Shadow on the Trail
First Skyhorse Edition 2017 by arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency
Copyright © 1946 by Lina Elise Grey
Copyright © renewed 1958 by Romer Zane Grey, Elizabeth Zane Grosso, and Loren Zane Grey
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Cover design by Tom Lau
Print ISBN: 978-1-63450-067-8
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63450-082-1
Printed in the United States of America
FOREWORD
IN MY reading of historical books on our American frontiers, and in my many trips to wild places in the West, and my early contacts with great westerners like Buffalo Jones, Buffalo Bill, Joe Sitter and Vaughn, Texas Rangers, Wyatt Earp and Dick Moore, gunmen, and my old guides A1 Doyle and John Wetherill, one of the remarkable things in western life was the way desperate characters and hunted outlaws disappeared without leaving a trace, never to be heard of again.
Henderson, one of the Billy the Kid gang, was a case in point. Henderson was a bad man, a desperado, a killer, marked by sheriffs from Abilene to Santa Fe. But he left Billy the Kid just before that deadly young man helped to instigate the Lincoln County War in New Mexico, and was eventually with his gang and many others wiped out. Henderson was never heard of again. What became of him?
Another case in point, and one which particularly inspired this novel, was that of a young lieutenant of Sam Bass, the notorious Texas bandit and bank-robber. Very little was ever known of this young outlaw, Jackson by name, during Sam Bass’s life, and nothing at all after Bass’s death.
When Sam Bass and his gang attempted to rob the bank at Mercer, Texas, they were surprised and attacked by Texas Rangers and citizens, and in a terrific fight all the robbers were killed except young Jackson.
He rode out of town supporting the mortally shot Bass in his saddle. The pursuing rangers came upon the dying Bass sitting up under a tree along the roadside. He died there. But nothing could be seen of Jackson except his tracks, and though the rangers rode this outlaw down for years, acting upon a hundred clues, he was never found.
What became of Jackson, as well as of so many desperate outlaws of those early days? Of those who were never heard of again!
For a novelist of western historical life that query was one of intriguing interest. Some of them, surely, turned their backs upon the uncertainty and inevitability of the evil life. Some of them, surely, were not as black as the wild frontier painted them. It is conceivable that some of them reformed, and lived useful hidden perhaps remorseful lives in out of the way corners of the vast West.
It is within the province of the creative writer to take upon himself the task of imagining and portraying what might have happened to one of these vanishing outlaws. And that is what I have tried to do in Shadow on the Trail.
ZANE GREY
Altadena
December 1, 1936
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER ONE
THE whistle of the Texas Pacific express train nerved Wade Holden to dare one more argument against the unplanned holdup and robbery his chief had undertaken. Standing there in the dark night under the trees with the misty rain blowing in his face and the horses restlessly creaking leather, Wade thought swiftly, realizing the peril in speaking ill of men Simm Bell chose as comrades for a job of banditry.
“Listen, Simm,” whispered Wade close to the ear of the lean dark outlaw beside him. “It’s too sudden, this holdup. We’ve got the big bank job all ready.”
“I’ve a hunch,” replied Bell, with the force of one who never brooked opposition. “We’re ridin’ through this country. Bad weather. Passed the towns at night. No one has seen us. Wade, I’ll get you a bunch of money like pickin’ it off bushes.”
“But these two strangers. We don’t know them.”
“Blue says he knows them. That’s enough for me.”
“Chief, I don’t trust Randall Blue,” returned Wade, with effort.
“Son, what’re you sayin’?” asked Bell, in gruff amaze. His big eyes glowed in the gloom.
“I know what I’m saying. I don’t trust Blue. Ever since I saw him talking to that ranger, Pell.
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