There was a red-headed slattern sweeping the veranda - nobody else visible about the house. All the shutters of the stone and timber chalet were closed; cow-barn, stable, springhouse and bottling house appeared to be deserted. Weeds smothered the garden where a fountain played above a brimming basin of gray stone; cat-grass grew rank on the oval lawn around the white-washed flag-pole from which no banner flapped. An intense and heated silence possessed the place. Tall mountains circled it, cloud-high, enormous, gathered around the little valley as though met in solemn council there under the vast pavilion of sky...
150 Western Classics : Stories of Adventure, Courage, and Justice in the American West
Mark Twain, James Fenimore Cooper, Max Brand, James Oliver Curwood, B.M. Bower, Zane Grey, Jackson Gregory, Jack London, Emerson Hough, Will Lillibridge, Andy Adams, Bret Harte, Owen Wister, Washington Irving, Willa Cather, O.Henry, Grace Livingston Hill, Charles King, Charles Alden Seltzer, Stephen Crane, Dane Coolidge, Marah Ellis Ryan, Francis William Sullivan, Frederic Homer Balch, Frederic Remington, Robert W. Chambers, Forrestine C. Hooker, Frank H. Spearman, J. Allan Dunn, Ann S. Stephens, Robert E. Howard, R.M Ballantyne, Charles Siringo, Isabel E. Ostrander
