Dorn Of The Mountains
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Authors: Zane Grey
Zane Grey
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LEISURE BOOKS 
NEW YORK CITY
Riggs wheeled with an inarticulate cry. Wilson stood a few paces off with his gun half leveled, low down. His face seemed as usual, only his eyes held a quivering light intensity, like boiling molten silver.
“Girl, what made thet blood in your mouth?”
“Riggs hit me,” she whispered. Then at something she feared or saw or divined, she shrank back, dropped on her knees, and crawled into the spruce shelter.
“Wal, Riggs, I’d invite you to draw if thet’d be any use,” said Wilson. This speech was reflective, yet it hurried a little.
Riggs could not draw or move or speak. He seemed turned to stone, except his jaw, which slowly fell.
“Harve Riggs, gunman from down Missouri way!” continued the voice of incalculable intent. “Reckon you’ve looked into a heap of gun barrels in your day…. Shore. Wal, look into this heah one!” Wilson deliberately leveled the gun on a line with Riggs’s starting eyes. “Wasn’t you heard to brag in Turner’s saloon…thet you could see lead comin’…an’ dodge it? Shore you must be swift! Dodge this heah bullet!”
J
ON
T
USKA
It is unfortunate that a truly comprehensive and accurate biography of Zane Greytrade; is not likely ever to be written. Over the years since Grey’s death on October 23, 1939, most of the essential documents in one way or another have been dispersed, or destroyed as in the case of most of his diaries written in a private code he had devised. Correspondence has been scattered to the winds, sold at auction, or acquired by private collectors. Those wDorn of the Mountainsho have attempted biographical portraits have singularly neglected to read the books Zane Grey wrote, and, when a plot description is attempted, it is usually wrong. Stephen J. May in
Zane Grey: Romancing the West
(Ohio University Press, 1997) wrote: “
Man of the Forest
has a simple, even trivial plot with influences from Grey’s beloved Robinson Crusoe. It tells the story of Milt Dale, an uncouth misfit living in the White Mountains of Arizona, who loathes people and bonds to animals instead. Psychologically ‘marooned,’ Dale finds a woman in the village who is in
real
trouble. Removing Helen Rayner to his remote cabin in the mountains, he soon falls in love with her and through their relationship begins a slow connection to humanity.” This summary does not remotely resemble the novel Harper & Brothers published in 1920 as
Man of the Forest,
but in the second film version,
Man of the Forest
(Paramount, 1933), Randolph Scott as Brett Dale does live in a remote cabin to which he brings Alice Gayner who he kidnaps on her journey from the East to her uncle’s ranch in order to prevent her being kidnapped by Clint Beasley. In both Grey’s original holographic manuscript of
Dorn of the Mountains
and in the book version published in 1920, Helen Rayner and her sister Bo are rescued before being taken captive by Beasley. Stephen J. May left Bo out altogether. In
Man of the Forest
(Paramount, 1921) the villain is named Lem Beasley and is a bootlegger. In the 1933 film version, Clint Beasley is a landowner who covets water rights to a lake owned by the girl’s uncle. In Zane Grey’s story Beasley is not given a first name.
Grey’s original name for his protagonist was Milt Dorn. Dorn means “thorn” in German. The story first appeared serially in fifteen installments in
The Country Gentleman
from October 1917 through January 1918, during the time when the United States was at war with Germany. Anti-German sentiment was widespread, and doubtless for this reason the name was changed to Milt Dale in the magazine version, and Grey left it that way for the subsequent book version. Helen Rayner in this story was based on Lillian Wilhelm and Bo was modeled on Lillian’s younger sister Claire, both cousins of Dolly Grey, Zane’s wife, and both—to use Dolly Grey’s word for them—among Zane Grey’s “inamoratas.” Beasley calls Bo a “cat-eyed slut” in Grey’s holographic manuscript, and from what is known of Grey’s relationship with Claire, it was tempestuous.
Zen Ervin is a member of Zane Grey’s West Society and a contributor to
The Zane Grey Review
. Based on his research, Paradise Park in this story is a real place in the White Mountains. Ervin has physically traced the route taken by the characters from Magdalena, New Mexico across the mountains and into Paradise Park, commenting that while “it is impossible to know for certain what trails they followed, I used Grey’s descriptions and compared them to landmarks in the mountains, paid close attention to travel time, etc.” According to Ervin’s research, Milt Dorn was based on a real person, Jack Funk, who Grey most probably met in the White Mountains in 1916 when Grey hired John Butler of Greer, Arizona to guide his party into the White Mountains for hunting and fishing. To make that trip, Butler hired as wranglers two of the four Hall brothers, Roy and John, and Roy Hall later recalled Zane Grey and Zane’s brother Romer on that journey in which the party crossed the White River. Ervin believes that Roy and John Hall served as models for the Beeman brothers in this story.
