Explore "By Right of Purchase" by Harold Bindloss on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The night was still dark, and there was not then or afterwards any sign of hail when Sergeant Grier halted his little force under the Blackfoot Ridge. There were, in all, eight of them, excellently mounted, and most of them rode with a magazine rifle slung across their shoulders. In front of them a deep ravine wound away into the Ridge, which, though sometimes called a mountain, consisted of a long, broken rise, perhaps two hundred feet above the level of the rest of the prairie. Stunted birches, and, where the grounds were moister, a dense growth of willows, clothed its sides. Behind the first rise lay a rolling, deeply fissured plateau, lined here and there with trees. It stretched away before them, a black and shadowy barrier, and Sergeant Grier sat with his hand upon his hip, looking at it reflectively.
"I guess your news can be relied on, Mr. Leland? " he said.