uniform size had been laid end to end, with a deep trough cut in them, and they made a shining line down the slope, across the valley, and up the little hill to Auchincloss’s home. Near the house the hollowed halves of logs had been bound together, making a crude pipe. Water really ran uphill in this case, one of the facts that had made the ranch famous, as it had always been a wonder and delight to the small boys of Pine. The two good women who managed Auchincloss’s large house hold were often shocked by the strange things that floated into their clean kitchen with the ever-flowing stream of clear cold mountain water.
    As it happened this day, Dorn encountered Al Auchincloss sitting in the shade of a porch, talking to some of his sheepherders and stock men. Auchincloss was a short man of extremely powerful build and enormous width of shoulders. He had no gray hairs and he did not look old, yet there was in his face a gray weariness, something that resembled sloping lines of distress, dim and pale, that told of age and the ebb tide of vitality. His features, cast in large mold, were clean-cut and comely, and he had frank blue eyes, somewhat sad, yet still full of spirit.
    Dorn had no idea how his visit would be taken, and he certainly would not have been surprised to be ordered off the place. He had not set foot there for years. Therefore it was with surprise that he saw Auchincloss wave away the herders, and take his entrance without any particular expression. Someone had acquainted the old rancher with his presence in Pine and not improbably about how he had openly rebuked Beasley in Auchincloss’s behalf.
    “Howdy, Al. How are you?” greeted Dorn easily as he leaned his rifle against the log wall.
    Auchincloss did not rise,