Only a few months have passed since then--when I had my
memorable sojourn with you--and yet, in that short time,
Russell and Moore have crossed the Divide, like Rangers.

Gentlemen,--I have the honor to dedicate this book to you, and
the hope that it shall fall to my lot to tell the world the
truth about a strange, unique, and misunderstood body of
men--the Texas Rangers--who made the great Lone Star State
habitable, who never know peaceful rest and sleep, who are
passing, who surely will not be forgotten and will some day
come into their own.

ZANE GREY



BOOK 1 THE OUTLAW



CHAPTER I

So it was in him, then--an inherited fighting instinct, a
driving intensity to kill. He was the last of the Duanes, that
old fighting stock of Texas. But not the memory of his dead
father, nor the pleading of his soft-voiced mother, nor the
warning of this uncle who stood before him now, had brought to
Buck Duane so much realization of the dark passionate strain in
his blood. It was the recurrence, a hundred-fold increased in
power, of a strange emotion that for the last three years had