Zane Grey

The Mysterious Rider Zane Grey

A girl rode along the slope, with gaze on the sweep and range and color of the mountain fastnessthat was her home. She followed an old trail which led to a bluff overlooking an arm of the valley. Once it had been a familiar lookout for her, but she had not visited the place of late. It wasassociated with serious hours of her life. Here seven years before, when she was twelve, she hadmade a hard choice to please her guardian--the old rancher whom she loved and called father, whohad indeed been a father to her. That choice had been to go to school in Denver. Four years she hadlived away from her beloved gray hills and black mountains. Only once since her return had sheclimbed to this height, and that occasion, too, was memorable as an unhappy hour. It had been threeyears ago. To-day girlish ordeals and griefs seemed back in the past: she was a woman at nineteenand face to face with the first great problem in her life. The trail came up back of the bluff, through a clump of aspens with white trunks and yellowfluttering leaves, and led across a level bench of luxuriant grass and wild flowers to the rocky edge. She dismounted and threw the bridle. Her mustang, used to being petted, rubbed his sleek, darkhead against her and evidently expected like demonstration in return, but as none was forthcominghe bent his nose to the grass and began grazing. The girl's eyes were intent upon some waving, slender, white-and-blue flowers. They smiled up wanly, like pale stars, out of the long grass that hada tinge of gold