To The Last Man

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To The Last Man

by Zane Grey

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,
GASTON ISBEL.

Jean pondered over this letter. judged by memory of his father, who
had always been self-sufficient, it had been a surprise and somewhat
of a shock. Weeks of travel and reflection had not helped him to
grasp the meaning between the lines.

"Yes, dad's growin' old," mused Jean, feeling a warmth and a sadness
stir in him. "He must be 'way over sixty. But he never looked old.
. . . So he's rich now an' losin' stock, an' goin' to be sheeped off
his range. Dad could stand a lot of rustlin', but not much from
sheepmen."

The softness that stirred in Jean merged into a cold, thoughtful
earnestness which had followed every perusal of his father's letter.
A dark, full current seemed flowing in his veins, and at times he
felt it swell and heat. It troubled him, making him conscious of a
deeper, stronger self, opposed to his careless, free, and dreamy
nature. No ties had bound him in Oregon, except love for the great,
still forests and the thundering rivers; and this love came from his
softer side. It had cost him a wrench to leave. And all the way by
ship down the coast to San Diego and across the Sierra Madres by stage,
and so on to this last overland travel by horseback, he had felt a
retreating of the self that was tranquil and happy and a dominating
of this unknown somber self, with its menacing possibilities. Yet
despite a nameless regret and a loyalty to Oregon, when he lay in his
blankets he had to confess a keen interest in his adventurous future,
a keen enjoyment of this stark, wild Arizona. It appeared to be a
different sky stretching in dark, star-spangled dome over him--closer,
vaster, bluer. The strong fragrance of sage and cedar floated over
him with the camp-fire smoke, and all seemed drowsily to subdue his
thoughts.

At dawn he rolled out of his blankets and, pulling on his boots,
began the day with a zest for the work that must bring closer his
calling future. White, crackling frost and cold, nipping air were
the same keen spurs to action that he had known in the uplands of
Oregon, yet they were not wholly the same. He sensed an exhilaration
similar to the effect of a strong, sweet wine. His horse and mule had
fared well during the night, having been much refreshed by the grass
and water of the little canyon. Jean mounted and rode into the cedars
with gladness that at last he had put the endless leagues of barren
land behind him.

The trail he followed appeared to be seldom traveled. It led,
according to the meager information obtainable at the last settlement,
directly to what was called the Rim, and from there Grass Valley could
be seen down in the Basin. The ascent of the ground was so gradual
that only in long, open stretches could it be seen. But the nature
of the vegetation showed Jean how he was climbing. Scant, low, scraggy
cedars gave place to more numerous, darker, greener, bushier ones,
and these to high, full-foliaged, green-berried trees. Sage and grass
in the open flats grew more luxuriously. Then came the pinyons, and
presently among them the checker-barked junipers. Jean hailed the
first pine tree with a hearty slap on the brown, rugged bark. It was
a small dwarf pine struggling to live. The next one was larger, and
after that came several, and beyond them pines stood up everywhere
above the lower trees. Odor of pine needles mingled with the other
dry smells that made the wind pleasant to Jean. In an hour from the
first line of pines he had ridden beyond the cedars and pinyons into
a slowly thickening and deepening forest. Underbrush appeared scarce
except in ravines, and the ground in open patches held a bleached grass.
Jean's eye roved for sight of squirrels, birds, deer, or any moving
creature. It appeared to be a dry, uninhabited forest. About midday
Jean halted at a pond of surface water, evidently melted snow, and
gave his animals a drink. He saw a few old deer tracks in the mud
and several huge bird tracks new to him which he concluded must have
been made by wild turkeys.

The trail divided at this pond. Jean had no idea which branch he
ought to take. "Reckon it doesn't matter," he muttered, as he was
about to remount. His horse was standing with ears up, looking back
along the trail. Then Jean heard a clip-clop of trotting hoofs,
and presently espied a horseman.

Jean made a pretense of tightening his saddle girths while he peered
over his horse at the approaching rider. All men in this country were
going to be of exceeding interest to Jean Isbel. This man at a distance
rode and looked like all the Arizonians Jean had seen, he had a superb
seat in the saddle, and he was long and lean. He wore a huge black
sombrero and a soiled red scarf. His vest was open and he was without
a coat.

The rider came trotting up and halted several paces from Jean

"Hullo, stranger! " he said, gruffly.

