Zane Grey Quotes

I need this wild life, this freedom.

Recipe For Greatness - To bear up under loss; To fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief; To be victor over anger; To smile when tears are close; To resist disease and evil men and base instincts; To hate hate and to love love; To go on when it would seen good to die; To look up with unquenchable faith in something ever more about to be. That is what any man can do, and be great.

Where I was raised a woman's word was law. I ain't quite outgrowed that yet.

Instinct may not be greater than reason, but it's a million years older. Don't fight your instincts so hard. If they were not good the God of Creation would not have given them to you.

Jealousy is an unjust and stifling thing.

But what can women do in times of war? They help, they cheer, they inspire, and if their cause is lost they must accept death or worse. Few women have the courage for self-destruction. "To the victor belong the spoils," and women have ever been the spoils of war.

I knew you"d never be American enough to help me reconstruct my life.

The narrator finds that as a maturing character grows in stature before her friends that she sees less stature while evaluating herself.

Love of man for woman - love of woman for man. That's the nature, the meaning, the best of life itself.

I need this wild life, this freedom. To be alive, to look into nature, and so into my soul.

Her forefathers had been Vikings, savage chieftains who bore no cross and brooked no hindrance to their will.

When I envied a man's spurs then they were indeed worth coveting.

That, my dear uncultured wolf, is a Charlie Russell—cowboy turned artist. Without him, Montana’s history would just be a footnote in a Zane Grey novel.

Unhappiness is only a change. Happiness itself is only change. So what does it matter? The great thing is to see life--to understand--to feel--to work--to fight--to endure.

Pride would never be her ally.

You and I will never live to see the day that women recover their balance.

I am waiting to plunge down, to shatter and crash, roar and boom, to bury your trail, and close forever the outlet to Deception Pass!

Good God!” cried Hare. “They’re firing on us! They'd shoot a woman!”’ “Has it taken you so long to learn that?

The blindness I mean is blindness that keeps you from seein' the truth.

You dream… or you’re driven mad.

When I rode—I rode like the wind," she replied, "and never had time to stop for anything.

 Carley saw two forces in life--the destructive and constructive. On the one side greed, selfishness, materialism: on the other generosity, sacrifice, and idealism.

An awful sense of her deadness, of her soul-blighting selfishness, began to dawn upon her as something monstrous out of dim, gray obscurity.

the false courage of association with a crowd.

Fishing keeps men boys longer than any other pursuit

It was a sight to make Zane Grey reach for his ballpoint, or Sergio Leone send out for another fifty foot of standard eight.

Mrs. Mudford. Room six. I realize she might be a little more advanced than some of the other children, but I doubt she’ll be the only one reading Zane Grey, don’t you?

...dare we live for one another? Dare we be happy?" "Child, it's our only hope. Let us make our love atone for the hate of our fathers. We have been doomed by their sins. Not that...nor anythin' can keep us apart. I am a slayer of men, but I think God spoke to me today.

So that's troublin' you? I reckon it needn't. You see it was this way. I come round the house an' seen that fat party an' heard him talkin' loud. Then he seen me, an' very impolite goes straight for his gun. He oughtn't have tried to throw a gun on me - whatever his reason was. For that's meetin' me on my own grounds. I've seen runnin' molasses that was quicker'n him. Now I didn't know who he was, visitor or friend or relation of yours, though I seen he was a Mormon all over, an' I couldn't get serious about shootin'. So I winged him - put a bullet through his arm as he was pullin' at his gun. An' he droppped the gun there, an' a little blood. I told him he'd introduced himself sufficient, an' to please move out of my vicinity. An' went" - Lassiter

Socialism reached into her mind, to be rejected. She had never understood it clearly, but it seemed to her a state of mind where dissatisfied men and women wanted to share what harder working or more gifted people possessed.

And as he lost that softness of nature, so he lost his fear of men. He would watch for Oldring, biding his time, and he would kill this great black-bearded rustler who had held a girl in bondage, who had used her to his infamous ends.

