THE MAN OF THE FOREST

by Zane Grey




CHAPTER I

At sunset hour the forest was still, lonely, sweet with tang
of fir and spruce, blazing in gold and red and green; and
the man who glided on under the great trees seemed to blend
with the colors and, disappearing, to have become a part of
the wild woodland.

Old Baldy, highest of the White Mountains, stood up round
and bare, rimmed bright gold in the last glow of the setting
sun. Then, as the fire dropped behind the domed peak, a
change, a cold and darkening blight, passed down the black
spear-pointed slopes over all that mountain world.

It was a wild, richly timbered, and abundantly watered
region of dark forests and grassy parks, ten thousand feet
above sea-level, isolated on all sides by the southern
Arizona desert -- the virgin home of elk and deer, of bear
and lion, of wolf and fox, and the birthplace as well as the
hiding-place of the fierce Apache.

September in that latitude was marked by the sudden cool
night breeze following shortly after sundown. Twilight