It is relatively easy by a process of comparison to see what Ripley Hitchcock, Zane Grey’s editor at Harper & Brothers, removed from the original story. It is far more difficult to determine who added passages to the novel as published in what became Chapters X, XI, and XII of the Harper edition. The only thing that can be stated with certainty is that it wasn’t Zane Grey. Helen Rayner for that brief period becomes a wholly different character than she is in Zane Grey’s manuscript before and after this section. I know Ripley Hitchcock rewrote the second half of
The Lone Star Ranger,
a bogus Zane Grey novel made up of the first half of Zane Grey’s
Last of the Duanes
and the last half of his serial,
Rangers of the Lone Star
. Hitchcock may have done the same thing here. Or it might be we will never know, as we do not know absolutely who rewrote Zane Grey’s
Open Range
(Five Star, 2002) to form the book,
Valley of Wild Horses
(Harper, 1947). Romer Grey, the author’s elder son and long president of Zane Grey, Inc., told me in 1972 that he simply did not know, but he was willing to take the credit for it. I suspected it was veteran author Tom Curry who ghost-wrote all the Buck Duane stories as Romer Zane Grey, and Tom Curry admitted as much to me long before his son Stephen Curry became a Golden West client for his father’s literary estate. What I can say with total certitude is that
Dorn of the Mountains
appears now for the first time as Zane Grey wrote it ninety years ago. The title alone has been changed so that there can be no confusion between the two books. Clipped to the original holographic manuscript donated to the Library of Congress by Dolly Grey was a note in Zane Grey’s handwriting that reads: “Original Man of the Forest.” Here it is.
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 stealthily 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 and bold, 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 vast wild richly timbered and abundantly watered region of dark forest and grassy parks, 10,000 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 appeared to come on its wings, as did faint sounds, not distinguishable before in the stillness.
Milt Dorn, man of the forest, halted at the edge of a timbered ridge, to listen and to watch. Beneath him lay a narrow valley, open and grassy, from which rose a faint low murmur of running water. Its music was pierced and marred by the wild staccato yelp of a hunting coyote. From overhead in a giant fir came a twittering and rustling of grouse settling for the night, and from across the valley drifted the last low calls of wild turkeys going to roost.
To Dorn’s keen ear these sounds were all they should have been, betokening an unchanged serenity of forestland. He was glad, for he had expected to hear the
clip-clop
of white men’s horses—which to hear, up in those fastnesses, was hateful to him. He and the Indian were friends. That fierce foe had no enmity toward the lone hunter. But there hid somewhere in the forest a gang of bad men, sheep thieves, who Dorn did not want to meet.
As he started out upon the slope, a sudden flaring of the afterglow of sunset flooded down from Old Baldy, filling the valley with lights and shadows, yellow and blue, like the radiance of the sky. The pools in the curves of the brook shone darkly bright. Dorn’s gaze swept up and down the valley, and then tried to pierce the black shadow across the brook where the wall of spruce stood up, its speared and spiked crest against the pale clouds. The wind began to moan in the trees and there was a feeling of rain in the air. Dorn, striking a trail, turned his back to the fading afterglow and strode down the valley.
With night at hand and a rainstorm brewing, he did not head for his own camp, some miles distant, but directed his steps toward an old log cabin. When he reached it, darkness had almost set in. He approached with caution. This cabin, like the few others scattered in the valleys, might harbor Indians or a bear or a panther. Nothing, however, appeared to be there. Then Dorn studied the clouds driving across the sky and he felt the cool dampness of a fine misty rain on his face. It would rain off and on during the night. Whereupon he entered the cabin.
And the next moment he heard quick hoof beats of trotting horses. Peering out, he saw dim moving forms in the darkness, quite close at hand. They had approached against the wind so that sound had been deadened. Five horses with riders Dorn made out—saw them loom up close. Then he heard rough voices. Quickly he turned to feel in the dark for a ladder he knew led to a loft, and, finding it, he quickly mounted, taking care not to make a noise with his rifle, and lay down upon the floor of brush and poles. Scarcely had he done so when heavy steps, with accompaniment of
clinking
spurs, passed through the door below into the cabin.
“Wal, Beasley, are you here?” queried a loud voice.
There was no reply. The man below growled under his breath, and again the spurs
jingled
.
“Fellars, Beasley ain’t here yet!” he called. “Put the hosses under the shed. We’ll wait.”
“Wait, huh!” came a harsh reply. “Mebbe all night…an’ we got nuthin’ to eat.”
