The pioneer

June
THE PIONEER
A TALE OF TWO STATES
By GERALDINE BONNER Author of Tomorrow’s Tangle
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY HARRISON FISHER
INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS
Copyright 1905 The Bobbs-Merrill Company March PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS BROOKLYN, N. Y.
THE PIONEER
THE PIONEER
It had been five o’clock in the clear, still freshness of a May morning when the Colonel had started from Sacramento. Now, drawing rein where the shadow of a live-oak lay like a black pool across the road, he looked at his watch—almost five. The sun had nearly wheeled from horizon to horizon.
During the burning noon hour he had rested at Murderer’s Bar. Except for that he had been in the saddle all day, slackening speed where the road passed over the burnt shoulder of the foot-hills, descending into sheltered cañons by cool river-beds, pacing along stretches of deserted highway where his mounted figure was the only living thing in sight.
Stationary in the shade of the live-oak he looked about him. The rich foot-hill country of California stretched away beneath his gaze in lazy undulations, dotted with the forms of the oaks. The grass on unprotected hilltops was already drying to an ocher yellow, the road was deep in dust. Far away, hanging on the horizon like a faded mirage, was the high Sierra, thin, snow-touched, a faint, aërial vision.