Like an arrow sprung from a bow Betty flashed past the Colonel and out on the green. Scarcely ten of the long hundred yards had been covered by her flying feet when a roar of angry shouts and yells warned Betty that the keen-eyed savages saw the bag of powder and now knew they had been deceived by a girl.

As he watched this beautiful, still world, Louie played with a thought that had come to him before. He had thought it as he had watched hunting seabirds, marveling at their ability to adjust their dives to compensate for the refraction of light in water. He had thought it as he had considered the pleasing geometry of the sharks, their gradation of color, their slide through the sea. He even recalled the thought coming to him in his youth, when he had lain on the roof of the cabin in the Cahuilla Indian Reservation, looking up from Zane Grey to watch night settling over the earth. Such beauty, he thought, was too perfect to have come about by mere chance. That day in the center of the Pacific was, to him, a gift crafted deliberately, compassionately, for him and Phil. Joyful and grateful in the midst of slow dying, the two men bathed in that day until sunset brought it, and their time in the doldrums, to an end.

Shut off your wind, Jack! And you, too, Blaze! I didn't want you fellows to come here. But as you would come, you've got to shut up. This is my business.

With distrust came suspicion and with suspicion came fear, and with fear came hate--and these, in already distorted minds, inflamed a hell.

Get up, an' take my scarf," said Wade, "an' bandage these bullet-holes I got.

I arise full of eagerness and energy, knowing well what achievement lies ahead of me.

Mister Hawe, you come along, not satisfied with ropin

About noon the following day, the horses

Red Lake must be his Rubicon. Either he must enter the unknown to seek, to strive, to find, or turn back and fail and never know and be always haunted.

And you must forget what you are—were—I mean, and be happy. When you remember that old life you are bitter, and it hurts me.

Once he had said to her that a man should never be judged by the result of his labors, but by the nature of his effort.

If you want fame or wealth or wolves, go out and hunt for them.

Motion picture rights brought in a fortune and, with 109 films based on his work, Grey set a record yet to be equaled by any other author.

Ken sat glued to his seat in mingled fear and wrath. Was he to be the butt of those overbearing sophomores?

A sharp clip-crop of iron-shod hoofs deadened and died away, and clouds of yellow dust drifted from under the cottonwoods out over the sage.

I want to know who I can trust." "Las Vegas says we're shore in for it now." "Roy, what do you think?

Jane smothered the glow and burn within her, ashamed of a passion for freedom that opposed her duty.

Is it not the loss of things which makes life bitter?

Carley's edifice of hopes, dreams, aspirations, and struggles fell in ruins about her. It had been built upon false sands. It had no ideal for foundation. It had to fall.

did not at first give vague disappointment, a confounding of reality, a disenchantment of contrast with what the mind had conceived.

It was difficult to define an outlaw in a country where there was no law.

Lassiter, I'll ride away with you. Hide me till danger is past—till we are forgotten—then take me where you will. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God!

The coach put his hand on Ken's knee.

What's all the row over at Ben's?" [Mrs. Ide] inquired, placidly, from her comfortable chair. "Rustlers, cattle, foremen, sheriffs, and Heaven only knows what," replied Hettie, distractedly.

He stalked into the room, leaned his long rifle against the mantelpiece and spread out his hands to the fire. He was clad from head to foot in fringed and beaded buckskin, which showed evidence of a long and arduous tramp. It was torn and wet and covered with mud. He was a magnificently made man, six feet in height, and stood straight as an arrow. His wide shoulders, and his muscular, though not heavy, limbs denoted wonderful strength and activity. His long hair, black as a raven's wing, hung far down his shoulders. Presently he turned and the light shone on a remarkable face. So calm and cold and stern it was that it seemed chiselled out of marble. The most striking features were its unusual pallor, and the eyes, which were coal black, and piercing as the dagger's point.

line.” King strode on in the direction Shurd had taken. Neale pondered a moment, perplexed, impressed, and grateful to his comrade. He heard remarks among the laborers and he saw the flagman Casey

That you should save me—be so good and kind—want to make me happy—why, it's beyond belief. No wonder I'm wretched at the thought of your leaving me. But I'll be wretched and bitter no more. I promise you.