"Howdy yourself!" replied Jean. He felt an instinctive importance
in the meeting with the man. Never had sharper eyes flashed over
Jean and his outfit. He had a dust-colored, sun-burned face, long,
lean, and hard, a huge sandy mustache that hid his mouth, and eyes
of piercing light intensity. Not very much hard Western experience
had passed by this man, yet he was not old, measured by years.
When he dismounted Jean saw he was tall, even for an Arizonian.

"Seen your tracks back a ways," he said, as he slipped the bit to let
his horse drink. "Where bound?"

"Reckon I'm lost, all right," replied Jean. "New country for me."

"Shore. I seen thet from your tracks an' your last camp. Wal, where
was you headin' for before you got lost?"

The query was deliberately cool, with a dry, crisp ring. Jean felt
the lack of friendliness or kindliness in it.

"Grass Valley. My name's Isbel," he replied, shortly.

The rider attended to his drinking horse and presently rebridled him;
then with long swing of leg he appeared to step into the saddle.

"Shore I knowed you was Jean Isbel," he said. "Everybody in the Tonto
has heerd old Gass Isbel sent fer his boy."

"Well then, why did you ask?" inquired Jean, bluntly.

"Reckon I wanted to see what you'd say."

"So? All right. But I'm not carin' very much for what YOU say."

Their glances locked steadily then and each measured the other by
the intangible conflict of spirit.

"Shore thet's natural," replied the rider. His speech was slow,
and the motions of his long, brown hands, as he took a cigarette
from his vest, kept time with his words. "But seein' you're one
of the Isbels, I'll hev my say whether you want it or not. My name's
Colter an' I'm one of the sheepmen Gass Isbel's riled with."

"Colter. Glad to meet you," replied Jean. "An' I reckon who riled
my father is goin' to rile me."

"Shore. If thet wasn't so you'd not be an Isbel," returned Colter,
with a grim little laugh. "It's easy to see you ain't run into any
Tonto Basin fellers yet. Wal, I'm goin' to tell you thet your old
man gabbed like a woman down at Greaves's store. Bragged aboot you
an' how you could fight an' how you could shoot an' how you could
track a hoss or a man! Bragged how you'd chase every sheep herder
back up on the Rim. . . . I'm tellin' you because we want you to git
our stand right. We're goin' to run sheep down in Grass Valley."

"Ahuh! Well, who's we?" queried Jean, curtly.

"What-at? . . . We--I mean the sheepmen rangin' this Rim from
Black Butte to the Apache country."

"Colter, I'm a stranger in Arizona," said Jean, slowly. I know little
about ranchers or sheepmen. It's true my father sent for me. It's
true, I dare say, that he bragged, for he was given to bluster an' blow.
An' he's old now. I can't help it if he bragged about me. But if he
has, an' if he's justified in his stand against you sheepmen, Im goin'
to do my best to live up to his brag. "

"I get your hunch. Shore we understand each other, an' thet's a
powerful help. You take my hunch to your old man," replied Colter,
as he turned his horse away toward the left. "Thet trail leadin'
south is yours. When you come to the Rim you'll see a bare spot down
in the Basin. Thet 'll be Grass Valley."

He rode away out of sight into the woods. Jean leaned against his
horse and pondered. It seemed difficult to be just to this Colter,
not because of his claims, but because of a subtle hostility that
emanated from him. Colter had the hard face, the masked intent,
the turn of speech that Jean had come to associate with dishonest men.
Even if Jean had not been prejudiced, if he had known nothing of his
father's trouble with these sheepmen, and if Colter had met him only
to exchange glances and greetings, still Jean would never have had a
favorable impression. Colter grated upon him, roused an antagonism
seldom felt.

"Heigho!" sighed the young man, "Good-by to huntin' an' fishing'!
Dad's given me a man's job."

With that he mounted his horse and started the pack mule into the
right-hand trail. Walking and trotting, he traveled all afternoon,
toward sunset getting into heavy forest of pine. More than one snow
bank showed white through the green, sheltered on the north slopes of
shady ravines. And it was upon entering this zone of richer, deeper
forestland that Jean sloughed off his gloomy forebodings. These stately
pines were not the giant firs of Oregon, but any lover of the woods
could be happy under them. Higher still he climbed until the forest
spread before and around him like a level park, with thicketed ravines
here and there on each side. And presently that deceitful level led
to a higher bench upon which the pines towered, and were matched by
beautiful trees he took for spruce. Heavily barked, with regular
spreading branches, these conifers rose in symmetrical shape to spear
the sky with silver plumes. A graceful gray-green moss, waved like
veils from the branches. The air was not so dry and it was colder,
with a scent and touch of snow. Jean made camp at the first likely site,
taking the precaution to unroll his bed some little distance from his
fire. Under the softly moaning pines he felt comfortable, having lost
the sense of an immeasurable open space falling away from all around him.

