Evlum Free Online Ebooks

More results...

Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors
Evlum Free Online Ebooks

More results...

Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors

PUBLISHED: 1922
PAGES: 238

Average rating 5 / 5. Vote count: 1

Be the first to rate this book.

The Fighting Edge

By William MacLeod Raine

She stood in the doorway, a patched and ragged Cinderella of the desert. Upon her slim, ill-poised figure, the descending sun slanted a shaft of glory. It caught in a spotlight the cheap, dingy gown, the coarse stockings through the holes of which white flesh peeped, and the heavy, broken brogans that disfigured the feet. It beat upon a small head with a mass of black, wild-flying hair, on red lips curved with discontent, into dark eyes passionate and resentful at what fate had made of her young life. A silent, sullen lass, one might have guessed, and the judgment would have been true as most first impressions.

The girl watched her father drive half a dozen dogies into the mountain corral perched precariously on the hillside. Soon now it would be dusk. She went back into the cabin and began to prepare supper.

In the rickety stove, she made a fire of cottonwood. There was a business-like efficiency in the way she peeled potatoes, prepared the venison for the frying pan, and mixed the biscuit dough.

June Tolliver and her father lived alone on Piceance[1] Creek. Their nearest neighbor was a trapper on Eighteen-Mile Hill. From one month’s end to another, she did not see a woman. The still repression in the girl’s face was due not wholly to loneliness. She lived on the edge of a secret she intuitively felt was shameful. It colored her thoughts and feelings, and set her apart from the rest of the world. Her physical reactions were dominated by it. Yet what this secret was she could only guess at.

A knock sounded on the door.

June brushed back a rebellious lock of hair from her eyes with the wrist above a flour-whitened hand. “Come in.”

A big dark man stood on the threshold. His glance swept the girl, searched the room, and came back to her.

Read or download Book

William MacLeod Raine

William MacLeod Raine (June 22, 1871 – July 25, 1954), was a British-born American novelist who wrote fictional adventure stories about the American Old West.

In 1959, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.

Life

William MacLeod Raine was born in London, the son of William and Jessie Raine. After his mother died, his family migrated from England to Arkansas when Raine was ten years old, eventually settling on a cattle ranch near the Texas-Arkansas border. In 1894, after graduating from Oberlin College, Raine left Arkansas and headed for the western U.S. He became the principal of a school in Seattle while contributing columns to a local newspaper. Later he moved to Denver, where he worked as a reporter and editorial writer for local periodicals, including the Republican, the Post, and the Rocky Mountain News.

At this time he began to publish short stories, eventually becoming a full-time freelance fiction writer, and finally finding his literary home in the novel. His earliest novels were romantic histories taking place in the English countryside. However, after spending some time with the Arizona Rangers, Raine shifted his literary focus and began to utilize the American West as a setting. The publication of Wyoming in 1908 marks the beginning of his prolific career, during which time he averaged nearly two Western novels a year until he died in 1954. In 1920 he was awarded an M.L. degree from the University of Colorado, where he had established that school’s first journalism course.

During the First World War, 500,000 copies of one of his books were sent to British soldiers in the trenches. Twenty of his novels have been filmed. Though he was prolific, he was a slow, careful, conscientious worker, intent on accurate detail, and considered himself a craftsman rather than an artist.

In 1905 Raine married Jennie P. Langley, who died in 1922. In 1924 he married Florence A. Hollingsworth; they had a daughter. Though he traveled a good deal, Denver was considered his home.

In 1928, he ghostwrote with Billy Breakenridge, the book Helldorado: Bringing Law to the Mesquite. Breckenridge had been a deputy sheriff under Johnny Behan in Tombstone, Arizona Territory during the period of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Breckenridge had pressed Wyatt for details about his time in Tombstone to add to the book. It was published the year before Wyatt died. and it depicted Wyatt as a thief, pimp, crooked gambler, and murderer. The book stated that the Earps and Doc Holliday aggressively mistreated the guiltless cowboys until they were forced into a fatal confrontation. His description of the 1881 O.K. Corral gunfight stated that the Clanton and McLaury brothers were merely cowboys who had been unarmed and surrendered but the Earp brothers had shot them in cold blood. Wyatt and Josie protested that the book’s contents were biased and more fiction than fact. Earp complained about the book until his death in January 1929, and his wife continued in the same vein afterward.

Raine died on July 25, 1954, and is buried at Fairmount Cemetery in Denver. He was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1959.

William MacLeod Raine

William MacLeod Raine