The rugged fallow ground under her feet seemed to her to be a symbol of faith — faith that winter would come and pass — the spring sun and rain would burst the seeds of wheat — and another summer would see the golden fields of waving grain. If she did not live to see them, they would be there just the same; and so life and nature had faith in its promise. That strange whisper was to Lenore the whisper of God.

When he had gotten rid of his exuberance he sat down at once to write to his brother Hal about it, and also his forest-ranger friend, Dick Leslie, with whom he had spent an adventurous time the last summer.

wild men in wild places, fighting cold, heat, starvation, thirst, barrenness, facing the elements in all their ferocity, usually retrograded, descended to the savage, lost all heart and soul and became mere brutes.

The other sleepers lay calm and white in the starlight. There was something nameless in that canyon, and whether or not it was what the Indian embodied in the great Nonnezoshe . . . the truth was that there was a spirit.

Good and evil began to seem incomprehensibly blended in her judgment. It was her belief that evil could not come forth from good; yet here was a murderer who dwarfed in gentleness, patience, and love any man she had ever known.

joy that was half a sob she fell upon her knees and clasped the little burro's neck. Noddle wearily flapped his long brown ears, wearily nodded his white nose; then evidently considering the incident closed, he went lazily to sleep.

Instantly a thick blackness seemed to enfold her and silence as of a dead world settled down upon her. Drowsy as she was she could not close her eyes nor refrain from listening. Darkness and silence were tangible things. She felt them. And they seemed suddenly potent with magic charm to still the tumult of her, to sooth and rest, to create thought she had never thought before. Rest was more than selfish indulgence. Loneliness was necessary to gain conciseness of the soul.

A bandit, then, in the details of his life, the schemes, troubles, friendships, relations, was no different from any other kind of a man. He was human, and things that might constitute black evil for observers were dear to him, a part of him.

Morning dawned bright and sparkling after the rain. The air was keen and crisp. The cedars glistened as if decked with diamonds. Pan felt the sweet scent of the damp dust, and it gave him a thrill and a longing for the saddle and the open country.

All the saddle horses, and even some of the pack animals, were affected by the scent of the wild herd. Freedom still lived deep down in their hearts. That was why a broken horse, no matter how gentle, became the wildest of the wild when he got free.

Nat'rully I looked back to see what hed acted so powerful strange on the judge. An' there, half-way up the room, in the middle of the wide aisle, stood Lassiter! All white an' black he looked, an' I can't think of anythin' he resembled, onless it's death.

She sensed in him loneliness, hunger for the sound of a voice. She had heard her uncle speak of the loneliness of lonely camp-fires and how all men working or hiding or lost in the wilderness would see sweet faces in the embers and be haunted by soft voices.

It was wonderful country that faced him, cedar, piñon and sage, colored hills and flats, walls of yellow rock stretch away, and dim purple mountains all around. If his keen eyes did not deceive him there was a bunch of wild horses grazing on top of the first hill.

No nerve, hey? Not half a man!... Buster Jack, why don't you finish game? Make up for your low-down tricks. At the last try to be worthy of your dad. In his day he was a real man.... Let him have the consolation that you faced Hell-Bent Wade an' died in your boots!

So the struggle for existence continued till I seemed to see all the world before me with its myriads of wild creatures preying upon one another; the spirit of nature, unquenchable as the fires of the sun, continuing ceaseless and imperturbable in its inscrutable design.

American should read the signs of the times, realize the crisis, and meet it in an American way. Otherwise we are done as a race. Money is God in the older countries. But it should never become God in America. If it does we will make the fall of Rome pale into insignificance.

Halt!..." Wade leaped at the white Belllounds. "If you run I'll break a leg for you--an' then I'll beat your miserable brains out!... Have you no sense? Can't you recognize what's comin'?... I'm goin' to kill you, Buster Jack!" "My God!" whispered the other, understanding fully at last.

