The Last Of The Plainsmen

The Last Of The Plainsmen

by Zane Grey
The Last Of The Plainsmen

The Last Of The Plainsmen

by Zane Grey

Paperback

$16.99 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Qualifies for Free Shipping
    Choose Expedited Shipping at checkout for delivery by Wednesday, April 3
  • PICK UP IN STORE
    Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Related collections and offers


Overview

American sportsmen don't need an introduction to Buffalo Jones. He spent almost his whole life pursuing wild animals after being born on the Illinois prairie sixty-two years ago. It has been a chase that has been driven by a single passion-almost an obsession-to catch alive rather than to kill that has given it an unwavering vigor and unbreakable purpose. Every well-known wild animal that is native to western North America has been captured and had its will broken by him. He found killing disgusting. Even though he detested the sight of a sporting rifle, he had little choice but to feed the caravans traveling the plains with buffalo meat for years due to needing it. When he finally realized that the noble creatures would eventually go extinct, he shattered his rifle over a wagon wheel and resolved to safeguard the species. He toiled for ten years, hunting down, seizing, and domesticating buffalo; for this, the West made him famous and gave him the moniker Preserver of the American Bison. Buffalo Jones steadily moved westward as civilization encroached on the plains; today, he resides on a remote plateau bordered by the desert on the north rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona. His buffalo remain as free as ever on the undulating plains, grazing alongside mustangs and deer.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9789357275323
Publisher: Double 9 Booksllp
Publication date: 01/01/2023
Pages: 196
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.45(d)

About the Author

About The Author
Zane Grey was born on January 31, 1872, in Zanesville, Ohio. He was a dentist and a writer, and he was famous for his western adventure novels and stories. As he was trained as a dentist, he practised in New York City from 1898 to 1904, while he published confidentially a novel of pioneer life, Betty Zane. Choosing to leave dentistry for full-time writing, he published 1905's The Spirit of the Border, which was based on Zane's notes and unexpectedly turned into a best seller. The author also wrote more than 80 books. Various books were published after his death, and more than 50 were printed in the last quarter of the 20th century. The most famous novel was Riders of the Purple Sage (1912), followed by The Lone Star Ranger (1915), The U.P. Trail in 1918, Call of the Canyon in 1924, and Code of the West in 1934.His remarkable non-fiction novel was Tales of Fishing (1925).

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1

The Arizona Desert.

One afternoon, far out on the sun-baked waste of sage, we made camp near a clump of withered pinyon trees. The cold desert wind came down upon us with the sudden darkness. Even the Mormons, who were finding the trail for us across the drifting sands, forgot to sing and pray at sundown. We huddled round the campfire, a tired and silent little group. When out of the lonely, melancholy night some wandering Navajos stole like shadows to our fire, we hailed their advent with delight. They were good-natured Indians, willing to barter a blanket or bracelet; and one of them, a tall, gaunt fellow, with the bearing of a chief, could speak a little English.

"How," said he, in a deep chest voice.

"Hello, Noddlecoddy," greeted Jim Emmett, the Mormon guide.

"Ugh!" answered the Indian.

"Big paleface--Buffalo Jones--big chief--buffalo man," introduced Emmett, indicating Jones.

"How." The Navajo spoke with dignity, and extended a friendly hand.

"Jones big white chief--rope buffalo--tie up tight," continued Emmett, making motions with his arm, as if he were whirling a lasso.

"No big--heap small buffalo," said the Indian, holding his hand level with his knee, and smiling broadly.

Jones, erect, rugged, brawny, stood in the full light of the campfire. He had a dark, bronzed, inscrutable face; a stern mouth and square jaw, keen eyes, half-closed from years of searching the wide plains; and deep furrows wrinkling his cheeks. A strange stillness enfolded his feature the tranquility earned from a long life of adventure.

He held up both muscular hands to the Navajo, and spread out his fingers.

"Rope buffalo--heap bigbuffalo--heap many--one sun."

The Indian straightened up, but kept his friendly smile.

"Me big chief," went on Jones, "me go far north--Land of Little Sticks--Naza! Naza! rope musk-ox; rope White Manitou of Great Slave Naza! Naza!"

"Naza!" replied the Navajo, pointing to the North Star; "no--no."

"Yes me big paleface--me come long way toward setting sun--go cross Big Water--go Buckskin--Siwash--chase cougar."

The cougar, or mountain lion, is a Navajo god and the Navajos hold him in as much fear and reverence as do the Great Slave Indians the musk-ox.

"No kill cougar," continued Jones, as the Indian's bold features hardened. "Run cougar horseback--run long way--dogs chase cougar long time--chase cougar up tree! Me big chief--me climb tree--climb high up--lasso cougar--rope cougar--tie cougar all tight."

The Navajo's solemn face relaxed

"White man heap fun. No."

"Yes," cried Jones, extending his great arms. "Me strong; me rope cougar--me tie cougar; ride off wigwam, keep cougar alive."

"No," replied the savage vehemently.

"Yes," protested Jones, nodding earnestly.

"No," answered the Navajo, louder, raising his dark head.

"Yes!" shouted Jones.

"BIG LIE!" the Indian thundered.

Jones joined good-naturedly in the laugh at his expense. The Indian had crudely voiced a skepticism I had heard more delicately hinted in New York, and singularly enough, which had strengthened on our way West, as we met ranchers, prospectors and cowboys. But those few men I had fortunately met, who really knew Jones, more than overbalanced the doubt and ridicule cast upon him. I recalled a scarred old veteran of the plains, who had talked to me in true Western bluntness:

"Say, young feller, I heerd yer couldn't git acrost the Canyon fer the deep snow on the north rim. Wal, ye're lucky. Now, yer hit the trail fer New York, an' keep goint! Don't ever tackle the desert, 'specially with them Mormons. They've got water on the brain, wusser 'n religion. It's two hundred an' fifty miles from Flagstaff to Jones range, an' only two drinks on the trail. I know this hyar Buffalo Jones. I knowed him way back in the seventies, when he was doin' them ropin' stunts thet made him famous as the preserver of the American bison. I know about that crazy trip of his'n to the Barren Lands, after musk-ox. An' I reckon I kin guess what he'll do over there in the Siwash. He'll rope cougars--sure he will--an' watch 'em jump. Jones would rope the devil, an' tie him down if the lasso didn't burn. Oh! he's hell on ropin' things. An' he's wusser 'n hell on men, an' hosses, an' dogs."

All that my well-meaning friend suggested made me, of course, only the more eager to go with Jones. Where I had once been interested in the old buffalo hunter, I was now fascinated. And now I was with him in the desert and seeing him as he was, a simple, quiet man, who fitted the mountains and the silences, and the long reaches of distance.

"It does seem hard to believe--all this about Jones," remarked Judd, one of Emmett's men.

"How could a man have the strength and the nerve? And isn't it cruel to keep wild animals in captivity? it against God's word?"

Quick as speech could flow, Jones quoted: "And God said, 'Let us make man in our image, and give him dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowls of the air, over all the cattle, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth'!"

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews