Buffalo Jones needs no introduction to American sportsmen, but to theseof my readers who are unacquainted with him a few words may not beamiss.
He was born sixty-two years ago on the Illinois prairie, and he hasdevoted practically all of his life to the pursuit of wild animals. Ithas been a pursuit which owed its unflagging energy and indomitablepurpose to a singular passion, almost an obsession, to capture alive,not to kill. He has caught and broken the will of every well-known wildbeast native to western North America. Killing was repulsive to him. Heeven disliked the sight of a sporting rifle, though for years necessitycompelled him to earn his livelihood by supplying the meat of buffaloto the caravans crossing the plains. At last, seeing that theextinction of the noble beasts was inevitable, he smashed his rifleover a wagon wheel and vowed to save the species. For ten years helabored, pursuing, capturing and taming buffalo, for which the Westgave him fame, and the name Preserver of the American Bison.
As civilization encroached upon the plains Buffalo Jones ranged slowlywestward; and to-day an isolated desert-bound plateau on the north rimof the Grand Canyon of Arizona is his home. There his buffalo browsewith the mustang and deer, and are as free as ever they were on therolling plains.
In the spring of 1907 I was the fortunate companion of the oldplainsman on a trip across the desert, and a hunt in that wonderfulcountry of yellow crags, deep canyons and giant pines. I want to tellabout it. I want to show the color and beauty of those painted cliffsand the long, brown-matted bluebell-dotted aisles in the grand forests;I want to give a suggestion of the tang of the dry, cool air; andparticularly I want to throw a little light upon the life and nature ofthat strange character and remarkable man, Buffalo Jones.
Happily in remembrance a writer can live over his experiences, and seeonce more the moonblanched silver mountain peaks against the dark bluesky; hear the lonely sough of the night wind through the pines; feelthe dance of wild expectation in the quivering pulse; the stir, thethrill, the joy of hard action in perilous moments; the mystery ofman's yearning for the unattainable.
As a boy I read of Boone with a throbbing heart, and the silentmoccasined, vengeful Wetzel I loved.
I pored over the deeds of later men—Custer and Carson, those heroes ofthe plains. And as a man I came to see the wonder, the tragedy of theirlives, and to write about them. It has been my destiny—what a happyfulfillment of my dreams of border spirit!—to live for a while in thefast-fading wild environment which produced these great men with thelast of the great plainsmen.
ZANE GREY.
| 1. | THE ARIZONA DESERT |
| 2. | THE RANGE |
| 3. | ...