Zane Grey - The Deer Stalker

This edition is published by PICKLE PARTNERS PUBLISHINGwww.pp-publishing.com

To join our mailing list for new titles or for issues with our bookspicklepublishing@gmail.com

Or on Facebook

Text originally published in 1925 under the same title.

Pickle Partners Publishing 2016, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publishers Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

THE DEER STALKER

BY

ZANE GREY

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THAD EBURNE rode slowly down a trail through the forest of Buckskin Mountain. It led from his lonely cabin to one of the ranger stations called V. T. Park. He had blazed and trodden it himselfa winding trail, made to dodge the automobile roads that during recent years had extended too far, he thought, into the wilderness of his beloved deer sanctuary. He loved the great herd of deer on Buckskin, and though he did not hate civilization, he feared its encroachment into what should always have been kept virgin forest.

Afternoon was far advanced, and the warmth of the early summer day was fading. Shafts of golden sunlight slanted down through the giant pines and spruces of the open forest. Big blue grouse flew up from the thickets along the trail and sped away in noisy flight; and every open glade showed at least one of the squirrels peculiar to that forest plateau. They were black as coal, had tufted ears and huge furry white tails.

Eburne paid more attention to these than to the deer that he encountered everywhere along the trail. It hurt him to look at them because of late he was always taking stock of their leanness or counting their ribs. For the deer of Buckskin Forest were starving and that was the deer stalkers great concern.

In a way, Thad Eburne had sacrificed himself to the cause of forest conservation. True, he had first sought the ranger life to regain rugged health, but having achieved it years ago, he had not returned to the home and advantages he had left back in New England. A life in the open had always been his dream, and the West had claimed him. He was past thirty now. His ambition had been to work himself up in the service to the point where he could travel from one national forest preserve to another, fostering his ideals of conservation. But that long since had become only a dream. His very love of the wild animals, his antagonism to the killing of even wolves and wildcats, and especially cougars, had incurred the enmity of men above him in the service. Besides that he had fought the building of roads and the overtures of lumbering and mining men who would have exploited the beautiful preserve for their greedy ends. There were cattlemen, too, who hated Eburne for sternly holding them to their prescribed grazing permits. Graft had not worked with this ranger, and men of little brief authority found him a hard nut to crack. Wherefore he had remained merely a ranger, and had been advised that even his present situation was none too secure.

Thad had not worried himself by dwelling upon this implied threat; still, as he rode down the trail, on his return to V. T. Park, where he knew he must encounter one or more of his enemies and deliver reports that he knew would be disliked, his thoughts were far from pleasant.

Next to the great herd of deer, he loved this vast plateau, upon the level summit of which Buckskin Forest stretched its dark growth of virgin conifers. He felt that probably no living man, certainly none in the service, knew this vast, silent place so well as he. For eight years he had ranged it, sometimes alone for months, exploring, mapping, studying the deer, the snow, the water, the timber, the grass.

The wonder of that plateau country never lost its enchantment for the deer stalker. It was Grand Canyon country. Buckskin Forest occupied the highest eminence for many miles around. To the north the dim round dome of Navajo Mountain peeped above the red ramparts across the intervening desert; to the south, equally distant, the sharp San Francisco Peaks notched the azure sky.

The plateau itself was geologically a faultan abrupt crack and upthrust of the crust of the earth. A hundred miles and more of its southern edge formed the wild and sublime north rim of the Grand Canyon. Its long black-fringed line, sloping imperceptibly, extended almost to the Pink Cliffs of Utah. On the desert side it broke, and its yellow wall and dark-spotted slope gave way with a wonderful and majestic concord to the gray level of the barrens.

Its made me well, changed me, gripped me, yet its not a home, mused the ranger as he rode along the shadowing trail. Ive let the years roll by....Still, what does that matter? Ill drift to another forest preserve, I suppose, and to another until

But he did not conclude the wandering thought. Morbid self-pity never abided long with him. Material success in life, so often worshiped as a false ideal, did not mean much to Eburne. His wants were few and his needs simple. Moreover, he had a strange undefined faith in his destiny, in something that was going to happen to him. Failure to advance in the forest service had not killed his zest for life nor the latent love of romance in his soul.

The forest was growing dark when Eburne rode into V. T. Park. Troops of deer, as tame as cattle, showed indistinctly in the gathering dusk. They had come down to water. A light shone brightly from the cabin. The hum of a motorcar droned out of the woods, gradually dying away. The ranger reflected that he must have missed someone, but whether tourists or service men, he had no regrets. The roads, though soft in spots, were already open to the summer traffic, an increasingly growing factor in a rangers life. Most of the rangers welcomed the coming of the tourists, but Eburne did not care for it. He had no self-interest, and he had a clear vision of what the opening of Buckskin Forest would bring. To his reflective mind, the day would come when automobiles must inevitably prove fatal to the wild life and beauty of the forests. Snow had not yet melted off the north slopes of the woodland ravines, yet the influx of tourists and travelers already had begun.

Eburne attended to his horse and then entered the log cabin, burdened with saddlebags, pack, and gun. The big rude room was bright with the glow from blazing red logs in a stone fireplace. Blakener, a companion ranger, one of his few friends in the service, was the only occupant, and manifestly he had been interrupted in the process of eating supper. He was a mature man from the Middle West, rather stout, and of genial aspect.

Howdy, Thad, youre just in time for grub, was his greeting.

Im hungry, all right, replied Eburne as he deposited his burden. Whos been here? I heard a car.