Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 526
“It’s mine, yu son-of-a-gun!” They wrestled like boys in play, but before Deuce could obtain the quirt from his friend, Holden snatched it.
“I reckon findin’s keepin’s,” he laughed.
With a shout the two cowboys flung themselves upon him. Brite sat down to watch the fun. Pan Handle looked on dubiously. The boys were sober. They had not had a drink. They were just full of lazy glee. As the three of them tugged at the quirt their warm young faces flashed into sight, one after the other. And they grunted and laughed and tugged.
“Aw, Less, thet hurt. Don’t be so gol-durned rough,” complained Rolly as Holden wrenched the quirt away from the other two. Little looked askance at the blood on his hand. But he was too good-natured to take offense. Deuce, however, suddenly changing from jest to earnest, wrenched the quirt in turn from Holden.
“Heah, Rolly. It’s yores. Let’s quit foolin’,” said Deuce.
But Holden leaped for the quirt, and securing a grip he tore at it. He flung Rolly off his balance. Like a cat, however, the agile cowboy came down on his feet. The playful violence succeeded to something else. Holden, failing to secure the quirt, let go with his right and struck Rolly in the face.
“Aw!” cried Rolly, aghast. Then as fierce wild spirit mounted he slashed at Holden’s darkening face with the quirt. Blood squirted.
“HEAH BOYS! STOP!” yelled Pan Handle.
But too late. Holden threw his gun and shot. Rolly doubled up, his face convulsed in dark dismay, and fell. Like tigers then Holden and Ackerman leaped to face one another, guns spouting. Holden plunged on his face, his gun beating a tatoo on the hard ground. Brite sat paralyzed with horror as Deuce sank down, his back to the porch.
The demoniac expression faded from his dark face. His gun slipped from his hand to clatter on the steps, blue smoke rising from the barrel. His other hand sought his breast and clutched there, with blood gushing out between his fingers. He never wasted a glance upon the prostrate Holden, but upon his beloved comrade Rolly he bent a pitying, all-possessing look. Then his handsome head fell back.
Pan Handle rushed to kneel beside him. And Brite, dragging up out of his stupor, bent over the dying boy. He smiled a little wearily. “Wal, old — trail driver, we pay,” he whispered, feebly. “I reckon — I cain’t — wait for — little gray-eyed — Ann!”
His whisper failed, his eyes faded. And with a gasp he died.
* * * * *
An hour later Brite met Pan Handle and with him left the hotel.
“Pan, I’ll never drive the trail again,” he said.
“Small wonder. But yu’re a Texan, Brite, an’ these air border times.”
“Poor, wild, fire-hearted boys!” exclaimed Brite, still shaken to his depths. “All in less than a minute! My God!... We must keep this from Reddie.... I’ll never forget Deuce’s eyes — his words. ‘Old trail driver, we pay!’... I know an’ God knows he paid. They all paid. Oh, the pity of it, Pan! To think thet the grand game spirit of these cowboys — the soul thet made them deathless on the trail — was the cause of such a tragedy!”
Dodge was not concerned with auditing a few more deaths. It was four in the afternoon and the hum of the cattle metropolis resembled that of a hive of angry bees.
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.
They crossed the intersecting street and went on. Brite finally noticed that Pan Handle walked on the inside and quite apart. He spoke briefly when addressed. Brite let him be, cold and sick with these gunmen — with their eternal watchfulness — their gravitating toward the violence they loved.
Dodge roared on, though with lesser volume, toward the end of the main thoroughfare. Brite gazed with strange earnestness into the eyes of passers-by. So many intent, quiet, light eyes of gray or blue! Indians padded along in that stream, straight, dusky-eyed, aloof, yet prostituted by the whites. No more of the gaudy butterfly girls! Young men and old who had to do with cattle! The parasites were back in that block of saloons and dance-halls and gambling-dens.