She's mine. I'll fight to keep her safe from that old life. I've already seen her forget it. I love her. And if a beast ever rises in me I'll burn my hand off before I lay it on her with shameful intent. And, by God! sooner or later I'll kill the man who hid her and kept her in Deception Pass!

He saw the dark, slender, graceful outline of her form. A woman lay in his arms! And he held her closer. He who had been alone in the sad, silent watches of the night was not now and never must be again alone. He who had yearned for the touch of a hand felt the long tremble and the heart-beat of a woman.

He came at length to realize that the desert was a teacher. He did not realize all that he had learned, but he was a different man. And when he decided upon that, he was not thinking of the slow, sure call to the primal instincts of man; he was thinking that the desert, as much as he had experienced and no more, would absolutely overturn the whole scale of a man’s values, break old habits, form new ones, remake him. More of desert experience, Gale believed, would be too much for intellect. The desert did not breed civilized man, and that made Gale ponder over a strange thought: after all, was the civilized man inferior to the savage?

A man can die. He is glorious when he calmly accepts death; but when he fights like a tiger, when he stands at bay his back to the wall, a broken weapon in his hand, bloody, defiant, game to the end, then he is sublime. Then he wrings respect from the souls of even his bitterest foes. Then he is avenged even in his death.

The awfulness of sudden death and the glory of heaven stunned me! The thing that had been mystery at twilight, lay clear, pure, open in the rosy hue of dawn. Out of the gates of the morning poured a light which glorified the palaces and pyramids, purged and purified the afternoon's inscrutable clefts, swept away the shadows of the mesas, and bathed that broad, deep world of mighty mountains, stately spars of rock, sculptured cathedrals and alabaster terraces in an artist's dream of color. A pearl from heaven had burst, flinging its heart of fire into this chasm. A stream of opal flowed out of the sun, to touch each peak, mesa, dome, parapet, temple and tower, cliff and cleft into the new-born life of another day. I sat there for a long time and knew that every second the scene changed, yet I could not tell how. I knew I sat high over a hole of broken, splintered, barren mountains; I knew I could see a hundred miles of the length of it, and eighteen miles of the width of it, and a mile of the depth of it, and the shafts and rays of rose light on a million glancing, many-hued surfaces at once; but that knowledge was no help to me. I repeated a lot of meaningless superlatives to myself, and I found words inadequate and superfluous. The spectacle was too elusive and too great. It was life and death, heaven and hell.

I must tell you—because you mightn't come back," she whispered. "You must know what—what I think of your goodness—of you. Always I've been tongue-tied. I seemed not to be grateful. It was deep in my heart. Even now—if I were other than I am—I couldn't tell you. But I'm nothing—only a rustler's girl—nameless—infamous. You've saved me—

The wind blew steadily in from the desert seeping the sand in low, thin sheets. Afternoon waned, the sun sank, twilight crept over the barren waste. There were no sounds but the seep of sand, the moan of wind, the mourn of wolf. Loneliness came with the night that mantled Beauty Stanton’s grave. Shadows trooped in from the desert and the darkness grew black. On that slope the wind always blew, and always the sand seeped, dusting over everything, imperceptibly changing the surface of the earth. The desert was still at work. Nature was no respecter of graves. Life was nothing. Radiant, cold stars blinked pitilessly out of the vast blue-black vault of heaven. But there hovered a spirit beside this woman’s last resting-place — a spirit like the night, sad, lonely, silent, mystical, immense. And as it hovered over hers so it hovered over other nameless graves. In the eternal workshop of nature, the tenants of these unnamed and forgotten graves would mingle dust of good with dust of evil, and by the divinity of death resolve equally into the elements again.

Soon he would be walking a beat in one of the training camps, with a bugle call in his ears and the turmoil of thousands of soldiers in the making around him; soon, too, he would be walking the deck of a transport.....feeling under his feet the soil of a foreign country, with hideous and incomparable war shrieking its shell furies and its man anguish all about him.

