To The Last Man

by Zane Grey





FOREWORD

It was inevitable that in my efforts to write romantic history of the
great West I should at length come to the story of a feud. For long
I have steered clear of this rock. But at last I have reached it and
must go over it, driven by my desire to chronicle the stirring events
of pioneer days.

Even to-day it is not possible to travel into the remote corners of
the West without seeing the lives of people still affected by a
fighting past. How can the truth be told about the pioneering of
the West if the struggle, the fight, the blood be left out? It cannot
be done. How can a novel be stirring and thrilling, as were those
times, unless it be full of sensation? My long labors have been
devoted to making stories resemble the times they depict. I have
loved the West for its vastness, its contrast, its beauty and color
and life, for its wildness and violence, and for the fact that I
have seen how it developed great men and women who died unknown
and unsung.

In this materialistic age, this hard, practical, swift, greedy age
of realism, it seems there is no place for writers of romance, no