I. A Gentleman of the Range When Madeline Hammond stepped from the train at El Cajon, New Mexico, it was nearly midnight, and her first impression was of a huge dark space of cool, windy emptiness, strange and silent, stretching away under great blinking white stars. "Miss, there's no one to meet you," said the conductor, rather anxiously. "I wired my brother," she replied. "The train being so late—perhaps he grew tired of waiting. He... more...

There was Delaney's red-haired trio—Red Gilbat, left fielder; Reddy Clammer, right fielder, and Reddie Ray, center fielder, composing the most remarkable outfield ever developed in minor league baseball. It was Delaney's pride, as it was also his trouble. Red Gilbat was nutty—and his batting average was .371. Any student of baseball could weigh these two facts against each other and understand something of Delaney's trouble. It was... more...

CHAPTER I So it was in him, then—an inherited fighting instinct, a driving intensity to kill. He was the last of the Duanes, that old fighting stock of Texas. But not the memory of his dead father, nor the pleading of his soft-voiced mother, nor the warning of this uncle who stood before him now, had brought to Buck Duane so much realization of the dark passionate strain in his blood. It was the recurrence, a hundred-fold increased in... more...

1 Joan Randle reined in her horse on the crest of the cedar ridge, and with remorse and dread beginning to knock at her heart she gazed before her at the wild and looming mountain range. "Jim wasn't fooling me," she said. "He meant it. He's going straight for the border... Oh, why did I taunt him!" It was indeed a wild place, that southern border of Idaho, and that year was to see the ushering in of the wildest time probably ever known in the... more...

PROLOGUE I A FACE haunted Cameron—a woman's face. It was there in the white heart of the dying campfire; it hung in the shadows that hovered over the flickering light; it drifted in the darkness beyond. This hour, when the day had closed and the lonely desert night set in with its dead silence, was one in which Cameron's mind was thronged with memories of a time long past—of a home back in Peoria, of a woman he had wronged and... more...

CHAPTER I. The Zane family was a remarkable one in early days, and most of its members are historical characters. The first Zane of whom any trace can be found was a Dane of aristocratic lineage, who was exiled from his country and came to America with William Penn. He was prominent for several years in the new settlement founded by Penn, and Zane street, Philadelphia, bears his name. Being a proud and arrogant man, he soon became obnoxious to... more...

I. RED LAKE Shefford halted his tired horse and gazed with slowly realizing eyes. A league-long slope of sage rolled and billowed down to Red Lake, a dry red basin, denuded and glistening, a hollow in the desert, a lonely and desolate door to the vast, wild, and broken upland beyond. All day Shefford had plodded onward with the clear horizon-line a thing unattainable; and for days before that he had ridden the wild bare flats and climbed the... more...

CHAPTER I A September sun, losing some of its heat if not its brilliance, was dropping low in the west over the black Colorado range. Purple haze began to thicken in the timbered notches. Gray foothills, round and billowy, rolled down from the higher country. They were smooth, sweeping, with long velvety slopes and isolated patches of aspens that blazed in autumn gold. Splotches of red vine colored the soft gray of sage. Old White Slides, a... more...

CHAPTER I For some reason the desert scene before Lucy Bostil awoke varying emotions—a sweet gratitude for the fullness of her life there at the Ford, yet a haunting remorse that she could not be wholly content—a vague loneliness of soul—a thrill and a fear for the strangely calling future, glorious, unknown. She longed for something to happen. It might be terrible, so long as it was wonderful. This day, when Lucy had stolen... more...

Western Novels byZANE GREY Desert GoldSunset PassForlorn RiverTo the Last ManMajesty's RanchoRiders of the Purple SageThe Vanishing AmericanNevadaWilderness TrekCode of the WestThe Thundering HerdFighting Caravans30,000 on the HoofThe Hash Knife OutfitThunder MountainThe Heritage of the DesertUnder the Tonto RimKnights of the RangeWestern UnionThe Lost Wagon TrainShadow on the TrailThe Mysterious RiderTwin SombrerosThe Rainbow TrailArizona... more...