Published by Good Press, 2019

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      EAN 4064066224172

Table of Contents

       I

       THE HAPPY GIRL

       II

       A RIDE IN THE RAIN

       III

       WAYLAND RECEIVES A WARNING

       IV

       THE SUPERVISOR OF THE FOREST

       V

       THE GOLDEN PATHWAY

       VI

       STORM-BOUND

       VII

       THE WALK IN THE RAIN

       VIII

       THE OTHER GIRL

       IX

       FURTHER PERPLEXITIES

       X

       THE CAMP ON THE PASS

       XI

       THE DEATH-GRAPPLE

       XII

       BERRIE’S VIGIL

       XIII

       THE GOSSIPS AWAKE

       XIV

       THE SUMMONS

       XV

       A MATTER OF MILLINERY

       XVI

       THE PRIVATE CAR

      Illustrations

      AUTHOR’S FOREWORD

      This little story is the outcome of two trips (neither of which was in the Bear Tooth Forest) during the years 1909 and 1910. Its main claim on the reader’s interest will lie, no doubt, in the character of Berea McFarlane; but I find myself re-living with keen pleasure the splendid drama of wind and cloud and swaying forest which made the expeditions memorable.

      The golden trail is an actuality for me. The camp on the lake was mine. The rain, the snow I met. The prying camp-robbers, the grouse, the muskrats, the beaver were my companions. But Berrie was with me only in imagination. She is a fiction, born of a momentary, powerful hand-clasp of a Western rancher’s daughter. The story of Wayland Norcross is fiction also. But the McFarlane ranch, the mill, and the lonely ranger-stations are closely drawn pictures of realities. Although the stage of my comedy is Colorado, I have not held to any one locality. The scene is composite.

      It was my intention, originally, to write a much longer and more important book concerning Supervisor McFarlane, but Berrie took the story into her own strong hands and made of it something so intimate and so idyllic that I could not bring the more prosaic element into it. It remained personal and youthful in spite of my plans, a divergence for which, perhaps, most of my readers will be grateful.

      As for its title, I had little to do with its selection. My daughter, Mary Isabel, aged ten, selected it from among a half-dozen others, and for luck I let it stand, although it sounds somewhat like that of a paper-bound German romance. For the sub-title my publishers are responsible.

      Finally, I warn the reader that this is merely the very slender story of a young Western girl who, being desired of three strong men, bestows her love on a “tourist” whose weakness is at once her allurement and her care. The administration problem, the sociologic theme, which was to have made the novel worth while, got lost in some way on the low trail and never caught up with the lovers. I’m sorry—but so it was!

      Chicago, January, 1914.

      THE FORESTER’S DAUGHTER

      THE FORESTER’S DAUGHTER

I

       Table of Contents

THE HAPPY GIRL

       Table of Contents

      The