Zane Grey

To the Last Man Zane Grey

But Ellen Jorth's moccasined feet did not leave a distinguishable trail on the springy pine needlecovering of the ground, and Jean could not find any trace of her. A little futile searching to and fro cooled his impulse and called pride to his rescue. Returning tohis horse, he mounted, rode out behind the pack mule to start it along, and soon felt the relief ofdecision and action. Clumps of small pines grew thickly in spots on the Rim, making it necessary forhim to skirt them; at which times he lost sight of the purple basin. Every time he came back to anopening through which he could see the wild ruggedness and colors and distances, his appreciationof their nature grew on him. Arizona from Yuma to the Little Colorado had been to him an endlesswaste of wind-scoured, sun-blasted barrenness. This black-forested rock-rimmed land of untroddenways was a world that in itself would satisfy him. Some instinct in Jean called for a lonely, wild land, into the fastnesses of which he could roam at will and be the other strange self that he had alwaysyearned to be but had never been. Every few moments there intruded into his flowing consciousness the flashing face of EllenJorth, the way she had looked at him, the things she had said. "Reckon I was a fool," he soliloquized, with an acute sense of humiliation. "She never saw how much in earnest I was." And Jean began toremember the circumstances with a vividness that disturbed and perplexed him. The accident of running across such a girl in that lonely place might be out of the ordinary-butit had happened. Surprise had made him dull. The charm of her appearance, the appeal of hermanner, must have drawn him at the very first, but he had not recognized that. Only at her words,"Oh, I've been kissed before," had his feelings been checked in their heedless progress. And theutterance of them had made a difference he now sought to analyze. Some personality in him, somevoice, some idea had begun to defend her even before he was conscious that he had arraigned herbefore the bar of his judgment. Such defense seemed clamoring in him now and he forced himselfto listen. He wanted, in his hurt pride, to justify his amazing surrender to a sweet and sentimentalimpuls