“Shut up, Moze. Reckon you’re no good fer anythin’ but eatin’. Put them hosses away an’ some of you rustle firewood in here.”
Low muttered curses then mingled with dull
thuds
of hoofs and strain of leather and heaves of tired horses.
Another shuffling
clinking
footstep entered the cabin.
“Snake, it’d been sense to fetch a pack along,” drawled this newcomer.
“Reckon so, Jim. But we didn’t an’ what’s the use hollerin’. Beasley won’t keep us waitin’ long.”
Dorn, lying still and prone, felt a slow start in all his blood—a thrilling wave. That deep-voiced man below was Snake Anson, the worst and most dangerous character of the region, and the others, undoubtedly, composed his gang, long notorious in that sparsely settled country. And the Beasley mentioned—he was one of the two biggest ranchers and sheep raisers of the White Mountain ranges. What was the meaning of a rendezvous between Snake Anson and Beasley? Milt Dorn answered that question to Beasley’s discredit, and many strange matters pertaining to sheep and herders, always a mystery to the little village of Pine, now became as clear as daylight.
Other men entered the cabin.
“It ain’t a-goin’ to rain much,” said one. Then came a
crash
of wood thrown to the ground.
“Jim, hyar’s a chunk of pine log, dry as punk,” said another.
Rustlings and slow footsteps, and then heavy
thuds
attested to the probability that Jim was knocking the end of a log upon the ground to split off a corner, whereby a handful of dry splinters could be procured.
“Snake, lemme your pipe an’ I’ll hev a fire in a jiffy.”
“Wal, I want my terbacco an’ I ain’t carin’ about no fire,” replied Snake.
“Reckon you’re the meanest cuss in these woods,” drawled Jim.
Sharp
click
of steel on flint—many times—and then a sound of hard blowing and sputtering told of Jim’s efforts to start a fire. Presently the pitchy blackness of the cabin changed; there came a little
crackling
of wood and the rustle of flame, and then a steady growing roar.
As it chanced, Dorn lay face down upon the floor of the loft and right near his eyes were cracks between the boughs. When the fire blazed up, he was fairly well able to see the men below. The only one who he had ever seen was Jim Wilson, who had been well known at Pine before Snake Anson had ever been heard of. Jim was the best of a bad lot and he had friends among honest people. It was rumored that he and Snake did not pull well together.
“Fire feels good,” said the burly Moze, who appeared as broad as he was black-visaged. “Fall’s sure a-comin’…. Now if we only had some grub!”
“Moze, there’s a hunk of deer meat in my saddlebag, an’, if you git it, you can have half,” spoke up another voice.
Moze shuffled out with alacrity.
In the firelight Snake Anson’s face looked lean and serpent-like, his eyes glittered, and his long neck, and all of his long length, carried out the analogy of his name.
“Snake, what’s this here deal with Beasley?” inquired Jim.
“Reckon you’ll larn when I do,” replied the leader. He appeared tired and thoughtful.
“Ain’t we done away with enough of them poor greaser sheepherders…fer nuthin’?” queried the youngest of the gang, a boy in years, whose hard bitter lips and hungry eyes somehow set him apart from his comrades.
“You’re dead right, Burt…an’ thet’s my stand,” replied the man who had sent Moze out.
“Snake, snow’ll be flyin’ around these woods before long,” said Jim Wilson. “Are we goin’ to winter down in the Tonto Basin or over on the Gila?”
“Reckon we’ll do some tall ridin’ before we strike south,” replied Snake gruffly.
At this juncture Moze returned. “Boss, I heerd a hoss comin’ up the trail,” he said.
Snake rose and stood at the door, listening. Outside, the wind moaned fitfully and scattering raindrops pattered upon the cabin.
“Ahuh!” exclaimed Snake in relief.
Silence ensued then for a moment, at the end of which interval Dorn heard a rapid
clip-clop
on the rocky trail outside. The men below shuffled uneasily, but none of them spoke. The fire cracked cheerily. Snake Anson stepped back from before the door with an action that expressed both doubt and caution.
The trotting horse had halted out there somewhere.
“Ho there inside!” called a voice from the darkness.
“Ho yourself!” replied Anson.
“That you, Snake?” quickly followed the query.
“Reckon so,” returned Anson, showing himself. “Come on in.”
A newcomer entered. He was a large man, wearing a heavy slicker that shone wet in the firelight. His sombrero, pulled well down, shadowed his face so that the upper half of his features might as well have been masked. He had a black drooping mustache and a chin like a rock. A potential force, matured and powerful, seemed to be wrapped in his movements.
“Hullo Snake. Hullo Wilson,” he said. “My boss backed out on the deal. Sent me on another little matter…particular private.” Here he indicated with a significant gesture that Snake’s men were to leave the cabin.