Strangely it came to Gale then that he was glad. Yaqui had returned to his own — the great spaces, the desolation, the solitude — to the trails he had trodden when a child, trails haunted now by ghosts of his people, and ever by his gods. Gale realized that in the Yaqui he had known the spirit of the desert, that this spirit had claimed all which was wild and primitive in him.

He saw his enemies stealthily darting from rock to tree, and tree to bush, creeping through the brush, and slipping closer and closer every moment. On three sides were his hated foes and on the remaining side—the abyss. Without a moment's hesitation the intrepid Major spurred his horse at the precipice. Never shall I forget that thrilling moment. The three hundred savages were silent as they realized the Major's intention. Those in the fort watched with staring eyes. A few bounds and the noble steed reared high on his hind legs. Outlined by the clear blue sky the magnificent animal stood for one brief instant, his black mane flying in the wind, his head thrown up and his front hoofs pawing the air like Marcus Curtius' mailed steed of old, and then down with a crash, a cloud of dust, and the crackling of pine limbs.

Characters you’ll find difficult to forget (besides the two lead characters), include the astute Jim Traft, Sr., Molly’s semi-outlaw brother Arch (Slinger) Dunn; faithful Andy Stoneham; kind-hearted Mrs. See; the rollicking cowboy, Curley Prentiss; the despicable villain, Hank Jocelyn; the supposedly deaf cook, Jeff Davis; Molly’s embittered mother; Ring Locke, the range boss; and a host of other characters who play cameo parts.

The elder wife said that the stranger was welcome to the children, but she insisted that they hear nothing of the outside world, and that they be kept to the teachings of the Mormon geography—which made all the world outside Utah an untrodden wilderness. August Naab did not hold to the letter of the Mormon law; he argued that if the children could not be raised as Mormons with a full knowledge of the world, they would only be lost in the end to the Church.

Armies of marching men told of that blight of nations old or young—war. These, and birds unnamable, and beasts unclassable, with dots and marks and hieroglyphics, recorded the history of a bygone people. Symbols they were of an era that had gone into the dim past, leaving only these marks, {Symbols recording the history of a bygone people.} forever unintelligible; yet while they stood, century after century, ineffaceable, reminders of the glory, the mystery, the sadness of life.

Many were the last resting-places of toilers of the wheat there on those hills. And surely in the long frontier days, and in the ages before, men innumerable had gone back to the earth from which they had sprung. The dwelling-places of men were beautiful; it was only life that was sad. In this poignant, revealing hour Kurt could not resist human longings and regrets, though he gained incalculable strength from these two graves on the windy slope. It was not for any man to understand to the uttermost the meaning of life.

We cannot possibly expect, and should not desire, that the great bulk of the populace embark on a mental and spiritual voyage for which very few people are equipped and which even fewer have survived. They have, after all, their indispensable work to do, even as you and I. What we are distressed about, and should be, when we speak of the state of mass culture in this country, is the overwhelming torpor and bewilderment of the people. The people who run the mass media are not all villains and they are not all cowards—though I agree, I must say, with Dwight Macdonald’s forceful suggestion that many of them are not very bright. (Why should they be? They, too, have risen from the streets to a high level of cultural attainment. They, too, are positively afflicted by the world’s highest standard of living and what is probably the world’s most bewilderingly empty way of life.) But even those who are bright are handicapped by their audience: I am less appalled by the fact that Gunsmoke is produced than I am by the fact that so many people want to see it. In the same way, I must add, that a thrill of terror runs through me when I hear that the favorite author of our President is Zane Grey.

And so on this rainbow day, with storms all around them, and blue sky above, they rode only as far as the valley. But from there, before they turned to go back, the monuments appeared close, and they loomed grandly with the background of purple bank and creamy cloud and shafts of golden lightning. They seemed like sentinels — guardians of a great and beautiful love born under their lofty heights, in the lonely silence of day, in the star-thrown shadow of night. They were like that love. And they held Lucy and Slone, calling every day, giving a nameless and tranquil content, binding them true to love, true to the sage and the open, true to that wild upland home.

