"Grey, Zane - The Last Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grey Zane)

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.