Fox The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4553-6095-6
Verlag: Seltzer Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 563 Seiten

Classic western. According to Wikipedia: 'Born in Stony Point, Kentucky to John William Fox, Sr., and Minerva Worth Carr, Fox studied English at Harvard University. He graduated in 1883 before becoming a reporter in New York City. After working for both New York Times and the New York Sun, he published a successful serialization of his first novel, A Mountain Europa, in Century magazine in 1892. Two moderately successful short story collections followed, as well as his first conventional novel, The Kentuckians in 1898. Fox gained a following as a war correspondent, working for Harper's Weekly in Cuba during the Spanish-American War of 1898, where he served with the 'Rough Riders.' Six years later he traveled to Asia to report on the Russo-Japanese War for Scribner's magazine. Though he occasionally wrote for periodicals, after 1904, Fox dedicated much of his attention to fiction. The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come (published in 1903) and The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (published in 1908) are arguably his most well known and successful works, entering the New York Times top ten list of bestselling novels for 1903, 1904, 1908, and 1909 respectively. Many of his works reflected the naturalist style, his childhood in Kentucky's Bluegrass region, and his life among the coal miners of Big Stone Gap, Virginia. Many of his novels were historical romances or period dramas set in that region.'

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fox, John

Leseproben

THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME BY JOHN FOX, JR.
  published by Samizdat Express, Orange, CT, USA established in 1974, offering over 14,000 books   Westerns by John Fox, Jr.:   Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories Crittenden Cumberland Vendetta The Heart of the Hills Hell fer Sartain and Other Stories In Happy Valley A Knight of the Cumberland The Last Stetson A Mountain Europa The Trail of the Lonesome Pine   feedback welcome: [e-mail]   visit us at samizdat.com   To   CURRIE DUKE   DAUGHTER OF THE CHIEF   AMONG   MORGAN'S MEN   KENTUCKY, APRIL, 1898   1. TWO RUNAWAYS FROM LONESOME   2. FIGHTING THEIR WAY   3. A "BLAB SCHOOL" ON KINGDOM COME   4. THE COMING OF THE TIDE   5. OUT OF THE WILDERNESS   6. LOST AT THE CAPITAL   7. A FRIEND ON THE ROAD   8. HOME WITH THE MAJOR   9. MARGARET   10. THE BLUEGRASS   11. A TOURNAMENT   12. BACK TO KINGDOM COME   13. ON TRIAL FOR HIS LIFE   14. THE MAJOR IN THE MOUNTAINS   15. TO COLLEGE IN THE BLUEGRASS   16. AGAIN THE BAR SINISTER   17. CHADWICK BUFORD, GENTLEMAN   18. THE SPIRIT OF '76 AND THE SHADOW OF '61   19. THE BLUE OR THE GRAY   20. OFF TO THE WAR   21. MELISSA   22. MORGAN'S MEN   23. CHAD CAPTURES AN OLD FRIEND   24. A RACE BETWEEN DIXIE AND DAWN   25. AFTER DAWS DILLON--GUERILLA   26. BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER AT LAST   27. AT THE HOSPITAL OF MORGAN'S MEN   28. PALL-BEARERS OF THE LOST CAUSE   29. MELISSA AND MARGARET   30. PEACE   31. THE WESTWARD WAY     CHAPTER 1. TWO RUNAWAYS FROM LONESOME
  The days of that April had been days of mist and rain. Sometimes, for hours, there would come a miracle of blue sky, white cloud, and yellow light, but always between dark and dark the rain would fall and the mist creep up the mountains and steam from the tops--only to roll together from either range, drip back into the valleys, and lift, straightway, as mist again. So that, all the while Nature was trying to give lustier life to every living thing in the lowland Bluegrass, all the while a gaunt skeleton was stalking down the Cumberland--tapping with fleshless knuckles, now at some unlovely cottage of faded white and green, and now at a log cabin, stark and gray. Passing the mouth of Lonesome, he flashed his scythe into its unlifeing shadows and went stalking on. High up, at the source of the dismal little stream, the point of the shining blade darted thrice into the open door of a cabin set deep into a shaggy flank of Black Mountain, and three spirits, within, were quickly loosed from aching flesh for the long flight into the unknown.   