The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Last of the Plainsmen, by Zane Grey

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Title: The Last of the Plainsmen

Author: Zane Grey

Posting Date: November 19, 2008 [EBook #2057]
Release Date: February, 2000

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Mary Starr. HTML version by Al Haines.

THE LAST OF THE PLAINSMEN

by

ZANE GREY

PREFATORY NOTE

Buffalo Jones needs no introduction to American sportsmen, but to these
of my readers who are unacquainted with him a few words may not be
amiss.

He was born sixty-two years ago on the Illinois prairie, and he has
devoted practically all of his life to the pursuit of wild animals. It
has been a pursuit which owed its unflagging energy and indomitable
purpose to a singular passion, almost an obsession, to capture alive,
not to kill. He has caught and broken the will of every well-known wild
beast native to western North America. Killing was repulsive to him. He
even disliked the sight of a sporting rifle, though for years necessity
compelled him to earn his livelihood by supplying the meat of buffalo
to the caravans crossing the plains. At last, seeing that the
extinction of the noble beasts was inevitable, he smashed his rifle
over a wagon wheel and vowed to save the species. For ten years he
labored, pursuing, capturing and taming buffalo, for which the West
gave him fame, and the name Preserver of the American Bison.

As civilization encroached upon the plains Buffalo Jones ranged slowly
westward; and to-day an isolated desert-bound plateau on the north rim
of the Grand Canyon of Arizona is his home. There his buffalo browse
with the mustang and deer, and are as free as ever they were on the
rolling plains.

In the spring of 1907 I was the fortunate companion of the old
plainsman on a trip across the desert, and a hunt in that wonderful
country of yellow crags, deep canyons and giant pines. I want to tell
about it. I want to show the color and beauty of those painted cliffs
and the long, brown-matted bluebell-dotted aisles in the grand forests;
I want to give a suggestion of the tang of the