The Girl from the Big Horn Country

E-text prepared by Roger Frank
“Rode down the hill into the valley.”
THE GIRL FROM THE BIG HORN COUNTRY By MARY ELLEN CHASE Illustrated by R. FARRINGTON ELWELL THE PAGE COMPANY BOSTON—MDCCCCXVI
Copyright, 1916, by the Page Company All rights reserved First Impression, January, 1916 Second Impression, March, 1916 Third Impression, May, 1916 Fourth Impression, June, 1916 Fifth Impression, August, 1916 PRESSWORK BY THE COLONIAL PRESS C. H. SIMONDS COMPANY, BOSTON, U. S. A.
TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER WHO, PERHAPS, KNOWS, AND IS GLAD
CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
A September afternoon in the Big Horn mountains! The air crystal clear; the sky cloudless; the outlines of the hills distinct! Elk Creek Valley lay golden in the sunshine, silent save for the incessant hum of locust and cricket, the hurrying of the creek waters, and the occasional bellowing of steers on the range beyond the foot-hills; deserted except for the distant cattle, a coyote stealing across the hills, a pheasant scurrying through the buck-brush by the creek, and some cotton-tail rabbits and prairie dogs, who, sure of safety, meant to enjoy the sunshine while they might.
The foot-hills more than half-encircled the Valley. North, east, and south they tumbled, their brown, closely-cropped sides glowing here and there with the yellow of the quaking-asps, the red of hawthorn, and the bronze of service-berry. Above them rose the higher ranges, clothed in gray-green sagebrush and scant timber, and cut by canyon-forming mountain storms, invisible from the Valley; and far above all, seemingly near, but in reality miles away, the mountains extended their blue, snow-furrowed summits toward a bluer sky. Peak above peak they rose—some isolated and alone, others leaning upon the shoulders of the higher—all silent, majestic, mysterious, as though they held in their great hearts the secrets of the world—secrets of which Elk Creek Valley could never know. Yet the Valley looked very happy and content. Perhaps it had lain so long beneath their protection that it knew no fear.