“Ahuh!” ejaculated Anson dubiously. Then he turned abruptly. “Moze, you an’ Shady an’ Burt go wait outside. Reckon this ain’t the deal I expected…. An’ you can saddle the hosses.”
The three members of the gang filed out, all glancing keenly at the stranger who had moved back in the shadow.
“All right now, Beasley,” said Anson, low-voiced. “What’s your game? Jim here is in on my deals.”
Then Beasley came forward to the fire, stretching his hands to the blaze.
“Nothin’ to do with sheep,” he replied.
“Wal, I reckoned not,” assented the other. “An’ say…what ever your game is, I ain’t likin’ the way you kept me waitin’ an’ ridin’ around. We waited near all day at Big Spring. Then thet greaser rode up an’ sent us here. We’re a long way from camp with no grub…an’ no blankets.”
“I won’t keep you long,” said Beasley. “But even if I did, you’d not mind…when I tell you this deal concerns Al Auchincloss…the man who made an outlaw of you.”
Anson’s sudden action then seemed a leap of his whole frame. Wilson, likewise, bent forward eagerly. Beasley glanced at the door—then began to whisper.
“Old Auchincloss is on his last legs. He’s goin’ to croak. He sent back to Missouri for a niece…a young girl…an’ he means to leave his ranches an’ sheep…all his stock to her. Seems he has no one else…. Them ranches…an’ all them sheep an’ hosses! You know me an’ Al were pardners in the sheep raisin’ for years. He swore I cheated him an’ he threw me out. An’ all these years I’ve been swearin’ he did me dirt…owed me sheep an’ money. I’ve got as many friends in Pine…an’ all the way down the trail…as Auchincloss has…. An’, Snake, see here….”
He paused to draw a deep breath and the big hands trembled over the blaze. Anson leaned forward like a serpent ready to strike, and Jim Wilson was as tense with his divination of the plot at hand.
“See here…,” panted Beasley. “The girl’s due to arrive at Magdalena on the Sixteenth. That’s a week from tomorrow. She’ll take the stage to Snowdrop, where some of Auchincloss’s men will meet her with a team.”
“Ahuh,” grunted Anson as Beasley halted again. “An’ what of all thet?”
“She mustn’t never get as far as Snowdrop!”
“You want me to hold up the stage…an’ get the girl?”
“Exactly.”
“Wal…an’ what then?”
“Make way with her! She disappears. That’s your affair…. I’ll press my claims on Auchincloss…hound him, an’ be ready when he croaks to take over his property…. You an’ Wilson fix up the deal between you. If you have to let the gang in on it, don’t give them any hunch as to who an’ what. This’ll make you a rich stake. An’ providin’ when it’s paid, you strike for new territory.”
“Thet might be wise,” muttered Snake Anson. “Beasley, the weak point in your game is the uncertainty of life. Old Al is tough. He may fool you.”
“Auchincloss is a dyin’ man,” declared Beasley with such positiveness that it could not be doubted.
“Wal, he sure wasn’t plumb hearty when I last seen him…. Beasley, in case I play your game…how’m I to know thet girl?”
“Her name’s Helen Rayner,” replied Beasley eagerly. “She’s twenty years old. All of them Auchinclosses was handsome an’ they say she’s the handsomest.”
“Ahuh! Beasley, that’s sure a bigger deal…an’ one I ain’t fancyin’…. But I never doubted your word…. Come on…an’ talk out. What’s in it for me…me to take care of Jim, or anyone I need?”
“Don’t let anyone in on this. You two can hold up the stage. Why, it never was held up…. But you want to mask…. How about ten thousand sheep…or what they bring at Phoenix in gold?”
Jim Wilson whistled low.
“An’ leave for new territory?” repeated Snake Anson under his breath.
“You’ve said it.”
“Wal, I ain’t fancyin’ the girl end of this deal, but you can count on me…. September Sixteenth at Magdalena…an’ her name’s Helen…an’ she’s handsome?”
“Yes…. My herders will begin drivin’ south in about two weeks. Later, if the weather holds good, send me word by one of them an’ I’ll meet you.”
Beasley spread his hands once more over the blaze, pulled on his gloves and pulled down his sombrero, and with abrupt word of parting strode out into the night.
“Jim, what do you make of him?” queried Snake Anson.
“Pard, he’s got us beat two ways for Sunday,” replied Wilson.
“Ahuh! Wal, let’s get back to camp.” And he led the way out.
Low voices drifted into the cabin, then came snorts of horses and striking hoofs, and after that a steady trot, gradually ceasing. Once more the moan of wind and soft patter of rain filled the forest stillness.