ffred's
nearly-forgotten treasures"...never undervalue your foe, and particularly in this instance. You are fighting, God save us! against men of your own race, your own blood, your own temper—your very brothers! Does it stand to reason, as you say, that an imaginary line drawn across this great country from east to west will leave all the brave men on the one side of it, and all the cowards on the other? No, no! The common ancestry who gave to the one section tough fibre and hot blood has been no less liberal to the other, you may depend upon it."
Here's another excellent, nearly-forgotten novel by Mollie Evelyn Moore Davis. Reminiscent of the "Jim-Ned Creek" tales in An Elephant's Track, and Other Stories, I consider it a more mature and better-realized work than Under the Man-Fig.
The protagonist is Leroy Hilliard Junior, born Francis Deerford Junior. Before his birth, his mother first married Hilliard, then divorced him, and married Deerford. Even though born three years after the second marriage, the son's striking resemblance to his mother's first husband causes the father to take him accusingly to Hilliard, who willingly adopts and renames him. After coming of age, the son moves to West Texas and becomes involved in the range wars there. When his younger brother Allan Deerford shows up, neither knowing their actual relationship, the fur begins to fly in earnest. Although I don't have a high opinion of the old "my mother was scared by..." cliché, the background nonetheless adds a Gothic touch to an already fine story of the Old West.
The text is from this scan of the 1899 edition, backed up by this scan. While most of the original spelling was preserved, contractions such as "I 'm" and "that 's" were joined. Otherwise, only a very few typographical errors were noticed and corrected.
So here it is: the master HTML version, the home-brew Kindle version, and the actual Amazon publication.
January 22, 2025