THE BORDER LEGION

Zane Grey



1

Joan Randle reined in her horse on the crest of the cedar ridge, and
with remorse and dread beginning to knock at her heart she gazed
before her at the wild and looming mountain range.

"Jim wasn't fooling me," she said. "He meant it. He's going straight
for the border ... Oh, why did I taunt him!"

It was indeed a wild place, that southern border of Idaho, and that
year was to see the ushering in of the wildest time probably ever
known in the West. The rush for gold had peopled California with a
horde of lawless men of every kind and class. And the vigilantes and
then the rich strikes in Idaho had caused a reflux of that dark tide
of humanity. Strange tales of blood and gold drifted into the camps,
and prospectors and hunters met with many unknown men.

Joan had quarreled with Jim Cleve, and she was bitterly regretting
it. Joan was twenty years old, tall, strong, dark. She had been born
in Missouri, where her father had been well-to-do and prominent,
until, like many another man of his day, he had impeded the passage
of a bullet. Then Joan had become the protegee of an uncle who had
responded to the call of gold; and the latter part of her life had
been spent in the wilds.