Zane Grey

The Man of the Forest Zane Grey

At sunset hour the forest was still, lonely, sweet with tang of fir and spruce, blazing in gold andred and green; and the man who glided on under the great trees seemed to blend with the colorsand, disappearing, to have become a part of the wild woodland. Old Baldy, highest of the White Mountains, stood up round and bare, rimmed bright gold in thelast glow of the setting sun. Then, as the fire dropped behind the domed peak, a change, a cold anddarkening blight, passed down the black spear-pointed slopes over all that mountain world. It was a wild, richly timbered, and abundantly watered region of dark forests and grassy parks, tenthousand feet above sea-level, isolated on all sides by the southern Arizona desert-the virgin homeof elk and deer, of bear and lion, of wolf and fox, and the birthplace as well as the hiding-place ofthe fierce Apache. September in that latitude was marked by the sudden cool night breeze following shortly aftersundown. Twilight appeared to come on its wings, as did faint sounds, not distinguishable before inthe stillness. Milt Dale, man of the forest, halted at the edge of a timbered ridge, to listen and to watch. Beneath him lay a narrow valley, open and grassy, from which rose a faint murmur of running water. Its music was pierced by the wild staccato yelp of a hunting coyote. From overhead in the giant fircame a twittering and rustling of grouse settling for the night; and from across the valley drifted thelast low calls of wild turkeys going to roost. To Dale's keen ear these sounds were all they should have been, betokening an unchangedserenity of forestland. He was glad, for he had expected to hear the clipclop of white men's horses-which to hear up in those fastnesses was hateful to him. He and the Indian were friends. That fiercefoe had no enmity toward the lone hunter. But there hid somewhere in the forest a gang of badmen, sheep-thieves, whom Dale did not want to meet.