The gobbling of wild turkeys awakened Jean, "Chuga-lug, chug-a-lug,
chug-a-lug-chug." There was not a great difference between the gobble
of a wild turkey and that of a tame one. Jean got up, and taking his
rifle went out into the gray obscurity of dawn to try to locate the
turkeys. But it was too dark, and finally when daylight came they
appeared to be gone. The mule had strayed, and, what with finding
it and cooking breakfast and packing, Jean did not make a very early
start. On this last lap of his long journey he had slowed down.
He was weary of hurrying; the change from weeks in the glaring sun
and dust-laden wind to this sweet coot darkly green and brown forest
was very welcome; he wanted to linger along the shaded trail. This
day he made sure would see him reach the Rim. By and by he lost the
trail. It had just worn out from lack of use. Every now and then
Jean would cross an old trail, and as he penetrated deeper into the
forest every damp or dusty spot showed tracks of turkey, deer, and
bear. The amount of bear sign surprised him. Presently his keen
nostrils were assailed by a smell of sheep, and soon he rode into
a broad sheep, trail. From the tracks Jean calculated that the
sheep had passed there the day before.

An unreasonable antipathy seemed born in him. To be sure he had been
prepared to dislike sheep, and that was why he was unreasonable. But
on the other hand this band of sheep had left a broad bare swath,
weedless, grassless, flowerless, in their wake. Where sheep grazed
they destroyed. That was what Jean had against them.

An hour later he rode to the crest of a long parklike slope, where
new green grass was sprouting and flowers peeped everywhere. The
pines appeared far apart; gnarled oak trees showed rugged and gray
against the green wall of woods. A white strip of snow gleamed like
a moving stream away down in the woods.

Jean heard the musical tinkle of bells and the baa-baa of sheep and
the faint, sweet bleating of lambs. As he road toward these sounds
a dog ran out from an oak thicket and barked at him. Next Jean smelled
a camp fire and soon he caught sight of a curling blue column of smoke,
and then a small peaked tent. Beyond the clump of oaks Jean encountered
a Mexican lad carrying a carbine. The boy had a swarthy, pleasant face,
and to Jean's greeting he replied, "BUENAS DIAS." Jean understood
little Spanish, and about all he gathered by his simple queries was
that the lad was not alone--and that it was "lambing time."

This latter circumstance grew noisily manifest. The forest seemed
shrilly full of incessant baas and plaintive bleats. All about the
camp, on the slope, in the glades, and everywhere, were sheep. A few
were grazing; many were lying down; most of them were ewes suckling
white fleecy little lambs that staggered on their feet. Everywhere
Jean saw tiny lambs just born. Their pin-pointed bleats pierced the
heavier baa-baa of their mothers.

Jean dismounted and led his horse down toward the camp, where he
rather expected to see another and older Mexican, from whom he might
get information. The lad walked with him. Down this way the plaintive
uproar made by the sheep was not so loud.

"Hello there!" called Jean, cheerfully, as he approached the tent.
No answer was forthcoming. Dropping his bridle, he went on, rather
slowly, looking for some one to appear. Then a voice from one side
startled him.

"Mawnin', stranger."

A girl stepped out from beside a pine. She carried a rifle. Her
face flashed richly brown, but she was not Mexican. This fact, and
the sudden conviction that she had been watching him, somewhat
disconcerted Jean.

"Beg pardon--miss," he floundered. "Didn't expect, to see a--girl.
. . . I'm sort of lost--lookin' for the Rim--an' thought I'd find a
sheep herder who'd show me. I can't savvy this boy's lingo."

While he spoke it seemed to him an intentness of expression, a strain
relaxed from her face. A faint suggestion of hostility likewise
disappeared. Jean was not even sure that he had caught it, but there
had been something that now was gone.

"Shore I'll be glad to show y'u," she said.

"Thanks, miss. Reckon I can breathe easy now," he replied,

"It's a long ride from San Diego. Hot an' dusty! I'm pretty tired.
An' maybe this woods isn't good medicine to achin' eyes!"

"San Diego! Y'u're from the coast?"

"Yes."

Jean had doffed his sombrero at sight of her and he still held it,
rather deferentially, perhaps. It seemed to attract her attention.

"Put on y'ur hat, stranger. . . . Shore I can't recollect when any
man bared his haid to me. "She uttered a little laugh in which
surprise and frankness mingled with a tint of bitterness.

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