Joan felt that she would always be haunted and would always suffer that pang for Kells. She would never lie down in the peace and quiet of her home, wherever that might be, without picturing Kells, dark and forbidding and burdened, pacing some lonely cabin or riding a lonely trail or lying with his brooding face upturned to the lonely stars. Sooner or later he would meet his doom. It was inevitable. She pictured over that sinister scene of the dangling forms; but no — Kells would never end that way. Terrible as he was, he had not been born to be hanged. He might be murdered in his sleep, by one of that band of traitors who were traitors because in the nature of evil they had to be. But more likely some gambling-hell, with gold and life at stake, would see his last fight. These bandits stole gold and gambled among themselves and fought. And that fight which finished Kells must necessarily be a terrible one. She seemed to see into a lonely cabin where a log fire burned low and lamps flickered and blue smoke floated in veils and men lay prone on the floor — Kells, stark and bloody, and the giant Gulden, dead at last and more terrible in death, and on the rude table bags of gold and dull, shining heaps of gold, and scattered on the floor, like streams of sand and useless as sand, dust of gold — the Destroyer. ZANE GREY. THE BORDER LEGION (Kindle Locations 4367-4376).

Oh—Silvermanel” cried Hare. It was just a call, as if the horse were human, and knew what that pace meant to his master. The stern business of the race had ceased to rest on Hare. Silvermane was out to the front! He was like a level-rushing thunderbolt. Hare felt the instantanepus pause between his long low leaps, the gather of mighty muscles, the strain, the tension, then the quivering expubsion of force. It was a perilous ride down that red slope, not so much from the hissing bullets as from the washes and gullies which Silvermane sailed over in magnificent leaps Hare thrilled with savage delight in the wonderful prowess of his desert king, in the primal instinct of joy at escaping with the woman he loved.

He meant the Grand Canyon was only a mood of nature, a bold promise, a beautiful record. He meant that mountains had sifted away in its dust, yet the canyon was young. Man was nothing, so let him be humble. This cataclysm of the earth, this playground of a river was not inscrutable; it was only inevitable—as inevitable as nature herself. Millions of years in the bygone ages it had lain serene under a half moon; it would bask silent under a rayless sun, in the onward edge of time. It taught simplicity, serenity, peace. The eye that saw only the strife, the war, the decay, the ruin, or only the glory and the tragedy, saw not all the truth. It spoke simply, though its words were grand: "My spirit is the Spirit of Time, of Eternity, of God. Man is little, vain, vaunting. Listen. To-morrow he shall be gone. Peace! Peace!

Steep black-cindered slope, with its soft gray patches of grass, sheered down and down, and out in rolling slope to merge upon a cedar-dotted level. Nothing moved below, but a red-tailed hawk sailed across her vision. How still-how gray the desert floor as it reached away, losing its black dots, and gaining bronze spots of stone! By plain and prairie it fell away, each inch of gray in her sight magnifying into its league-long roll, On and on, and down across dark lines that were steppes, and at last blocked and changed by the meandering green thread which was the verdure of a desert river. Beyond stretched the white sand, where whirlwinds of dust sent aloft their funnel-shaped spouts; and it led up to the horizon-wide ribs and ridges of red and walls of yellow and mountains of black, to the dim mound of purple so ethereal and mystic against the deep-blue cloud-curtained band of sky.

the long-deferred breaking of the storm with a courage and embittered calm that had come to her in her extremity. Hope had not died. Doubt and fear, subservient to her will, no longer gave her sleepless nights and tortured days. Love remained. All that she had loved she now loved the more. She seemed to feel that she was defiantly flinging the wealth of her love in the face of misfortune and of hate. No day passed but she prayed for all—and most fervently for her enemies. It troubled her that she had lost, or had never gained, the whole control of her mind. In some measure reason and wisdom and decision were locked in a chamber of her brain, awaiting a key. Power to think of some things was taken from her. Meanwhile, abiding a day of judgment, she fought ceaselessly to deny the bitter drops in her cup, to tear back the slow, the intangibly slow growth of a hot, corrosive lichen eating into her heart.

