Zane Grey

Perhaps the most interesting place on the frontier was a trading post during a bid day. Dance-halls, gambling-halls and saloons had more of raw drama and wildness of the period, but the trader's emporium had the life, the vividness, the atmosphere and business of the West. Here Mexican pesos adn American silver dollars jingled on the counters, and rolls of gold coins went into the greasy buckskin of the trappers. Lean, half-naked, befeathered adn painted savages sat and lounged around the great barn of a room, aiting to market their packs of hides. A dozen or more rugged white trappers held the floors, haranguing like auctioneers. Horn Brothers were close buyers. They knew these trappers dared not ship consignments of pelts east. And the trappers, Earnest, desperate, knowing their day was past, argued with bulging jaws for a living wage. Fat squaws and comely maidens, with their coal-black shining hair hanging down their backs, fingered the dry goods and gazed longingly at teh colored candy. Counters were piled high with merchandise ; rows of shelves sagged Under the weight of countless cans ; the odor of Tobacco vied with that of dried pelts. A swarm of flies buzzed in the warm air.

In half an hour the full chorus of yelps, barks and howls swelled hideously on the air, and the ever-increasing pack of wolves could be seen scarcely a hundred yards behind the sleds. The patter of their swiftly flying feet on the snow could be distinctly heard. The slender, dark forms came nearer and nearer every moment. Presently the wolves had approached close enough for the occupants of the sled to see their shining eyes looking like little balls of green fire.

As Always, Britt was amused and thrilled by these cowboys. Of all western types he admired them most. He had vision to see that they, more than trappers, traders, gold-seekers, freighters, soliers, and pioneers, should be given Glory of being the empire builders. With the Buffalo-hunters, who were going to subjugate the Indian and drive him into the waster places, these cowboys, wiht their rolling herds of cattle, would be the true and the great freers of the West.

Siena, a hunter of the leafy trails, dreamed his dreams; and at sixteen he was the hope of the remnant of a once powerful tribe, a stripling chief, beautiful as a bronzed autumn god, silent, proud, forever listening to voices on the wind.
To Siena the lore of the woodland came as flight comes to the strong-winged wild fowl. The secrets of the forests were his, and of the rocks and rivers.
(Nouvelles: The Great Slave)

Long years of hatred had existed between the Yaquis of upland Sonora and the Mexicans from the east. Like eagles, the Indian tribe had lived for centuries in the mountain fastnesses of the Sierra Madre, free, happy, self-sufficient. But wandering prospectors had found gold in their cournty and that had been the end of their peace. At first the Yaquis, wanting only the wildness and loneliness of their homes, moved farther and farther back from ever-encroaching advance of the gold differs. At last, driven from the mountains into the desert, they realized tht gold was the doom of their tribe and they befan to fight for their land.Bitter and bloody was the battles; and from father to son this wild, free proud race bequeathed a terrible hatred.
(Nouvelle : YAQUI)

"O bury me not on the lone prairie,
The word came low and mournfully
From the pallid lips of a boy who lay
On his death bed at the close of day.

He had wrestled with apain till o'er his brow
Death's shadows fast were creeping now;
He thought of his home and the loved ones nigh
As the cowboys gathered to see him die.

"O bury me not"- and his voice failed there,
But we paid no heed to his dying prayer ;
In a shallow grave just six by trhee
We buried him there on the lone prairie.

Where the dew drops shine.- "

I loved the motion of the horse, the feel of Wind in my face, the small of the pine, the sight of slope and forest glade and windfall and rocks, and the black shade under the spruces. My blood beat and burned. My teeth clicked. My nerves all quivered. My heart sometimes, at dangerous moments almost choked me, and all the time it pounded hard. Now my skin was hot and then it was cold. But I think the best of that chase for me was that I was on a fast horse, guiding him, controlling him. He was alive. Oh how I felt his running!

Ann looked up into Colmor's face with all her soul in her eyes, but she did not speak. Her look was noble. She yearned to guide him right, yet her lips were sealed. And Colmore betrayed the trouble of his saul. The code of men held him bound, and he could not break from it, though he divined n that moment how truly it was wrong.

Soft and fresh of color the gray old sage slopes came out from under their winter mantle ; the bleached tufts of grass waved in the wind and showed tiny blades of green at the roots ; the aspens and oaks, and the vines on fences and cliffs, and the round-clumped, brook bordering willows took on a hue of spring.
The mustangs and colts in the pastures snorted and ran and kicked and cavorted ; and on the hillsides the cows began to climb higher, searching for the tender greens, bawling for the new-born calves. Eagles shrieked the release of the snow-bound peaks, and the elks bugled their piercing calls. The grous-cocks spread their gorgeous brown plumage in parade before their twittering mates, and the jays screecked in the woods, and the sage-hens sailed along the bosom of the gray slopes.

You cowboys of the "lone prairee," who have stood white stars, in the dead of night, under the white stars, in sleet and rain and sand, in bitter cold and the hot blast of summer, who have ridden from the Rio Grande to the Black Hills, from the big river to this last and greatest cattle-range, who have slept nine out of every ten nights on the hard ground of plan or desert or upland or mesa, who know the West as none but the Indians know it, perhaps you still do not know the West. You know its romance but do not think of its history ; you know its cruelty but you do not consider its destiny.