It was the spirit of the plague that passed, taking with it the breath of the unlucky and the unfit: and in the hut on Lonesome three were dead--a gaunt mountaineer, a gaunt daughter, and a gaunt son. Later, the mother, too, "jes' kind o' got tired," as little Chad said, and soon to her worn hands and feet came the well-earned rest. Nobody was left then but Chad and Jack, and Jack was a dog with a belly to feed and went for less than nothing with everybody but his little master and the chance mountaineer who had sheep to guard. So, for the fourth time, Chad, with Jack at his heels, trudged up to the point of a wooded spur above the cabin, where, at the foot of a giant poplar and under a wilderness of shaking June leaves, were three piles of rough boards, loosely covering three hillocks of rain-beaten earth; and, near them, an open grave. There was no service sung or spoken over the dead, for the circuit-rider was then months away; so, unnoticed, Chad stood behind the big poplar, watching the neighbors gently let down into the shallow trench a home-made coffin, rudely hollowed from the half of a bee-gum log, and, unnoticed, slipped away at the first muffled stroke of the dirt--doubling his fists into his eyes and stumbling against the gnarled bodies of laurel and rhododendron until, out in a clear sunny space, he dropped on a thick, velvet mat of moss and sobbed himself to sleep. When he awoke, Jack was licking his face and he sat up, dazed and yawning. The sun was dropping fast, the ravines were filling with blue shadows, luminous and misty, and a far drowsy tinkling from the valley told him that cows were starting homeward. From habit, he sprang quickly to his feet, but, sharply conscious on a sudden, dropped slowly back to the moss again, while Jack, who had started down the spur, circled back to see what the matter was, and stood with uplifted foot, much puzzled.   There had been a consultation about Chad early that morning among the neighbors, and old Nathan Cherry, who lived over on Stone Creek, in the next cove but one, said that he would take charge of the boy. Nathan did not wait for the burial, but went back home for his wagon, leaving word that Chad was to stay all night with a neighbor and meet him at the death-stricken cabin an hour by sun. The old man meant to have Chad bound to him for seven years by law--the boy had been told that--and Nathan hated dogs as much as Chad hated Nathan. So the lad did not lie long. He did not mean to be bound out, nor to have Jack mistreated, and he rose quickly and Jack sprang before him down the rocky path and toward the hut that had been a home to both. Under the poplar, Jack sniffed curiously at the new-made grave, and Chad called him away so sharply that Jack's tail drooped and he crept toward his master, as though to ask pardon for a fault of which he was not conscious. For one moment, Chad stood looking. Again the stroke of the falling earth smote his ears and his eyes filled; a curious pain caught him by the throat and he passed on, whistling--down into the shadows below to the open door of the cabin.   It was deathly still. The homespun bedclothes and hand-made quilts of brilliant colors had been thrown in a heap on one of the two beds of hickory withes; the kitchen utensils--a crane and a few pots and pans--had been piled on the hearth, along with strings of herbs and beans and red pepper-pods--all ready for old Nathan when he should come over for them, next morning, with his wagon. Not a living thing was to be heard or seen that suggested human life, and Chad sat down in the deepening loneliness, watching the shadows rise up the green walls that bound him in, and wondering what he should do, and where he should go, if he was not to go to old Nathan; while Jack, who seemed to know that some crisis was come, settled on his haunches a little way off, to wait, with perfect faith and patience, for the boy to make up his mind.   It was the first time, perhaps, that Chad had ever thought very seriously about himself, or wondered who he was, or whence he had come. Digging back into his memory as far as he could, it seemed to him that what had just happened now had happened to him once before, and that he had simply wandered away. He could not recollect where he had started from first, but he could recall many of the places where he had lived, and why he had left them--usually because somebody, like old Nathan, had wanted to have him bound out, or had misused Jack, or would not let the two stray off into the woods together, when there was nothing else to be done. He had stayed longest where he was now, because the old man and his son and his girl had all taken a great fancy to Jack, and had let the two guard cattle in the mountains and drive sheep and, if they stayed out in the woods over night, struck neither a stroke of hand nor tongue. The old mother had been his mother and, once more, Chad leaned his head against the worn lintel and wept silently. So far, nobody had seemed to care particularly who he was, or was not--nor had Chad. Most people were very kind to him, looking upon him as one of the wandering waifs that one finds throughout the Cumberland, upon whom the good folks of the mountains do not visit the father's sin. He knew what he was thought to be, and it mattered so little, since it made no...