They passed Beatty and Kelly’s store, out from under an awning into the light. A dark-garbed man strode out of the barber shop.
“Jump!” hissed Pan Handle.
Even as Brite acted upon that trenchant word his swift eye swept to the man in front of the door. Sallow face, baleful eyes, crouching form — Ross Hite reaching for his gun!
Then Brite’s dive took him out of vision. As he plunged off the sidewalk two shots boomed out, almost together. A heavy bullet spanged off the gravel in the street.
Lunging up, Brite leaped forward. Then he saw Pan Handle standing erect, his smoking gun high, while Hite stretched across the threshold of the barbershop door.
A rush of feet, excited cries, a loud laugh, then Pan Handle bent a little, wrenching his gaze from his fallen adversary. He sheathed his gun and strode on to join Brite. They split the gathering crowd and hurried down the street. Dodge roared on, but in lessening volume.
Breathless with haste and agitation, Brite reached the stage office.
“Waitin’ for yu, boss,” drawled Texas Joe from inside the big stage-coach. “Wal, yu’re all winded. Yu needn’t have rustled. I’d kept this stage-driver heah.”
“Oh, Dad, I was afraid,” cried Reddie, leaning out with fair face flushed.
“Dog-gone! Heah’s Pan Handle, too,” exclaimed Texas. “Shore was fine of yu to come down to say good-by.”
Pan Handle coolly lighted a cigarette with fingers as steady as a rock. He smiled up at Reddie.
“Lass, I shore had to wish yu all the joy an’ happiness there is in this hard old West.”
“Thank yu, Pan,” she replied, shyly. “I wish — —”
“All aboard thet’s goin’,” yelled the stage-driver from his seat.
Brite threw his bag in and followed, tripping as he entered. The strong hand that had assisted him belonged to Pan Handle, who stepped in after him. Then the stage-coach lurched and rolled away.
“Wal now, Pan, where’s yore baggage?” drawled Texas Joe, his falcon eyes narrowing.
“Tex, I reckon all I’ve got is on my hip,” replied Pan Handle, his glance meeting that of Texas Joe.
“Ahuh.... Wal, I’m darn glad yu’re travelin’ with us.”
“Oh, Dad, yu didn’t forget to say good-by to the boys for me, especially to Deuce, who’ll never come back to Texas?”
“No, Reddie, I didn’t forget,” replied Brite.
“I hope Ann can coax Deuce never again to be a trail driver,” concluded Reddie, happily, as she smiled up at Texas Joe. “I’d shore like to tell her how.”
THE END
To the Last Man
This western novel is a shorter version of Tonto Basin. Grey submitted the manuscript of Tonto Basin to the magazine The Country Gentleman, which published the novel in serialised form as To the Last Man from May 28, 1921 to July 30, 1921. This was a much shorter version of the original, leaving out much of the background parts of the story.
Based on a factual event involving the notorious Hashknife gang of Northern Arizona, the narrative follows an ancient feud between two frontier families, which is inflamed when one of the families takes up cattle rustling. The ranchers are led by Jean Isbel and, on the other side, Lee Jorth and his band of cattle rustlers. In the grip of a relentless code of loyalty to their own people, they fight the war of the Tonto Basin doggedly ‘to the last man’, neither side seeing the futility of the conflict until it is too late. In this volatile environment, young Jean finds himself hopelessly in love with a girl from whom he is separated by an impassable barrier.
The first edition
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
FOREWORD
IT WAS INEVITABLE that in my efforts to write romantic history of the great West I should at length come to the story of a feud. For long I have steered clear of this rock. But at last I have reached it and must go over it, driven by my desire to chronicle the stirring events of pioneer days.
Even to-day it is not possible to travel into the remote corners of the West without seeing the lives of people still affected by a fighting past. How can the truth be told about the pioneering of the West if the struggle, the fight, the blood be left out? It cannot be done. How can a novel be stirring and thrilling, as were those times, unless it be full of sensation? My long labors have been devoted to making stories resemble the times they depict. I have loved the West for its vastness, its contrast, its beauty and color and life, for its wildness and violence, and for the fact that I have seen how it developed great men and women who died unknown and unsung.
