The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mysterious Rider, by Zane Grey

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Mysterious Rider

Author: Zane Grey

Release Date: November 3, 2004 [EBook #13937]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MYSTERIOUS RIDER ***

Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the PG Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.

[Illustration: That round-up showed a loss of one hundred head
of stock. Belllounds received the amazing news with a roar.]

THE

MYSTERIOUS RIDER

A NOVEL

BY

ZANE GREY

AUTHOR OF

THE MAN OF THE FOREST,
THE U.P. TRAIL,
RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE,
THE DESERT OF WHEAT, ETC.

1921

ILLUSTRATIONS

That round-up showed a loss of one hundred head
of stock. Belllounds received the amazing
news with a roar .............................. _Frontispiece_

"I know why you're going. It's to see that club-footed
cowboy Moore!... Don't let me
catch you with him" ........................... _Facing p._ 98

"I'm beginnin' to feel that I couldn't let her marry
that Buster Jack," soliloquized Wade, as he
rode along the grassy trail ......................... " 164

"Jack Belllounds!" she cried. "You put the
sheriff on that trail!" ............................. " 280

THE MYSTERIOUS RIDER

CHAPTER I

A September sun, losing some of its heat if not its brilliance, was
dropping low in the west over the black Colorado range. Purple haze
began to thicken in the timbered notches. Gray foothills, round and
billowy, rolled down from the higher country. They were smooth,
sweeping, with long velvety slopes and isolated patches of aspens that
blazed in autumn gold. Splotches of red vine colored the soft gray of
sage. Old White Slides, a mountain scarred by avalanche, towered with
bleak rocky peak above the valley, sheltering it from the north.

A girl rode along the slope, with gaze on the sweep and range and color
of the mountain fastness that was her home. She followed an old trail
which led to a bluff overlooking an arm of the valley. Once it had been
a familiar lookout for her, but she had not visited the place of late.
It was associated with serious hour