Nimble, alert, the big white dog was not still a moment. His duty was to keep the flock compact, to head the stragglers and turn them back; and he knew his part perfectly. There was dash and fire in his work. He never barked. As he circled the flock the small Navajo sheep, edging ever toward forbidden ground, bleated their way back to the fold, the larger ones wheeled reluctantly, and the old belled rams squared themselves, lowering their massive horns as if to butt him. Never, however, did they stand their ground when he reached them, for there was a decision about Wolf which brooked no opposition. At times when he was working on one side a crafty sheep on the other would steal out into the thicket. Then Mescal called and Wolf flashed back to her, lifting his proud head, eager, spirited, ready to take his order. A word, a wave of her whip sufficed for the dog to rout out the recalcitrant sheep and send him bleating to his fellows.

While she waited there she forgot the prospect of untoward change. The bray of a lazy burro broke the afternoon quiet, and it was comfortingly suggestive of the drowsy farmyard, and the open corrals, and the green alfalfa fields. Her clear sight intensified the purple sage-slope as it rolled before her. Low swells of prairie-like ground sloped up to the west. Dark, lonely cedar trees, few and far between, stood out strikingly, and at long distances ruins of red rocks. Farther on, up the gradual slope, rose a broken wall, a huge monument, looming dark purple and stretching its solitary, mystic way, a wavering line that faded in the north. Here to the westward was the light and color and beauty. Northward the slope descended to a dim line of canyons from which rose an up-flinging of the earth, not mountainous, but a vast heave of purple uplands, with ribbed and fan-shaped walls, castle-crowned cliffs, and gray escarpments. Over it all crept the lengthening, waning afternoon shadows.

Saddle horses lined the hitching-rails as far as Brite could see. Canvas-covered wagons, chuck-wagons, buckboards, vehicles of all Western types, stood outside the saddle horses. And up one side and down the other a procession ambled in the dust. On the wide sidewalk a throng of booted, belted, spurred men wended their way up or down. The saloons roared. Black-sombreroed, pale-faced, tight-lipped men stood beside the wide portals of the gaming-dens. Beautiful wrecks of womanhood, girls with havoc in their faces and the look of birds of prey in their eyes, waited in bare-armed splendor to be accosted. Laughter without mirth ran down the walk. The stores were full. Cowboys in twos and threes and sixes trooped by, young, lithe, keen of eye, bold of aspect, gay and reckless. Hundreds of cowboys passed Brite in that long block from the hotel to the intersecting street. And every boy gave him a pang. These were the toll of the trail and of Dodge. It might have been the march of empire, the tragedy of progress, but it was heinous to Brite. He would never send another boy to his death.

This beast that puffed smoke and spat fire and shrieked like a devil of an alien tribe; that split the silence as hideously as the long track split the once smooth plain; that was made of iron and wood; this thing of the white man’s, coming from out of the distance where the Great Spirit lifted the dawn, meant the end of the hunting-grounds and the doom of the Indian. Blood had flowed; many warriors lay in their last sleep under the trees; but the iron monster that belched fire had gone only to return again. Those white men were many as the needles of the pines. They fought and died, but always others came. The chief was old and wise, taught by sage and star and mountain and wind and the loneliness of the prairie-land. He recognized a superior race, but not a nobler one. White men would glut the treasures of water and earth. The Indian had been born to hunt his meat, to repel his red foes, to watch the clouds and serve his gods. But these white men would come like a great flight of grasshoppers to cover the length and breadth of the prairie-land. The buffalo would roll away, like a dust-cloud, in the distance, and never return. No meat for the Indian — no grass for his mustang — no place for his home. The Sioux must fight till he died or be driven back into waste places where grief and hardship would end him. Red and dusky, the sun was setting beyond the desert. The old chief swept aloft his arm, and then in his acceptance of the inevitable bitterness he stood in magnificent austerity, somber as death, seeing in this railroad train creeping, fading into the ruddy sunset, a symbol of the destiny of the Indian — vanishing — vanishing — vanishing —