The Fighting Edge

William MacLeod Raine (1871-1954) is the author of such popular western adventure novels as A Texas Ranger (1910), Yukon Trail (1917) and A Man Four-Square (1919). Raine's fast paced plots and varied settings are the backdrop for gun toting cowboys, tough marshals, mean outlaws and the language particular to the western frontier. The Fighting Edge begins, "She stood in the doorway, a patched and ragged Cinderella of the desert. Upon her slim, ill-poised figure the descending sun slanted a shaft of glory. It caught in a spotlight the cheap, dingy gown, the coarse stockings through the holes of which white flesh peeped, the heavy, broken brogans that disfigured the feet. It beat upon a small head with a mass of black, wild-flying hair, on red lips curved with discontent, into dark eyes passionate and resentful at what fate had made of her young life. A silent, sullen lass, one might have guessed, and the judgment would have been true as most first impressions."