The assistant editor of the San Francisco "Daily Informer" was going home. So much of his time was spent in the office of the &q...

CHAPTER I It was an enormous wheat-field in the Santa Clara valley, stretching to the horizon line unbroken. The meridian sun shone up...

"Oh! it's you, is it?" said the Editor. The Chinese boy to whom the colloquialism was addressed answered literally, afte...

I do not think that any of us who enjoyed the acquaintance of the Piper girls or the hospitality of Judge Piper, their father, ever cared ...

The year of grace 1797 passed away on the coast of California in a southwesterly gale. The little bay of San Carlos, albeit sheltered by t...

I first knew her as the Queen of the Pirate Isle. To the best of my recollection she had no reasonable right to that title. She was only n...

As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of November, 1850, he was con...

Some forty years ago, on the northern coast of California, near the Golden Gate, stood a lighthouse. Of a primitive class, since supersede...

His name was Fagg--David Fagg. He came to California in '52 with us, in the SKYSCRAPER. I don't think he did it in an adventurous ...

There was commotion in Roaring Camp. It could not have been a fight, for in 1850 that was not novel enough to have called together the ent...

The American paused. He had evidently lost his way. For the last half hour he had been wandering in a medieval town, in a profound medieva...

Sandy was very drunk. He was lying under an azalea bush, in pretty much the same attitude in which he had fallen some hours before. How lo...

In another chronicle which dealt with the exploits of "Chu Chu," a Californian mustang, I gave some space to the accomplishments...

CHAPTER I It had grown dark on Burnt Ridge. Seen from below, the whole serrated crest that had glittered in the sunset as if its i...

I The time was the year of grace 1779; the locality, Morristown, New Jersey. It was bitterly cold. A northeasterly wind had been s...

I do not think that we ever knew his real name. Our ignorance of it certainly never gave us any social inconvenience, for at Sandy Bar in ...

I A KISS AND AN ESCAPE Only one shot had been fired. It had gone wide of its mark,--the ringleader of the Vigilantes,--and had lef...

PART I--IN THE FIELD It was near the close of an October day that I began to be disagreeably conscious of the Sacramento Valley. I had...

CHAPTER I Just where the Sierra Nevada begins to subside in gentler undulations, and the rivers grow less rapid and yellow, on the sid...

We were eight, including the driver. We had not spoken during the passage of the last six miles, since the jolting of the heavy vehicle ov...