Zane Grey Memorial Day Treat: Zane Grey wrote often about the doughboys in World War I. The books shown here are perhaps his best regarding our soldiers. Imagine that the three doughboys in the picture are George, Grant and Abe in the following poignant passages from 30,000 On The Hoof: *** There was a telegram on the floor of his room just inside the door. He took it to the window, the better to see, and tore it open. The message was from Flagg and read: George and Grant killed in action Abe missing. ...Huett watched the dark hours pale and the dawn break with soft rosy grayness behind the grand spire of the Soldiers Monument. He hated the light of day. Beaten down, crushed by an unexpected blow that dwarfed the sum of all his lifes calamities, he had paced the endless black hours away at last to sink on a park bench, realizing that as he had forsaken God in his wild youth, now God had forsaken him in his troubled age. ...In the very beginning of that Western range career he had started with a driving passion, a single selfish purpose to which all else was subservient. He had sacrificed his wife, his sons, and Barbara. This tragedy, this devastation of his life in one crushing blow must have been just punishment, just retribution. He confessed it with anguish, and an exceeding bitterness flooded his soul. ...These boys had flashed up like fire, virile, trenchant, wonderful, imbued with the glory of fighting for their country. They had been misled. War in modern times held no glory for the boys who faced the firing line. ...His strong heart broke. ...The scene before his eyes strangely altered. The lofty shiny shaft, the faint tinge of foliage, the wide park and the gleam of water, the early cats and pedestrians that had begun to appear—these all faded. And in their place shone a stone-walled pine-rimmed canyon, with winding ribbon of stream and herds of browsing cattle, and a gray moss-roofed log cabin nestling on the wooded bench, all dim and unreal like the remembered scenes of a dream. Nevertheless it was home. And his pang of agony was appalling. He should have lived for his family and not for cattle. His great ambition had been a blunder. His greed had broken him. He had been clubbed down in the prime of his marvelous physical manhood. And as his vision sharpened he saw three dirty-faced ragged little boys playing beside the brook. And he cried out in his soul: Oh my sons, my sons! Would God I had died for you! Oh, my sons, my sons! * * * All at once Lucinda ceased her work to gaze out up the forested canyon. No differing sounds had caused this. She was puzzled. The brook murmured on, the soft wind moaned on, a stillness pervaded the canyon. The sun was directly overhead, as she ascertained by the shadows of the pines. Something had checked her actions, stopped her train of thought. It did not come from outside. Suddenly a stentorian yell burst the silence. Waa-hoo-oo! That was Logans hunting yell. Had he gone mad? Lucinda became rooted to the spot. Then her ears strung to the swift hard hoof-beats of a running horse. Who was riding in? What had happened? Logans whoop to a visiting cowboy? It seemed unnatural. The charged moment augmented unnaturally. How that horse was running! His hoofs rang on the hard trail up the bench. A grind of iron on stone, a sliding scrape and a pattering of gravel—then a thud of jangling boots! Bab, old girl—here I am! called a trenchant voice, deep and rich and sweet. Lucinda recognized it; and her frightened heart leaped pulsingly to her throat. Barbaras piercing shriek followed. It had the same wild note that had characterized Logans, and above and beyond that a high-keyed exquisite rapture which could only have burst from recognition. Abe! . . . Abe! Yes, darling. Its Abe. Alive and well. Didnt you get my telegram from New York? . . . My God, I—I expected to see you . . . but not—not so thin, so white. Dad must be okay—the way he yelled. And. . . . Aw, my boy! . . . So this is little Abe? He has your eyes, Barbara. . . . Brace up, honey. Im home. Itll all be jake pronto. Abe! . . . Youve come back—to me, cried Barbara, in solemn bewilderment. Lucinda heard Abes kisses but not his incoherent words. She lost all sensation from her head down. Her body seemed stone. She could not move. Abe had come home and the shock had restored Barbaras mind. Lucinda felt that she was dying: joy had saved, but joy could also kill. Mother! cried Abe. Come out! If Lucinda had been on the verge of death itself his call at that moment would have drawn her back, imbued her through and through with revivifying life. She rushed out. There stood Abe in uniform, splendid as she had never seen him, bronzed and changed, with one arm clasping Barbara and the boy, the other outstretched for her, and his gray eyes marvelously alight.
Posted on: Sun, 25 May 2014 15:39:41 +0000
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