In this materialistic age, this hard, practical, swift, greedy age of realism, it seems there is no place for writers of romance, no place for romance itself. For many years all the events leading up to the great war were realistic, and the war itself was horribly realistic, and the aftermath is likewise. Romance is only another name for idealism; and I contend that life without ideals is not worth living. Never in the history of the world were ideals needed so terribly as now. Walter Scott wrote romance; so did Victor Hugo; and likewise Kipling, Hawthorne, Stevenson. It was Stevenson, particularly, who wielded a bludgeon against the realists. People live for the dream in their hearts. And I have yet to know anyone who has not some secret dream, some hope, however dim, some storied wall to look at in the dusk, some painted window leading to the soul. How strange indeed to find that the realists have ideals and dreams! To read them one would think their lives held nothing significant. But they love, they hope, they dream, they sacrifice, they struggle on with that dream in their hearts just the same as others. We all are dreamers, if not in the heavy-lidded wasting of time, then in the meaning of life that makes us work on.
It was Wordsworth who wrote, “The world is too much with us”; and if I could give the secret of my ambition as a novelist in a few words it would be contained in that quotation. My inspiration to write has always come from nature. Character and action are subordinated to setting. In all that I have done I have tried to make people see how the world is too much with them. Getting and spending they lay waste their powers, with never a breath of the free and wonderful life of the open!
So I come back to the main point of this foreword, in which I am trying to tell why and how I came to write the story of a feud notorious in Arizona as the Pleasant Valley War.
Some years ago Mr. Harry Adams, a cattleman of Vermajo Park, New Mexico, told me he had been in the Tonto Basin of Arizona and thought I might find interesting material there concerning this Pleasant Valley War. His version of the war between cattlemen and sheepmen certainly determined me to look over the ground. My old guide, Al Doyle of Flagstaff, had led me over half of Arizona, but never down into that wonderful wild and rugged basin between the Mogollon Mesa and the Mazatzal Mountains. Doyle had long lived on the frontier and his version of the Pleasant Valley War differed markedly from that of Mr. Adams. I asked other old timers about it, and their remarks further excited my curiosity.
Once down there, Doyle and I found the wildest, most rugged, roughest, and most remarkable country either of us had visited; and the few inhabitants were like the country. I went in ostensibly to hunt bear and lion and turkey, but what I really was hunting for was the story of that Pleasant Valley War. I engaged the services of a bear hunter who had three strapping sons as reserved and strange and aloof as he was. No wheel tracks of any kind had ever come within miles of their cabin. I spent two wonderful months hunting game and reveling in the beauty and grandeur of that Rim Rock country, but I came out knowing no more about the Pleasant Valley War. These Texans and their few neighbors, likewise from Texas, did not talk. But all I saw and felt only inspired me the more. This trip was in the fall of 1918.
The next year I went again with the best horses, outfit, and men the Doyles could provide. And this time I did not ask any questions. But I rode horses — some of them too wild for me — and packed a rifle many a hundred miles, riding sometimes thirty and forty miles a day, and I climbed in and out of the deep canyons, desperately staying at the heels of one of those long-legged Texans. I learned the life of those backwoodsmen, but I did not get the story of the Pleasant Valley War. I had, however, won the friendship of that hardy people.
In 1920 I went back with a still larger outfit, equipped to stay as long as I liked. And this time, without my asking it, different natives of the Tonto came to tell me about the Pleasant Valley War. No two of them agreed on anything concerning it, except that only one of the active participants survived the fighting. Whence comes my title, TO THE LAST MAN. Thus I was swamped in a mass of material out of which I could only flounder to my own conclusion. Some of the stories told me are singularly tempting to a novelist. But, though I believe them myself, I cannot risk their improbability to those who have no idea of the wildness of wild men at a wild time. There really was a terrible and bloody feud, perhaps the most deadly and least known in all the annals of the West. I saw the ground, the cabins, the graves, all so darkly suggestive of what must have happened.
