Zane Grey

Skogens sønn Lucy forlater storbyen for å gjøre en innsats som sosialarbeider blant fattige og isolerte familier og skogsarbeidere. Med idealistisk innstilling oppsøker hun villmarken. Her er tilværelsen barsk og følelsene sterke. Lucy må kjempe for å holde giftesyke mannfolk fra livet. En dag dukker en fremmed opp, og det han kan fortelle, gjør livet til et mareritt for Lucy og dem hun er glad i. Banden fra Pecos De stjeler kveg, dreper og terroriserer innbyggerne i den lille byen. Texas Rangerne Vaughn Steele og Russ Sittell blir sendt av sted for å rydde opp. Russ utgir seg for å være en vanlig cowboy og får snart innpass hos den mektige borgermester Sampson, som rangerne har mistanke om er lederen for banden. Men så forelsker Steel seg i datteren til Sampson, og Russ faller for hennes kusine ...

For some reason the desert scene before Lucy Bostil awoke varying emotions-a sweet gratitude for the fullness of her life there at the Ford, yet a haunting remorse that she could not be wholly content-a vague loneliness of soul-a thrill and a fear for the strangely calling future, glorious, unknown. She longed for something to happen. It might be terrible, so long as it was wonderful. This day, when Lucy had stolen away on a forbidden horse, she was eighteen years old. The thought of her mother, who had died long ago on their way into this wilderness, was the one drop of sadness in her joy. Lucy loved everybody at Bostil's Ford and everybody loved her. She loved all the horses except her father's favorite racer, that perverse devil of a horse, the great Sage King.

Upon the death of his uncle, Ernest Selby, a young man from Iowa, inherits the Red Rock Ranch in Arizona. When he learns that the ranch's twenty thousand cattle have dwindled to six thousand he suspects foul play. Ernest decides to go under cover in order to investigate these strange circumstances and lands a job on his own ranch, posing as a tenderfoot cowboy under a different name. As he makes friends, enemies, and courts Annie, the daughter of the crooked foreman, Ernest learns to enjoy cowboy life. He knows that his charade must end eventually, but not until he can find the truth behind the disappearance of so many cattle?and win Annie’s heart. The Dude Ranger is a classic western story written by Zane Grey, one of the best-selling authors of all time. Follow Ernest Selby as the young dude quickly learns to be a rancher, a law-enforcer, and a cowboy.

A face haunted Cameron-a woman's face. It was there in the white heart of the dying campfire; it hung in the shadows that hovered over the flickering light; it drifted in the darkness beyond. This hour, when the day had closed and the lonely desert night set in with its dead silence, was one in which Cameron's mind was thronged with memories of a time long past-of a home back in Peoria, of a woman he had wronged and lost, and loved too late. He was a prospector for gold, a hunter of solitude, a lover of the drear, rock-ribbed infinitude, because he wanted to be alone to remember.

Joan Randle reined in her horse on the crest of the cedar ridge, and with remorse and dread beginning to knock at her heart she gazed before her at the wild and looming mountain range. "Jim wasn't fooling me," she said. "He meant it. He's going straight for the border... Oh, why did I taunt him " It was indeed a wild place, that southern border of Idaho, and that year was to see the ushering in of the wildest time probably ever known in the West. The rush for gold had peopled California with a horde of lawless men of every kind and class. And the vigilantes and then the rich strikes in Idaho had caused a reflux of that dark tide of humanity. Strange tales of blood and gold drifted into the camps, and prospectors and hunters met with many unknown men. Joan had quarreled with Jim Cleve, and she was bitterly regretting it. Joan was twenty years old, tall, strong, dark. She had been born in Missouri, where her father had been well-to-do and prominent, until, like many another man of his day, he had impeded the passage of a bullet. Then Joan had become the protegee of an uncle who had responded to the call of gold; and the latter part of her life had been spent in the wilds.

"Did ye notice anythin' queer about thet guide?" asked the teamster, lowering his voice. "Did ye see how oneasy he was last night? Did it strike ye he left us in a hurry, kind of excited like, in spite of his offhand manner?" "Yes, he acted odd, or so it seemed to me," replied Sheppard. "How about you, Will?" "Now that I think of it, I believe he was queer. He behaved like a man who expected somebody, or feared something might happen. I fancied, however, that it was simply the manner of a woodsman." "Wal, I hev my opinion," said the teamster, in a gruff whisper. "Ye was in a hurry to be a-goin', an' wouldn't take no advice. The fur-trader at Fort Pitt didn't give this guide Jenks no good send off. Said he wasn't well-known round Pitt, 'cept he could handle a knife some." "What is your opinion?" asked Sheppard, as the teamster paused. "Wal, the valley below Pitt is full of renegades, outlaws an' hoss-thieves.