I never learned the truth of the cause of the Pleasant Valley War, or if I did hear it I had no means of recognizing it. All the given causes were plausible and convincing. Strange to state, there is still secrecy and reticence all over the Tonto Basin as to the facts of this feud. Many descendents of those killed are living there now. But no one likes to talk about it. Assuredly many of the incidents told me really occurred, as, for example, the terrible one of the two women, in the face of relentless enemies, saving the bodies of their dead husbands from being devoured by wild hogs. Suffice it to say that this romance is true to my conception of the war, and I base it upon the setting I learned to know and love so well, upon the strange passions of primitive people, and upon my instinctive reaction to the facts and rumors that I gathered.
ZANE GREY. AVALON, CALIFORNIA,
April, 1921
CHAPTER I
AT THE END of a dry, uphill ride over barren country Jean Isbel unpacked to camp at the edge of the cedars where a little rocky canyon green with willow and cottonwood, promised water and grass.
His animals were tired, especially the pack mule that had carried a heavy load; and with slow heave of relief they knelt and rolled in the dust. Jean experienced something of relief himself as he threw off his chaps. He had not been used to hot, dusty, glaring days on the barren lands. Stretching his long length beside a tiny rill of clear water that tinkled over the red stones, he drank thirstily. The water was cool, but it had an acrid taste — an alkali bite that he did not like. Not since he had left Oregon had he tasted clear, sweet, cold water; and he missed it just as he longed for the stately shady forests he had loved. This wild, endless Arizona land bade fair to earn his hatred.
By the time he had leisurely completed his tasks twilight had fallen and coyotes had begun their barking. Jean listened to the yelps and to the moan of the cool wind in the cedars with a sense of satisfaction that these lonely sounds were familiar. This cedar wood burned into a pretty fire and the smell of its smoke was newly pleasant.
“Reckon maybe I’ll learn to like Arizona,” he mused, half aloud. “But I’ve a hankerin’ for waterfalls an’ dark-green forests. Must be the Indian in me.... Anyway, dad needs me bad, an’ I reckon I’m here for keeps.”
Jean threw some cedar branches on the fire, in the light of which he opened his father’s letter, hoping by repeated reading to grasp more of its strange portent. It had been two months in reaching him, coming by traveler, by stage and train, and then by boat, and finally by stage again. Written in lead pencil on a leaf torn from an old ledger, it would have been hard to read even if the writing had been more legible.
“Dad’s writin’ was always bad, but I never saw it so shaky,” said Jean, thinking aloud.
GRASS VALLY, ARIZONA.
Son Jean, — Come home. Here is your home and here your needed. When we left Oregon we all reckoned you would not be long behind. But its years now. I am growing old, son, and you was always my steadiest boy. Not that you ever was so dam steady. Only your wildness seemed more for the woods. You take after mother, and your brothers Bill and Guy take after me. That is the red and white of it. Your part Indian, Jean, and that Indian I reckon I am going to need bad. I am rich in cattle and horses. And my range here is the best I ever seen. Lately we have been losing stock. But that is not all nor so bad. Sheepmen have moved into the Tonto and are grazing down on Grass Vally. Cattlemen and sheepmen can never bide in this country. We have bad times ahead. Reckon I have more reasons to worry and need you, but you must wait to hear that by word of mouth. Whatever your doing, chuck it and rustle for Grass Vally so to make here by spring. I am asking you to take pains to pack in some guns and a lot of shells. And hide them in your outfit. If you meet anyone when your coming down into the Tonto, listen more than you talk. And last, son, dont let anything keep you in Oregon. Reckon you have a sweetheart, and if so fetch her along. With love from your dad,
